Ungodly Words: Toward a Political Philosophy of Heresy (Part V)

(Part I, II, III, IV)




The Community Model leads to a number of interesting possibilities as to how heresy functions on a day-to-day basis. For instance, since the Community Model does not require a text to objectively be in contradiction of a statement of dogma, it would be feasible to claim that something could be completely true and at the same time be completely heretical without in any way denying the legitimacy of a statement of dogma. Take the issue of evolution for example. As most of my readers would surely agree it is theoretically possible to reconcile the claims of evolution with the opening chapters of Genesis, but one, with some legitimacy, could argue that even though the theory of evolution may not really contradict the Bible and may even be true; still the Jewish community cannot afford to ever officially admit that possibility. The problem for the Jewish community in doing so is that we would be admitting that the biblical text can and should be reinterpreted in light of the findings of modern science. This fact, while arguably true, opens up a Pandora's Box. What is to happen when Zayd wakes up tomorrow and decides that he is a "homosexual?" He will come to the conclusion that since science has shown that the creation story does not really mean what he was taught it meant in heder (religious primary school), maybe those verses in Leviticus do not actually mean what he was always taught they meant, now that modern psychiatry has "demonstrated" that homosexuality is not an illness, but a "perfectly normal" style of behavior. (Note that the concepts of mental "illness" and "normal" behavior are value judgments and thus outside of any empirical proof or demonstration.) In light of this "scientific" discovery Zayd could claim that it should be assumed that the verse "thou shall not lie with a man in the manner one lies with a woman, it is an abomination," (Leviticus 18:22) is not meant to ban "healthy," "loving" relationships between homosexual men, who technically speaking are not anyway carrying out relations with each other in the same manner as a man and a woman. (See Michael Lerner's Jewish Renewal pg. 324-327.) Rather the text is only meant to ban homosexual men from claiming that their relationships are equivalent to heterosexual marriage. Personally I think it is far more dangerous for Zayd to think that Judaism is against science than for Zayd to become an active Orthodox homosexual, but that is just me.

The central issue for me surrounding the Community Model is that if we were to accept this notion that texts should be defined as being heretical based on the decision of the community then the whole notion of heresy becomes tied to the issue of defining community. Without a clearly defined community structure there can be no heretical texts. For example one could argue that we, in this post-Enlightenment world of ours, cannot with any legitimacy speak of a Jewish community. While a Jew may belong to a synagogue, only associate with other Jews, and live his life according to Jewish Law, none of these things have any innate authority over him, as they once did. Any authority that these things do have comes from the willingness of the individual to defer to them. So in fact when the individual follows rabbinic authority or the standards of his "community," he is merely following the dictates of his own conscience. If this is the case then heresy becomes the broken staff of a deposed king. The fact that this staff is still being waved encapsulates in of itself the very nature of the power structure that wields it. It has ceased to exist yet it still thinks that it does, which following Cartesian logic confers its own form of existence upon it.

So I put the challenge to my readers. What would you do if you saw your fellow Jew reading a book titled: "There is No God. If There Was One He Would Be Four Beings, Physical, Not Eternal, Not Worth Praying To and Not a Talker to Prophets Nor a Giver of Torahs. If He Would Have Given a Torah He Would Have Changed it and He Would Never Have Bothered With Anything So Foolish as Reward and Punishment, a Messiah or the Revival of the Dead?" Would you try to explain to this Jew that such a book is dangerous and if so who is it dangerous to? Would you attempt to confiscate this book; if so, by what means and by what authority? Would you claim that this Jew is actually committing a sin by continuing to read that book and if so what sin has he committed?

Ungodly Words: Toward a Political Philosophy of Heresy (Part IV)

(Part I, II, III)


The Historical Model would have us ignore the question of what the author did or did not intend and instead have us look at how a text has historically been interpreted. The advantage this model possesses over the previous two models is that it forces us to evaluate texts within the context of the real world, not just the imagination of individuals. The Historical Model becomes problematic though once we consider the issue of whose opinions exactly are we supposed to view as relevant. If we were serious about following this model we would have to declare parts of the bible to be heretical because there are numerous passages in the bible that Christians have interpreted as being in support of their beliefs. Take the Suffering Servant passage of Isaiah 53 for example. Christians have claimed since the Book of Acts that Isaiah was prophesying that the Messiah was going to allow himself to be murdered in an excruciating fashion and thereby atone for the sins of all mankind. If we are to take the Historical Model for evaluating heresy then it should be irrelevant that Christians have grossly misinterpreted this passage. The fact that they have understood this passage in the manner that they do and that they so greatly outnumber us should force us to admit that, no matter what Isaiah may have meant, today, in the twenty-first century, Isaiah's suffering servant refers to Jesus and must be removed from our Bibles. I alluded, earlier in this essay, to Strauss' view that Maimonides held secret beliefs that most Orthodox Jews would classify as heretical. If we were to follow the Historical Model we would have to at the very least suspect that maybe, in the fifty years since Strauss made this claim, enough Jewish Studies Professors have bought into Strauss' claim to form a critical mass, making the Guide forbidden to read. It does not stop there because Strauss also claimed that Maimonides wrote the Mishnah Torah as part of his cover so we would also potentially have to throw out the Mishnah Torah as well.

As I mentioned there is something going in favor of the Historical Model in that it makes as its primary issue a text's functioning in the real world. I would only modify the Historical Model to limit who has a say in what a text means. I would say that first of all, for the purposes of a given community, this conversation is limited to what members of that community have been saying about a text
and even furthermore that the power to define texts as heretical resides not within individuals but within in the body of the formal community itself. In this Community Model, the community, or the people who lead the community, come to the understanding that allowing a certain text to be freely circulated through the community would be detrimental to the community's ongoing health or that to allow an idea to take a legitimate place within the public discourse would prove harmful. The community, therefore, takes action and physically rids itself of the offending text making it impossible for certain ideas to enter the public discourse.

For practical purposes it is not possible for the Jewish community to allow Zayd to wake up one morning and think to himself: "Maybe Jesus is my Lord and Savior. Let me read this book the gentiles call 'the New Testament' to help me come to some conclusions." The problem is not just that Zayd might actually come to conclusions that the community would not approve of, but even if the proper conclusions were to be reached the mere fact that such an issue could be put on the table undermines the community by making it possible to challenge its foundations. (I am not saying that such an attitude is necessarily wrong per se or bad for the individual. I am simply saying that such an attitude works against the interests of the community and it is in the interests of the community itself to guard against such attitudes.) If community spokesperson, Umar, makes a statement of dogma then ideally it would be in the best interests of the community for Zayd to accept that dogma out of the belief that since a statement of dogma is in accordance with the absolute rules of the community and the community cannot be wrong therefore a statement of dogma itself cannot be wrong. More than that, it is important that Zayd not even seriously ask the question: "could it be otherwise?" Once we have Zayd choosing to follow a statement of dogma because he understands that the statement of dogma is in accordance with the rules of the community which he, at present, is choosing to accept as an absolute then both the dogma and the rules of the community cease to be absolutes. The reason for this is that, even though Zayd in either case may end up doing the same action, the reasoning in the latter case, unlike the former, has Zayd following the dictates of the community because it is in keeping with the dictates of his own beliefs. In this situation, the de facto decider of any issue is not the community, but Zayd.

Ungodly Words: Toward a Political Philosophy of Heresy (Part III)

(Part I, II)

At the same time that I am marching into Jewish homes confiscating all Uncle Moishy tapes for their Pantheist heresies, I could also be going around putting a Hechser (kosher symbol) on all sorts of "dangerous" texts. In dealing with the Gospels one could argue make a plausible argument that the writers of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and possibly even John did not believe that Jesus was part of a divine Trinity but simply believed that Jesus was the Messiah and the physical embodiment of the Law. This in fact was the view of the great medieval Jewish apologist Profiat Duran. Duran in fact goes so far as to call Jesus a "pious fool." Duran believed that the early Christians were good pious Jews, who were mistaken in certain matters. (See "Toward Formulating a Jewish View of Jesus.") Imagine for a second that Christianity had remained and died as an obscure first-century Jewish sect leaving nothing behind for us except the Gospels. Would we view them as "the New Testament?" More likely we would see them as the harmless writings of a group of Jews who lived a long time ago, who were followers of a Messiah who did not pan out and who got themselves into some heated verbal exchanges with the more mainstream rabbinate just like the Dead Sea Sect. In this scenario, if Zayd were to be caught with a copy of the New Testament, cross on the cover and all, underneath his shtender (reading lectern) it is highly unlikely that he would be thrown out of Shul (synagogue) or that anyone would bother to even confiscate the book. If we view heresy strictly in terms of what is the most plausible interpretation of the text then we have license to ignore, in making our judgments, any considerations of the historical trappings that can come in a text's wake. In looking at the Gospels, the Council of Nicea, Christianity, and the past two thousand years of anti-Semitism in the Western world would become irrelevant.

The Authorship Model would have us admit that we cannot reach any conclusions as to the heretical nature of a text simply from the text itself but that we must rather decide as to the heretical nature of a text based on what the author intended his text to mean. If this is the case then the imperative question that one has to ask about any text is did the author intend by the text to make claims that are in contradiction to set Jewish dogmas. This would get us out of the Uncle Moishy problem because it would allow Suki and Ding, assuming we decided to believe their public statements, to declare that they do not have any Pantheist messages in their songs and that all they meant to say was that God's authority and awareness extend to all places.

The first issue in regards to the Authorship Model is that like the Interpretive Model it turns away from the issue of how a text has fared in the real world. In fact, the Authorship Model would stick us into the mire even deeper because not only would it allow us to not take the issue into account, it would expressly forbid us from even considering it.

The second issue in regards to the Authorship Model is that one has to ask whether we are declaring any text written by a heretical author to be heretical or whether we are simply declaring only the texts of heretical authors that, in themselves, make heretical assumptions. Either way is problematic. If we are to say the former then we would have to conclude that any text that was written by someone who was not either an Orthodox Jew is heretical. This would mean that over 99.9% of all books in the world are heretical, including books on such subjects as mathematics, music, cooking, and sewing. This I guess would make some in Haredi circles happy, except that this does not end there. We would have to continue and apply the same rules to the spoken word since direct speech is potentially at least as dangerous as the written text. This would mean that no Jewish school would be able to hire a teacher who was not an Orthodox Jew to teach anything, not even that the sky is blue, since that statement is part of a larger "body" of work that is heretical. To take the matter even further if your gentile neighbor tried to wish you "good morning" you would have to cover your ears and run away lest you be exposed to heresy. If we are to allow texts and statements of heretical authors to be read as long as the texts themselves do not contain heresy we would simply run into other problems. What is heretical about John 3:16? The text 'G-d,' 'so,' 'loved,' 'the,' 'world,' or 'Son.' We cannot possibly declare that the author meant to make heretical statements with individual words, but at what point are texts large enough that we can say that the author meant something heretical by it; does a text have to be a complete sentence, paragraph or an entire book in order for it to be heretical? Where does one place the location of the author's heretical intentions?

The third issue that I would raise is the case where the author intended the text to mean something heretical but either was not trying to convince the reader to accept the heretical assumptions of the text or was even trying to refute the heretical assumptions of the text. Take Kierkegaard's Either/Or in which Kierkegaard wrote in the character of 'A' who is an aesthete. Now many of the aesthete's statements are intended to go against conventional dogmas but it was not Kierkegaard's intention to try to convince people to follow the aesthete's worldview; are we to say that Either/Or is still heretical? How for that matter are we to deal with a volume of Jewish anti-missionary literature? Are we to say that, because they quote texts that contradict set dogmas, they are heretical?

Ungodly Words: Toward a Political Philosophy of Heresy (Part II) – Is Uncle Moishy Kefira?

(Part I)

What does it mean when we say that a statement or even an entire work is heretical (kefira)? Examples of statements that have been, at one time or another, been declared heretical by Jews would be: "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life," (John 3:16)  "Religion is the opiate of the masses," (Karl Marx “Critique of the Hegelian Philosophy of Right”)  "the Bible was formed from the documents J, P, E and D" and "man is descended from monkeys." How are we able to say that such statements, and by extension the books in which they are contained, are in contradiction of statements of dogma and therefore heretical? There are a number of possible models which one can use in order to tag a text as heretical. The most obvious way would be to interpret a text and decide if it contains any heretical assumptions; this can be referred to as the Interpretive Model. Another way to go about the task would be to decide if the author had intended the text to mean something that is heretical; this can be referred to as the Authorship Model. A third way with which one could decide the matter is to look at how the text has generally been interpreted; this can be referred to as the Historical Model. The final possibility is what I like to refer to as the Community Model in which we would assume that the communal body is licensed to eliminate ideas that it views as dangerous and as such the community has the right to, on a whim, declare texts to be heretical. As I will attempt to demonstrate, each of the first three views, taken to their practical applications, lead to extremely problematic situations where we would either have to declare "safe" texts to be heretical or not be able to justify, on a rational basis, declaring certain "dangerous" texts to be heretical.

The problem with the Interpretive Model is that, once you start putting texts under a theological microscope you can find heresy almost anywhere. Take something really innocent like an Uncle Moishy song, a major staple of my childhood. If you think about it, the lyrics: "Hashem is here, Hashem is there, Hashem is truly everywhere," taken in their literal sense, are highly heretical because they imply that Hashem (God) occupies space. This could only be possible if God were a physical being or had some sort of physical element to him.

Everyone would agree that within the four-cubits which define "here" for me at the present there is a being named Benzion Noam Chinn, a desk, a computer, a copy of the 6^th edition of Wheelock's Latin, sound waves which are coming together to form the First Movement of Beethoven's Third Symphony along with the trillions upon trillions of nitrogen and oxygen atoms which make up the air that I am at present breathing. It would seem that Uncle Moishy and by extension my supposedly Orthodox parents would have had me believe that in addition to the list of things that I have just mentioned there is an omnipotent, omniscient, being better known as Hashem taking up space in the "here." Now in regards to things that are not physical we do not deal with them in terms of space or of "here" or "there." For example, we do not, except in a poetic sense, talk about peace, love, happiness, or the law of inertia being "here," "there" or occupying space. Just as the statement "the surface of the planet contains x amounts of love, or of Newtonian mechanics, per square cm" is meaningless, so to, for the purposes of all of us who believe that God is not a physical being, the statement "the surface of the planet contains y amounts of Deity Blessed be He per square cm has no meaning. Since it is not reasonable to assume that Uncle Moishy was singing gibberish, it would become conceivable that Uncle Moishy believes that God is in some form or fashion a physical entity pervading the entire universe. To be specific it could be assumed that Uncle Moishy believes in a Pantheistic conception of God, just as Baruch Spinoza did, or at the very least Panentheism, that God is in all things.

So maybe you could tell me that Suki and Ding, the makers of Uncle Moishy, only meant the song in a poetic sense. I would respond that first of all I never did see any notice on any Uncle Moishy tapes saying: "Warning, to all philosophically inclined children, this song should only be understood as a figure of speech and should not be taken in any way shape or form literally, Chas V'Shalom (God Forbid)." Even if such precautions had been taken it still would not allay the concern that the people behind Uncle Moishy were covert Pantheists, trying to poison the minds of innocent children with their heresies, because I could argue that not only are they Pantheists but they are also Straussians. They very well may have read Leo Strauss' Persecution and the Art of Writing, in which he argued that various writers, such as Maimonides in particular, hid the heretical aspects of their beliefs by spouting the orthodox creeds that contradicted their real beliefs, in order to fool the cursory censor, and then inserted their real beliefs in a backhanded fashion. In this same vain, any warning given by the producers of Uncle Moishy can be taken as mere cover for their real beliefs as stated in their songs. Particularly in this case since, let us face it, five year-olds as a whole do not read the warning labels on cassette tapes. Therefore the trick warning would never reach the eyes of the children and they would take in the real message of the song mainly that God is simply the physical spirit permeating all matter. In such a way a whole generation of Jewish children can be led astray and turned into Pantheists. For the purposes of the Interpretive Model, the fact that I might not be able to find a single person who has become a Pantheist through listening to Uncle Moishy songs is irrelevant. All that matters is what the song means to me, the Interpreter.

(Just to make you breathe easier, I do not actually believe that Uncle Moishy is the product of a Cabal of Straussian Pantheists. I do not consider the collective intelligence of the Jewish music industry to be high enough to actually know anything about Spinoza, Pantheism or Strauss let alone to be able to conspire to inculcate children to those ideas.)

My Presentation to the International Medieval Congress (Part II)

(Part I)

Did Jews have the power to act against those accused of heresy? When faced with other types of threats the heads of the Jewish community proved themselves quite capable of putting through legislation, which regulated the behavior of individuals. In 1397, in response to the events of 1391, the leader of the Jewish community, Hasdai Crescas passed through a series of takkanot, in Saragossa that increased the powers of the communal trustees, making it easier for them to act without consulting the community as a whole. He placed a ban of excommunication on anyone who would tamper with his regulations.[1] Crescas wrote a book, Or Adonai (Light of the Lord), attacking Aristotelian philosophy and Maimonides yet he did not bother to place any restrictions on the study of philosophy. If Crescas really believed that Aristotelian philosophy posed a mortal threat to Judaism then surely he should have done more than engage in a philosophical debate with Aristotle and Maimonides. He should have put the considerable power, that he wielded, and used it to rid the community of Aristotle’s books and Aristotelian philosophers.

We see a similar pattern with the Synod of Valladolid in 1432, under Don Abraham Benveniste that focused on the need to reestablish community authority. The ordinances focused on five things: instruction in Torah communal judges, denunciation and slander, taxes and services and restrictions upon extravagant dress and entertainment. The council was concerned with the lack of Torah study amongst the Jewish community in Castile. In order to rectify the situation and support those involved in the study of Torah and teaching it, a tax was levied on cattle slaughtered, wine, weddings, circumcisions, and death. Every community was to appoint its own judges and officials to serve terms of one year. In case of any indecisions, the matter was to be brought to the Rab de la Corte, who would appoint someone himself. These judges wielded the power to levy fines and even use corporal punishment. They could force people to appear before the court and fine those who refused. They could order the arrest of any Jew provided they first signed a warrant in the presence of witnesses. The Synod forbade Jews to take other Jews to a Christian court or denounce other Jews to Christians, except if it was a matter of taxes due to the king, something pertaining to the king’s welfare or if the Jew in question did not recognize the authority of the Jewish court.[2] The Synod forbade Jews to attempt to seek special privileges from the Christian authorities in order to exempt themselves from community taxes.[3] Finally, the Synod placed restrictions on what sort of clothing Jews could wear. [4] The idea being that Jews should not wear fancy garments so as to not incur the ire of their Christian neighbors. [5]

Benveniste was Rab de la Corte under John II of Castile. In accordance with these statutes, Benveniste, as Rab de la Courte, was the supreme legal authority amongst all Jews in Castile and had power over all courts. We know from Ibn Musa that Benveniste was critical of philosophical interpretations of the Bible. According to Ibn Musa, Benveniste once responded to two scholars, who preached about “matters alien to our tradition,” using “figurative interpretations,” saying:

My brothers, children of Abraham, believe that when the Bible says in the beginning God created (Gen. 1:1) or Jacob left Beersheba (Gen. 26:10), it is to be understood in its simple meaning. Believe also in all that is written in the Torah, and what the rabbis explained in accordance with their tradition. Do not believe those who provocatively speak of alien matters.[6]


One would have imagined that Benveniste, among all of his various community regulations, could have spared a few lines as to the regulation of rogue preachers engaged in undermining popular belief with their philosophical allegories. As Rab de la Courte he certainly would have had the power to successfully wage the sort of campaign that had been attempted with limited success by Solomon of Montpellier, in 1232, and Solomon ben Aderet and Abba Mari, in 1306.

Part of the solution to this historical problem lies, I believe, in rethinking the issue of what these anti-philosophical polemics were about. I would suggest that rabbis wrote these polemics not written in order to warn ordinary Jews as to the dangers and failings of philosophy, but to reach out to conversos and make the case to them that Christian theology was a denial of the God of the Bible, and that by remaining as Christians they were abandoning God’s covenant and were no different than the Israelites in the Bible who worshipped Baal. Since we are dealing with a population that the church and the civil authorities viewed as Christian, Jews could not directly write anything that tried to get conversos to remain Jewish in any fashion. Therefore any outreach to conversos needed to be esoterically written.

To give an example of this, Solomon Alami accused philosophers of exchanging the garments of the “pure” Torah for Greek garments.

According to their [the philosophers’] words they have raised Aristotle with his calculations above Moshe, Peace Be Upon Him, with his Torah. For, were it not for his work and his books on nature, we would be left in the darkness of our intellect and we would not go out into the light from the barriers. And this is a little like the Christian argument when they say that all the righteous descended [to Hell] and were lost until their Messiah came and atoned for them through his death.[7]

Alami clearly connects philosophy to Christianity. Other examples follow this course and we can see philosopher as a codeword for Christian.

Assuming that rabbis wrote anti-philosophical literature in order to reach conversos solves our problems. It would explain why no one made the jump from attacking philosophy to actually taking action against it. The “philosophers” in question, whom the rabbis saw as such great threats, lived outside of the formal control of the Jewish community so any attempt to take action against them was futile. No Jewish communal bureaucracy could touch a Christian. When faced with the fact that a large percentage of the Jewish community officially lived as Christians, one could quite comfortably choose to ignore the issue of Averroeist Jews reading large swaths of the Bible allegorically. The rabbis were addressing a contemporary issue and were not simply going through the troupes inherited from earlier generations. Previous generations had the luxury of not having to face mass apostasy so they had the ability to look inward and take action against those Jews deemed to be too philosophically minded.

This move to reach out to conversos would also explain the turn towards dogma and why it did not lead to any attempts to follow through and take action against those deemed to possess heterodox beliefs. If one viewed Judaism as a set of beliefs and not as practices then it is possible to say that a Jew who did not keep the practices of Judaism, but who still believed should not be counted as an apostate. If one followed Maimonides even if a Jew violated every commandment in the Bible he still counted as a member of Israel and must be treated as one in every respect as long as he accepted all thirteen Principles of Faith. Since this move to dogma came about in order to accommodate those who could not actually practice Judaism or even count themselves as part of the Jewish community, any attempt to rid the Jewish community of those who counted themselves as part of the community, even though they might not accept everything in Judaism, would have been counterproductive.

In dealing with rabbinic anti-philosophical polemics in the fifteenth-century one cannot simply pass them off as a form of reactionary conservatism aimed at rooting out philosophy. If the rabbis of this period had wished to fight philosophy then they would have gone beyond simply denouncing philosophy to using their political power in order to excommunicate philosophers and ban their books. The fact that these people did not take such action forces us to rethink our understanding of this literature. The solution I have offered connects the issues of conversos and rabbinic polemics against philosophy. The real concern here was not philosophy but the mass apostasy of Jews. The anti-philosophical polemics from this period did not serve as vehicles to purify Judaism from the threat of heresy. Rather they served as a means to reach out to other Jews, even those who did not practice Judaism in any sort of traditional sense.


[1] Baer HJCS II pg. 126-29 and Die Juden im Christlichen Spanien Erster Teil I no. 463, pg. 727-32.
[2] One wonders what sort of Jew this is meant to refer to. One source of possible candidates would have been conversos.
[3] This statute is found in almost every community ordinance in the middle ages both amongst Sephardic communities and Ashkenazic.
[4] Ibn Verga in his book Sevet Yehuda, argues that Jews brought about the expulsion of 1492 upon themselves because they paraded themselves in fancy garments in front of Christians, which made Christians resentful of them.
[5] Baer, HJCS II pg. 261-70 and Die Juden im Christlichen Spanien Erster Teil II no. 287, pg. 281-97.
[6] Saperstein, Jewish Preaching pg. 385-86.
[7] Iggeret Musar pg. 41-42.

My Presentation to the International Medieval Congress (Part I)

Philosophers, Conversos, and the Jewish Campaign against Heresy in 15th-Century Spain – Benzion Chinn (The Ohio State University)

One has to admit that there is something just a little bit odd about studying orthodox attempts to suppress “heretical” ideas. As academics, our very lifeblood is free inquiry. It would only be natural for us to simply view these defenders of orthodoxy as the “ultimate evil,” attempting to destroy "reason" and establishing the tyranny of “dogma” and “superstition.” I believe this speaks to the best of the historical profession that we are committed to giving all those from the past a chance to speak, particularly those who seem to be the most distant from “modernity.”

This paper is primarily about a question and I will spend most of my time dealing with this question. I will suggest a solution. Not that I am convinced that I have the evidence to completely solve the question. I would be interested in getting feedback if anyone can offer anything to further my case or to refute it.

One of the major features of Spanish Jewish thought, during the fifteenth century, was its polemic against philosophy. Philosophy was supposed to lead to the abandonment of the commandments, to heresy and even to apostasy. This element received particular emphasis in the work of the late Yitzchak Baer and his History of the Jews in Christian Spain. (Probably the finest study of any one particular Jewish community.) I first started exploring this topic with the intention of writing about the practical side of this move against philosophy, such as bans, book burnings, and excommunications. It seemed only logical that such things went on; what is the point of denouncing philosophy if you are not going to actually do something about it? As I am sure many of you can relate to, this project took a dramatic shift when, after several weeks of work, I realized that I had absolutely no evidence of such things happening. Out of frustration, as strange as this sounds, I found myself almost yelling at my sources: “what is wrong with you people? Why do you not show some spine and ban something?” I could have pretended that I had the evidence and hoped no one would notice. Instead, I chose what I think is the more interesting option and asked myself why I had no evidence. We are left with the conclusion that the reason we have no evidence of bans, book burnings and excommunications is that they did not happen.

So why would a rabbinic establishment devote so much energy to denouncing philosophy without taking any practical measures against it? To suggest some obvious possibilities: Maybe Jews were remarkably tolerant and did not go for banning books? Maybe Jews were just not that interested in dogma? Maybe the Jewish community during this period was remarkably orthodox and there were no dangerous philosophers? Maybe Jews just did not have the power to do something about it?

Attempts by the Jewish community to take action against perceived heterodox beliefs had clear precedent both within Spain and outside of it. Spanish Jewry possessed a particularly strong precedent for the active suppression of heterodox beliefs since it served as the host for most of the Maimonidean controversies. In 1232 Solomon of Montpellier and his students, Jonah of Gerondi and David b. Saul banned Maimonides’ Guide to the Perplexed. Furthermore, Solomon sent Jonah of Gerondi to Northern France in order to gain support for the ban. The Rabbis of Northern France themselves went and banned this book as well. The Maimonideans responded with a ban of their own against Solomon of Montpellier. Furthermore, they sent David Kimhi to Spain to rally support for their position. While Kimhi gained the support of a number of important community leaders, he met some fierce opposition from such Jewish leaders as Nachmonides, Judah Alfakar, and Abulafia. This fighting only came to a close when the Inquisition got involved and burned copies of the Guide.[1] This event shocked both sides and caused them to temporally halt their campaigns.

A similar controversy occurred in the fourteenth century. In 1304 Abba Mari ben Moses (d.c. 1310) and Solomon ben Aderet (1235-1310), the chief rabbi of Barcelona and student of Jonah of Gerondi, issued a ban of excommunication on all those under twenty-five who studied philosophy. The focus of Abba Mari and Aderet’ zeal was Levi ben Abraham of Villefranche who supposedly claimed that Abraham and Sarah represented Form and Matter and were not real historical figures. As with the case of Solomon of Montpellier, this attempt also met with stiff opposition from a number of scholars, most notably Menahem Meiri. Abba Mari collected his correspondence in a book titled Minhat Kinot (Offering of Jealously). It serves to detail all of his efforts to stamp out Aristotelian thought within the Jewish community. His efforts to get different communities to sign on to his ban, the rabbis that he convinced to sign and those that turned against him. He also recounts his efforts to defend himself against his opponents, who went after him personally and tried to destroy his reputation.[2]

As strange as this sounds, one has to admire these people. They took a principled stand, based on what they believed, and where even willing to put themselves at some professional risk for those beliefs. Keep in mind that the pro-Maimonidean forces possessed considerable power and were perfectly capable of moving against those who dared oppose them.

To move on to the issue of dogma. The central figure in the history of Jewish dogma was Maimonides (1138-1205) with his Thirteen Principles of Faith. As Menachem Kellner has argued, Maimonides attempted to reformulate Judaism as a theologically based religion as opposed to a law-based one. Furthermore, Maimonides redefined the meaning of being a Jew. For Maimonides a Jew was not simply someone born to a Jewish mother or a convert to Judaism; a Jew was someone who believed in the dogmas of Judaism. While Maimonides’ thought played a major role in the theological controversies of the Middle-Ages, his Principles of Faith only came to play an important role in fifteenth-century Spain. It was Hasdai Crescas (1350-1410) and his student Joseph Albo (1380-1445) who first made an issue out of it. They criticized Maimonides’ choices as to which doctrines should be viewed as the foundations and axioms upon which Judaism was to be based and put forth their own alternative lists of dogmas. Kellner suggests that the reason for this sudden interest in dogma was the church’s missionary assault at the end of the fourteenth and early fifteenth century. Christianity set the terms of debate and that meant dogma. Any responses on the part of Jews needed to formulate a conception of Jewish dogma and how it was different from Christian dogma. This predicament lead Jews back to Maimonides and the acceptance of all or parts of his reformulation of Judaism.

While Kellner notes in passing that this interest in dogma did not lead to any fissures within the Jewish community, he does not bother to follow through and consider the implications of this lack of any real-world crackdown on heresy. One would think that the point of formulating an official established dogma was so that one could define heresy. Once we have an official dogma all those who do not conform to it are heretics and should be persecuted. Why would someone go through so much trouble formulated dogma unless they intended to use it as a platform with which they could hunt after heretics? Both Crescas and Albo, in the early part of the fifteenth century, and Isaac Arama (1420-97) and Isaac Abarbanel (1437-1508), in the latter part, engaged in anti-philosophical polemics and in attempts to formulate official Jewish dogma. For some strange reason, though, none of these people ever banned a book or excommunicated someone for their philosophical leanings.

Where there radical Jewish philosophers in the fifteenth century? We do have some evidence to indicate that the Jewish community possessed some active philosophical radicals during this period. The mid fifteenth-century preacher, Haim ibn Musa, in a letter to his son wrote:

Now there is a new type of preacher. They rise to the lectern to preach before the reading of the Torah, and most of their sermons consist of syllogistic arguments and quotations from the philosophers. They mention by name Aristotle, Alexander, Themistius, Plato, Averroes, and Ptolemy, while Abbaye and Raba are concealed in their mouths. The Torah waits upon the reading stand like a dejected woman who had prepared herself properly by ritual immersion and awaited her husband; then, returning from the house of his mistress, he glanced at her and left without paying her further heed.[3]

While Ibn Musa did not give any specific names, the preachers he attacked clearly lived in his time.




[1] Whether or not the anti-Maimonideans denounced the works of Maimonides to the Inquisition is an open question. Maimonideans, such as Hillel of Verona, blamed their opponents for what happened and sought to use this event as a means of discrediting them. Daniel Silver has argued that such actions would have been highly unlikely as it would have elicited the complete opposition of the Jewish community at large.
[2] For more on the Maimonidean controversies see Joseph Sarachek, Faith and Reason, Daniel Silver’s Maimonidean Criticism and the Maimonidean Controversy and Bernard Septimus’ Hispano-Jewish Culture in Transition: the Career and Controversies of Ramah.
[3] Saperstein, Jewish Preachers pg. 386.



(To be continued ...)

International Medieval Congress: Day One Session Three

Reasoning with Heretics

Right Belief and Right Knowledge: Epistemological Subversion in the Cloud of Unknowing – Chance Woods (University of Oklahoma)

According to the anonymous author of the fourteenth century text, the Cloud of Unknowing, the prime source of heresy is the claim to know God. Complete union with God is impossible. This concept of the radical inability to know God comes from Pseudo-Dionysius. Traditional scholarship on religion thought in terms of object of experience. This model does not work for Pseudo-Dionysius or Cloud of Unknowing. The Cloud of Unknowing does not want the reader to focus on any one thing. He downplays rationality, but views the imagination as dangerous. The only response to the call of Grace is silence. The particular target of the Cloud of Unknowing’s hostility to images was the English mystic Richard Rolle. Rolle talked about feeling the Holy Spirit like a fire in his belly, which Cloud of Unknowing suggests may have been indigestion. For Cloud of Unknowing, images lead to heresy because they come from ignoring one’s spiritual mentor and pursuing images which are the products of one’s own mind. Soon such visions become addictive and Satan willingly aids in providing such images as will lead the foolhardy seeker away from the doctrines of the Church.

‘Protego – proterreo’: Pantaleon as Pagan Medicus, Healing Saint, and Heretical Magician – Dick E. H. de Boer (Rijksuniversiteit)

There is not a clear distinction between the miracles of saints and the feats of a magician. This comes out of the larger problem that, contrary to Emile Durkheim, religious ritual is not necessarily about making the distinction between the sacred and the profane. This is particularly the case with people in the Middle Ages for whom religious ritual often was distinctively about dealing with the profane and for whom religion had a distinctive magical quality.

The two most famous Catholic saints connected to medicine are Saint Cosmas and Saint Damian, twin brothers, who worked as physicians and were martyred during the third century. One miracle story of theirs has them grafting a leg of an Ethiopian onto an amputee. Another saint who is not as well remembered today is Saint Pantaleon. Pantaleon had a Christian mother and a pagan father. While he grew up as a Christian he became a pagan as an adult. He later, though returned to Christianity. (This story is almost exactly like Augustine’s.) Pantaleon served as an imperial physician in Nicomedia, but was martyred at the beginning of the fourth century. The charge against him was that he was a magician. According to legend he went through burning, hot lead, wild beast and the sword until finally he prayed for death.

For some strange reason Pantaleon is not nearly as famous as the twins. He only seemed to pick up much of a following as an individual saint during the Middle Ages in the Rhineland. During the Black Death we do see Pantaleon listed as one of the fourteen holy helpers. The popular image of Pantaleon is of him getting a nail through the head. This image is used as an amulet.

The words "hocus pocus" most probably are a mangled version of the Latin “hoc est corpus,” this is the body. One suspects that this was some magician imitating the priest consecrating the Eucharist. The words” hoc est corp[us]” appear on an amulet with the image of Pantaleon.

(I actually presented second, but I am going to leave my presentation for the next post. There were not a whole lot of people there. I suspect it was because we consisted of two graduate students and one legitimate scholar and because we dealt with such diverse topics. After the presentation I had a very interesting conversation with Chance Woods. Interesting as in it went on for about two hours. It was largely a running exchange of observations on religion in the Middle Ages and in the present. To my surprise, Chance knows quite a bit about Judaism. Apparently the University of Oklahoma has a decent Jewish Studies Department with the likes of Norman Stillman on board. So keep an eye out in the future for Chance Woods; he is someone special.)

International Medieval Congress: Day One Session Two

Dangerous Doctrines, II: Heresy trials and the Limits of Learning

Parisian Pantheism or Maurice’s Magic? A Re-Interpretation of the Condemnation of 1210 and 1215 – Thomas Gruber (Merton College, University of Oxford)

In the early thirteenth century we see a number of accusations against heresy. Robert of Courson, in the Statutes of the University of Paris of 1215, lists three groups. There are the Amalricians, followers of Amalric of Bena, who preached pantheistic creed in which there is no difference between creator and created. This group managed to grow large enough to form a sect and cause enough concern to be spied upon. There is David of Dinant, another pantheist philosopher. The third person mentioned is a Mauricii hyspani, Maurice the Spaniard. This Maurice is the twelfth century anti-Pope Gregory VIII, originally named Maurice Bourdin.
Maurice was the archbishop of Braga and close to Pope Paschalis II. Sent as an envoy to Henry V, Maurice switched to the side of the emperor, who repaid this action by making him Pope Gregory VIII. Maurice’s reign as pope did not last long. As the tide turned against the emperor, Maurice was captured, put on display and humiliated. There is an image of Maurice serving as a footstool to the pope. Later the archbishop of Toledo uses this to show the supremacy of Toledo over Braga.

What was Maurice’s doctrine? It would seem that Maurice was accused of necromancy. We have a magical text sent by John of Seville to a Pope Gregory to guard against kidney stones. This recipe represented a magic tradition that was condemned in 1215. Maurice’s name was added in order to add an element of menace to it. This would add an element to 1215 besides for Aristotelianism and pantheism.

Indians, Demons, and the Death of the Soul: Necromancy and Talismanic Magic at the University of Paris in 1277 - Matthias Heiduk (Albert-Ludwigs-Universitat)

We see a condemnation of magic in Paris in 1277 besides for the more famous attacks on Aristotle by Bishop Stephen Tempier. Who were the targets? Why would people in the Middle Ages have been interested in magic and why would the Church be against it. We possess several geomancy books which start with Estimaverunt Indi. The sorts of crimes of things we see listed are Nigromancy, a term often conflated with necromancy, invocation of demons, and talismans. We do not know if magical books were at the University of Paris or if magic was being taught to the students, but we do know that they were being read in the thirteenth century. William of Auvergne mentions that he studied magic in his youth before he became Bishop. These rituals involved the veneration of demons.

‘Ruditas et brevitas intellectu illorum’: Meister Eckhart against the Inquisition - Alessandra Beccarisi (Universita del Salento)

Charges of heresy were often used for political reasons. The move against Meister Eckhart was a good example of this. The Political situation in Germany in 1325-26 played a critical role in this, particularly in regards to the papal representative, Nicholas of Strasbourg. In 1324 Pope John XXII excommunicated Ludwig of Bavaria. Dominicans had to decide where they going to side. John decided to interfere directly with the Dominicans. There were sympathizers with Ludwig in the order. Nicholas of Strasbourg visited Cologne which was a particular delicate situation. Eckhart was a Dominican closely in the public eye so he became a target. His preaching in the vernacular about poverty came to be seen as an attack on the papacy. Nicholas served as the pope’s vicar and ended up defending Eckhart. We see a shift in the Dominican order and monks friendly to the pope are put in charge. Once Eckhart is on trial at Avignon away from his enemies the charges are relaxed and the charges of heresy are dropped.

International Medieval Congress: Key Note Lectures

Heresies and Rhetorics – John H. Arnold (Birkbeck College, University of London)

In 1261, after two decades of work, Benedict of Alignan’s De Summa Trinitate et Fide Catholica in Decretalibus was completed. This book follows the program set by the Fourth Lateran Council and goes points by point to answer those who go against Catholic doctrine. This book has over two thousand chapters. Some scholars view Benedict as the last gasp of a pre-Aquinas theology. In truth, he was a much more complex figure than he is usually given credit for. He was the Abbot of his monastery and dealt with Albigensians. He traveled to the Holy Land and saw Christian defeat and Christians making deals with Saracens. Benedict may not have been a scholar but he did have direct contact with heretics, Jews and Muslims. Benedict’s work still had a few hundred years of life on it and would influence subsequent generations. He is also useful in thinking about the context of heresy.

In the last two decades the study of heresy has taken a certain turn to viewing heresy as a construction of orthodoxy. There is a tendency to see the opposition to heresy as something uniform as if every preacher was preaching from the same hymn sheet. We note shared language and shared concepts such as the heresiarch. In truth there were differences in orthodox responses. There were those who saw heresy as a single monster with many heads united in its attempt to destroy the one true church. Others argued that heresies were many as opposed to a one unified church. To assume the uniformity of orthodoxy is to hand it the power that it sought.

Benedict does not use very colorful language. He has a few moments of insult. For example, he claims that Cathars got their name from kissing the anuses of cats. He follows the structure of the creed rather than going point by point to respond to heretics. It is not framed as a polemic or as a debate. He writes out of a need to convince the unfaithful, including Jews and Muslims, but particularly to strengthen the faithful. Like Augustine, Benedict seeks to refute all heresy as a group. He even goes after pre-Christian philosophers.

Bernard of Clairvaux and Guibert of Nogent are examples of responses to heresy that are insult over substance. Inquisitor texts, such as the work of Bernard of Gui, are far more technical. The inquisitor manual is meant for other inquisitors and emphasizes the inquisitor’s knowledge of heresy. This, ironically enough, brings the heretic into the same realm as the orthodox. Unwillingly, these texts acknowledge that heretics are thinking individuals with arguments that are not easily refutable. Benedict’s work is similar.

By the thirteenth century, there is no longer an assumption of orthodox triumph. Even the quotation of orthodox interpretation of scripture does not always bring victory. As an example, we have a story where a group of Dominican priests only win when the heretics are challenged to make the sign of the cross but are miraculously unable. Benedict, himself, notes that many people are not interested in reading a book as long as his.

(Dr. Arnold is the author of Belief and Unbelief in Medieval Europe.)


Between Christian and Jew: Orthodoxy, Violence, and Living Together in Medieval England – Jeffrey J. Cohen (George Washington University)

Gerald of Wales is a good place to go for almost any type of medieval stories. He has miracle stories dealing with Jews in which the Jew serves as the defeated monster. He tells the story of a Jew who doubts the miracles of a saint in Oxford, St. Frideswide. The young Jew comes to a procession of the saint with his hands tied, pretending to be crippled. If feminists like to talk about gender insubordination, this can be viewed as dogma insubordination. The youth, in the end, commits suicide. His parents try to cover up what happened, but the story gets out. The Jew is important for orthodoxy because he is a living heretic. The Jew says things that Christians can only think. To be clear, real Jews did mock Jesus and call him the hanged one, and challenged the virginity of Mary. The Jew of Unbelief, though, is a stock character to go with the other types of Jewish literary constructs.

To throw some other texts for consideration; there is Matthew Paris’ account of little Hugh of Lincoln, who is tortured in a manner similar to Christ. Hugh is important because he is one of the few martyr cults of Jewish victims that lasted more than a century and attracted royal patronage. Matthew of Paris is a story of supersessionism where the Jews are a living anachronism. John Mandeville refuses to condemn the foreign people he comes in contact with, even promiscuous, nudist, communist cannibals. John, though, does attack Jews. According to Mandeville, the Ten Lost Tribes are trapped in the mountains by Alexander. They have a prophecy that they will escape in the time of Antichrist. Jews learn Hebrew so that the Ten Lost Tribes will recognize them and not kill them along with their Christian neighbors. (For more on this legend see Andrew Gow’s Red Jews.)

Did the real life Jewish and Christian interactions go beyond the static constructions of works such as Gerald of Wales? If we look closely, anti-Semitic texts unwittingly reveal a world of interaction that goes beyond this static relationship. What other possibilities do these stories give us besides for the lachrymose narrative denounced by Salo Baron.

Christians and Jews shared urban spaces. Hugh of Lincoln is a story in which Jewish and Christian children play together and where Christians entered Jewish homes. What kinds of games did these children play? There is a line, in Paris’ account to suggest that Christians might have had pity on Jews. It should be noted that Jews were important to the economy and Christians were dependent upon them. For example, Aaron of Lincoln in the twelfth century was one of the richest people in England. Mandeville can be seen not just as a warrant for genocide but an example of Christian awareness of Jewish discontent.