Journal for the Study of Judaism 52 (2021) 105-125 Journal for

the Study of
Judaism
brill.com/jsj

Book Essay

∵
How Should We Understand Ancient Judaism?

Daniel Boyarin, Judaism: The Genealogy of a Modern Notion. Key Words in Jewish
Studies (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2018). Pp. 234. $31.95 (paper-
back) ISBN: 978-0813571614.

We cannot escape a certain level of categorization and analytical divi-

sion; neither can we fully distance ourselves from our own linguistic
conventions. But we must be conscious that reassembly is a creative
act. A society described as a composite entity in which religion is glued
to politics and politics to economics is not the same as a society more
simply viewed as a complete vessel. Reassembly, moreover, presents the
researcher with an opportunity to shuffle and reglue pieces of the social
new and sometimes Frankensteinian arrangements with emphases and
highlights suited more to the researcher’s theoretical paradigm than to
cultural realities.
Boyarin, 132.1

Ngũgĩ’s book (sc. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o - AKP) argues passionately and dra-
matically that to speak of African literature in European languages is not
only an absurdity but also part of the scheme of Western imperialism to
hold Africa in perpetual bondage.2

1 The text quoted by Boyarin (How Should We Understand Ancient Judaism?) is from Fowles,
Archaeology, 76.
2 Achebe, Education, 96. Achebe disagrees with Ngũgĩ by arguing that English occasionally
works better than local languages, which in a country like Nigeria with two hundred
languages cannot serve national cohesion. He shows that English was used in Kenya by “the
oppressed” to fight “the oppressors,” thus, shunning the inference that English is intrinsic

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106 Book Essay

1 The Book’s Significance

Boyarin’s book is a crucial contribution to the study of Judaism. It touches

upon a decisive question in the history of religion and Jewish and Biblical
studies but also on greater issues in historical studies and in philosophy of sci-
ence. Despite its brevity, the argument is deft, dense in philosophical thinking,
and concentrated in the historical studies pursued. It grapples with questions
historians inevitably have to reflect upon and takes issue with important
strands in recent research.3 In continuity of Barton and Boyarin’s Imagine No
Religion, it pursues the question of the emergence of Judaism and the appear-
ance of the juxtaposition of Judaism with religion. In fact, the two books hang
closely together. The core idea of Imagine No Religion is that religion as a mod-
ern notion is distorting, when applied to ancient realities. Since we think of
Judaism as a religion, it must by the same logic be a recent invention and,
hence, misleading as a category for past forms of Israel religion.4
An important discussion revolves around the question about the degree
of alterity yielded possible in reconstructing other worlds and the concomi-
tant problem of reproducing other epistemic formations than one’s own. How
alternate can one construe other ways of thinking, while simultaneously ren-
dering them meaningful in one’s own cultural language? What is the extent of
otherness elicited in the retrieved foreignness of alternate worlds, if the only
way to grasp the alterity depends on one’s own perceptual schemes? This ques-
tion not only pertains to the reconstruction of past cultures but also to repro-
ducing present worlds different from one’s own. In this way, anthropology and
history are variations of parallel epistemological quandaries, and the question
of retaining otherness in one’s interpretations is intrinsic to the humanities.

to “oppressive imperialism” (Achebe, 103-6). The relevance of the quotation will be evident
from my further argument.
3 See, for instance, Neusner, Way, 8; Mason, “Jews”; Satlow, “Defining Judaism”; and the different
contributions in Law and Halton, Jew and Judean.
4 To avoid the problems inherent in “Judaism” I use “Israel” religion to signify any type of
religion in which belongingness to Israel is the key taxon for the religion in question. In
this way, Israelite religion, Samaritan religion, Philonic Judaism, Pharisaic Judaism, early
Christ-religion, etc. are different manifestation of the same semantic system, although each
one of them is exemplary of different forms of Israel religion.

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Book Essay 107

2 Core Ideas and Structure of the Book

From when did it become possible to think of Judaism as religion? The matter
is not straightforward. With reference to J. Z. Smith, Boyarin accentuates that
the problem does not disappear by a simple distinction between phenomenon
and category.5 The core problem lies in the fact that “the abstractions that orga-
nize phenomena into categories cannot be asserted other than through their
usage in language” (170). To this Wittgensteinian point,6 the related question
emerges to what degree we can detach ourselves from our epistemic schemes
in approaching other worlds and acknowledge their alterity, while simultane-
ously rendering them understandable. The examination is entwined in the
larger philosophical question of transcending the hermeneutical circle, but
Boyarin’s take on the issue is distinct in the context of Jewish studies. The argu-
ment evolves in three main parts with a short prelude and a postlude. Whereas
part one contains one chapter dealing with key terms, the remaining two parts
each has two chapters. The second part seeks to demonstrate historically that
it was not until modernity that Judaism entered into “any Jewish language”
(xii). The first chapter of part two delineates the ramifications of the ques-
tion by arguing how one can think Jewry without Judaism, while chapter two
proceeds to discuss Yahadut of Medieval Jewish texts concluding that it did
not amount to contemporary Judaism. The third part argues that ultimately
Judaism is a Christian invention or “a product of Christian semantic necessity
and production, not that of the Jews” (xii). The formulation is noteworthy by
its presupposition of a divide between Judaism and Christianity indicating, as
Boyarin has argued in different work, a fourth century dating. The assertion,
however, raises its own problems, since ioudaismos is used in sources like Paul
and Ignatius preceding the Judaism-Christianity divide. I focus on the philo-
sophical questions of chapter one with important consequences for the subse-
quent discussion. I proceed to consider some of the larger problems discussed
and sketch a different way of tackling the topics, which Boyarin brings to atten-
tion. The prelude of the book sets the tone for the subsequent parts. Boyarin
asserts:

5 This was not entirely clear in Barton and Boyarin’s, Imagine No Religion. See Petersen, “Review
of Carlin A. Barton and Daniel Boyarin, Imagine No Religion”; and Petersen, “Carrying Coal to
Newcastle.”
6 Boyarin calls it theory (154), but Wittgenstein emphasises that his philosophy is not theory
(cf. Wittgenstein PI §109, 126). As is evident from the Bemerkungen and Lectures on Religious
Belief, theory only adds to the estrangement of the alterity of other worlds and does not
render them understandable as human forms of life (Lebensformen).

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When the term Ioudaismos appears in non-Christian Jewish writings—to

my knowledge only in 2 Maccabees—it doesn’t mean “Judaism,” “the reli-
gion,” but the entire complex of loyalties and practices, including dress,
speech, and also sacrifice, that mark off the people of Judea (what we
now call “Jewishness”); after that, it is used as the name of the Jewish
“religion”—itself a highly problematical term—only by writers who do
not identify themselves with and by that name at all, until, it would seem,
the nineteenth century (xi).

I return to this contention, which runs counter to the argument by assuming—

in light of Boyarin’s own criticism—an essentialized view of the modern schol-
arly notion of religion as detached from other parts of culture. Corollary with
this claim, Boyarin argues that Judaism is not a Jewish term and that research
“ought to be based on the categories recognized in the language(s) of the
objects of our research and not on anachronistic terms applied a priori” (xii).
The assertion begs the question about the adverb “a priori.” How does Boyarin
protect himself against the accusation of abstaining from an allegedly intru-
sive interpretation by remaining at the actors’ level of analysis?7

3 The Parameters and Argument in Detail

In chapter one, Boyarin discusses Seth Schwartz’ reified category of Judaism

remaining constant from Antiquity to the present (1; 17-20). While criticizing
Schwartz, Boyarin also gives him his fair due by acknowledging his qualities as
historian. This give and take in relating to other scholars permeates the book
and is praiseworthy. To engage in harsh, but no obstreperous criticism does
not rule out recognition of collegial qualities. For Boyarin the question relating
to hermeneutical access to other worlds does not only pertain to a historically
trustworthy rendering of foreign worlds, retained in their alterity, into our own
present world, but is also a matter of protecting the weak against the powerful.

7 Boyarin refrains from using the emic-etic distinction due to its inadequacy; see 161-62 n.
12 and 159-60 n. 5. I agree, but add two points. First, adherents of the terminology rarely
recognise that the emic level also exemplifies the observer’s view. It refers to the use of
indigenous categories in interpretation, but the selection and positioning of them in the
analysis originate in the observer’s perspective. Second, Lloyd’s more subtle distinction
(Mentalities, 13-14, 19-20) between actors and observers’ levels similarly blurs the fact that also
at the actors’ level there are different orders of language. Therefore, I differentiate between
orders of language also allowing refined distinctions at the actors’ level by granting users of
the culture studied the ability to apply conceptual categories, a usage Boyarin has adopted.

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Boyarin sides with advocates of criticism of ideology by endorsing Asad, but

also Foucault and Derrida, although he hardly pays attention to Foucault’s
equally crucial point of self-criticism implying that every view advocated has
its blind side. Boyarin approvingly cites Lilith Acadia:

Viewing non-Western society through the lens of a Western concept is

misleading and reveals an epistemological power asymmetry: the West
sets the terms of the debate, becomes the norm, unreciprocatingly expect
others to assimilate to the West, and belongs everywhere while others are
“uprooted” when not in their historically limited “local place of origin.”
The western (sic) concept of religion’s power in history-making skews the
narrative.8

Boyarin’s understanding is strikingly similar to a number of African authors

like Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s attempt to retake the “African narrative” from the
oppressive colonizers in terms of language and narrative, cf. my initial quote
from Achebe. Boyarin’s siding with a poststructuralist, postcolonial take on the
“Judaism as religion”-question has some consequences I shall return to. One is
that he disagrees with the late doyen of the history of religion, J. Z. Smith, who
argued that translation consists in transferring the data of the examined cul-
ture into the terms of our modern analytic thought. These points are important
for understanding Boyarin’s endeavour. Philosophically, he allies himself with
the late Wittgenstein in order to steer a course between the Skyla of assuming
extreme unintelligibility and the Charybdis of asserting a universal theoretical
language bridging the gap between different cultures. In an Assadian reading
of Wittgenstein, he envisages a path allowing him “neither to leave the texts
in ancient Greek nor to translate them into English but to make English speak
Greek” (6). This may sound enticing, but the comparison in my view falters on
the ground that English does not constitute an equivalent to scientific language
and Boyarin does not satisfactorily explain how we may conduct the exercise
epistemologically. He may turn it into a methodological question, but I wonder
if this is adequate. The methodological rigor enjoined in the attempt to bridge
the gap between past and present culture is reasonable, but my hesitance rises
from a potential hermeneutical blindness on Boyarin’s part to which I shall
return.
Boyarin astutely confronts grand questions to which we can give no definite
answers. He hits the nail on the head when quoting J. Z. Smith for inculcat-
ing the need to “reduce the unknown to the known,” but also justly cautions

8 Acadia, Discourses.

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us not to lose “the irreducible difference of the ‘unknown’” (7). The question,
however, remains regarding the degree of unknownness elicited. How can one
avoid the unknown to slide into the incomprehensible, and humanities to
become a form of Botokudo-Philologie as an accusation against adherents of
the Religionsgeschichtliche Schule sounded. Correspondingly, I find it hard to
see how “English can be made to speak Greek,” if it were not for the fact that
Boyarin already has a sense of Greek, that is to say, is approaching the unknown
territory by virtue of a conceptual basis that necessarily involves a dimension
of commonality. In other words, there is a limit to the otherness inherent in the
alterity of foreign worlds. Philosophically speaking, this is the reason we need
to distinguish between concept and conceptions. We have very different con-
ceptions, but to be able to appreciate that, there has to be a shared conceptual
basis, i.e., a common cognitive ground or concept.9 On Boyarin’s account, I do
not see how he can repudiate the accusation to advocate a more modest ver-
sion of the Sapir-Whorf thesis and Paul Feyerabend’s emphasis on the incom-
mensurability between different worlds. The question is not so much about
translating Greek into English, but relates to the transfer of making English
speak Greek. How do we avoid this exercise to become unintelligible to cur-
rent culture, when trying to understand past cultures, were it not for the use
of analytic categories enabling us to move to and from the involved cultures?
To follow the argument, it is crucial to appreciate that Boyarin sees the mod-
ern notion of religion to imply a distinct, unchanging essence: “I feel instinc-
tively sure that utilizing terms like ‘religion’ to delineate the concept worlds
of people who had no such concepts, or words, is a practice of self-replication
and not translation” (7). He proceeds: “It is the claim of my work that ‘religion’
obscures much more than it reveals for the formulation of interesting state-
ments about ancient Greek or Judean human beings, which is to be taken as
a synecdoche for all humans before or outside of the hegemony of modern
Euro-American forms of life” (7). Boyarin ascribes timelessness and (Western)
universalism to the notion religion, but why hold this view, which runs against
his understanding of language? Here postcolonial and poststructuralist theo-
rizing seems to take over the argument.

9 This is the point of critical realism. Putnam emphasises the distinction between concepts
and conceptions. It may be that we have different images of knowledge and conceptions of
rationality, but, as Putnam asserts, “we share a huge fund of assumptions and beliefs about
what is reasonable with even the most bizarre culture we succeed in interpreting at all”
(Putnam, Reason, 119). In this way, our conceptions may be very different, but underlying
them, we have to presume, shared concepts, unless we come to the conclusion of the
Humpty-Dumpty character of singular cultures.

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4 The Necessity for Definitions and Easiness in Relating to Them

Definitions are nothing more, although that does not reduce their importance,
than condensations of theorizing about a given area. Different types of defini-
tions exist (stipulative, lexical, and extentional),10 just as different definitions
may be used dependent on which aspects one wants to emphasise as Boyarin
illustrates by presenting four different definitions of religion (10). He accords
a substantialist character to all of them, but this is a mistake. As I am propo-
nent of one of the involved definitions,11 I accentuate its stipulative and, hence,
non-essentialist character. Boyarin argues: “it is by now notorious that none of
these ‘definitions’ fits all or even most of the human collectives of the world”
(10); but no one ever claimed this to be the case. The point of the stipulative
definition is to make it clear to recipients how one in a theoretically informed
way understands a particular phenomenon by simultaneously emphasizing
its resembling elements and particular characteristics per genus proximum et
differentiam specificam. The definition is meaningful only within the applied
theoretical perspective. Obviously it can be criticised, but the criticism should
be raised either against a potential discrepancy between the theoretical view
and the definition as an extrapolation of it or against the overall theory as
implausible with respect to the phenomenon under scrutiny. In my view,
Boyarin mistakes both the nature of definitions and their role in research. He
rejects to provide a definition of religion, since he considers it an impossible
task, but it is only unfeasible on the ground that one imputes a substantialist,
universal requirement to it, whereby the definition should correlate in a one-
to-one relationship with that to which it is applied. There is nothing enigmatic
in defining religion compared to other fourth-order categories like culture,
society, and politics. Boyarin had helped his readers, had he provided a defini-
tion, which would allow them to approve or criticise his disclaim of Judaism
as religion. Boyarin may counterclaim that he does not have a definition of
religion and that this, in fact, is an important point for him, but I think this
comes close to a very problematic form of methodological intuitivism. How
can one delineate what the category does not signify, unless one understands
what it denotes? There is no non-mediated access to the world. When in schol-
arship we account for theoretical perspectives, concomitant definitions, and

10 These overall types may be subdivided into a variety of more distinct forms of defini-
tions such as analytic vs. synthetic, nominal vs. real, which all four exemplify stipulative
definitions, just as there may be lexical vs. rule-defined, verbal vs. ostensive, and lexical
vs. regulative definitions representing the overall category of lexical definitions. These are
just some examples of the range of different sorts of definitions.
11 Turner et al., Emergence, 3.

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models endorsed, we help readers and ourselves to understand the argument

by explicating the prism through which we see the world—the basic sense
of theōrein—with respect to that part captured by the particular view. At the
same time, this is crucial to prevent readers and authors alike to fall victim to
prejudicial thinking.
Boyarin’s aversion on this point may as I have already indicated stem from
a greater concern about theorizing as being, ultimately, of an intrusive, hege-
monic character. I understand his concern not to place foreign worlds on a
Procrustean bed shortening or extending them according to measures of the
contemporary Western scholarly world. Although inevitable, presentism is a
constant danger in historical work. However, I am similarly concerned about
the adamant insistence on description at the cost of explanation, which risks
falling into a parallel danger of entertaining a dual world-view. Does descrip-
tion not have anything to do with explanation, and should it not at some point
be supplied by explanation? What about the risk of leaving the otherness of
other worlds as a form of radical otherness and, thereby, risk falling victim to
a form of obscurantism hailing the alternate on the merit of its alterity only.
Obviously, this is not what Boyarin advocates, but I am worried about the
implications of his view as regards philosophy of science. When Boyarin sides
with Foucault in wanting to pursue history of the present and takes him—in
Hacking’s rendering, which is open to discussion as an adequate interpretation
of Foucault—to “seeking to illumine our own predicaments through investi-
gation of the past” (8), one can hardly disagree.12 Again, a question emerges
relating to the degree of presentism, which Boyarin aspires to overcome.
Presentism is, as Certeau argues, an undeniable fact from which no interpreta-
tive enterprise can detach itself, not even a deliberate venture to remain with
the wording of the examined culture only.13
The core argument is that Judaism is a modern “ism” and, preferably, should
be avoided in studying pre-modern forms. Boyarin grants that the second argu-
ment does not follow from the first one: “One can accept the results of the
first—that “Judaism” is a modern term—without acceding to the second that
using it to refer to the past is problematic. In other words, one could conceiv-
ably grant that the concept of ‘Judaism’ is modern and still assert its utility
for scholarly historical research.” He adds: “I will try to show that this is not

12 Boyarin’s Foucauldian inspiration is filtered through Asad who undervalues the bi-
directional nature of presentism. In Foucault, it is not only a matter of unmasking how
modern usages exert power over the past, but as importantly how past usages continue to
exert power on present perceptual schemes and how every view, past and present, has its
blind sides.
13 Certeau, L’écriture, 58.

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the case but grant that my argument on this point is not indefeasible” (12 and
166, note 44, in which he refers to my criticism of Imagine No Religion). This
is reasonable, but only on the premise that it can respond satisfactorily to the
questions posed above.

5 No Data Exist without Theory and Categories

In Boyarin’s view, the real problem inherent in using an “ism” like “Judaism” is
the danger to endow the term with a normativity, whereby alternative versions
of the genus come to be judged as deviant forms. Even a scholar like Neusner
who invested much energy in criticizing the normativity in preceding uses of
the term could not avoid the danger of turning one trajectory of Judaism into
the category par excellence. Similarly, Satlow’s attempt to provide a polythetic
description of Judaism is not exempt from Boyarin’s criticism, since it does
not abide by the principle of “starting from the data and not from any precon-
ceived definition” (16).14 This, however, is a moot contention, since it begs the
question how to begin from data without a preconceived notion of data. That
is to say, data do not exist per se, unless initially someone understands some-
thing to constitute data, i.e., by attributing significance to them. When Boyarin
lauds Satlow for making progress over earlier monothetic ways of defining
Judaism, he, simultaneously, criticises him for ending up “with a polythetic
definition of a word that didn’t exist (Judaism—AKP)” (17). Correspondingly,
he questions the Neusner-introduced popular plural usage of Judaism to pay
remedy for the felt narrowness of a singular notion: “What is gained by add-
ing another layer of abstraction between us and the data by referring to them
as ‘Judaisms?’” (17). I agree with the criticism, but my reason is different and
the consequence I draw from it. The plural is no solution, because it conflates
two different levels, phenomenon and category.15 The world of phenom-
ena is always pluriform, whether we are talking about chairs, cars or forms
of Judaism, but, of course, we can group variants under the same rubric. To
understand family differences, we need a singular notion of a genus. Orlando

14 Satlow, “Defining Judaism.”

15 I distinguish between category and concept and concentrate here on the discussion of
functionality and appropriateness of the category by virtue of its extension. The concept
designates the mental idea of, say, Judaism, that is, the thinking of the concept, while the
category denotes the range of phenomena in the world that can be encompassed within
the category. I leave the moot question open about the causal relationship between the
two, whether the category determines the concept or vice-versa. For a wider discussion of
this issue, see Sørensen and Petersen, “Introduction.”

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Peterson makes the indispensability of categories palpably clear: “The basis of

all cultural knowledge is our capacity to categorise. Categories are the words,
concepts, and classes we use to make sense of reality and are one of the most
basic features of automatic cognitive processing.”16 We need categories to be
able to understand each other, and without them, we would not be able to
operationalise our different interpretational moves in science. This prevents
us from falling into the types of prejudicial thinking Boyarin is also concerned
about avoiding.
In continuity with his previous contention that religion in antiquity dif-
fered considerably from the currently popular understanding, Boyarin agrees
with Mason’s argument against the meaningfulness of the notion Judaism with
respect to antiquity.17 Mason accentuates that ideas about kinship were intrin-
sically connected to cultic activities and vice-versa, and that moving from one
people to another was conducive to taking over the gods of one’s new ethnos,
genos, and in some cases even polis. This is an important point, but the con-
clusion drawn from it is questionable. First, Mason and Boyarin do not take
satisfactorily into account that there were different forms of religion in the
Mediterranean, South-Asian and South-East-Asian antiquity from approx. the
middle of the sixth century BCE and onward. Some of them rested on a close
knit between kinship and religion, while others did not. This is the tension
between urban and kosmos forms of religion or what Bellah spoke of as the
distinction between archaic and Axial age types of religion.18 Additionally, to
emphasise that what we designate by the modern categories culture and reli-
gion were roughly the same in antiquity, does not disqualify the use of the
notion religion. Boyarin supports his understanding by quoting Castelli that:
“… insofar as practices that could conventionally be called ‘religion’ inter-
sected so thoroughly with political institutions, social structures, familial com-
mitments, and recognition of the self-in-society, there is very little in ancient
Roman society that would not as a consequence qualify as ‘religious.’” (18; cf.
44; 46).19 I think the problem is exaggerated. The intersection of culture and
religion in pre-modern society is a classic in sociological literature. The evolve-
ment of that, which we tend to designate religion, toward a separate and partly
autonomous sphere different from other life realms led Weber to his under-
standing of secularization, but this is not different from the autonomization

16 Peterson, “Making Sense,” 8.

17 Mason, “Jews.”
18 See, for example Petersen, “Unveiling the Obvious,” “Tangled History,” and “Asceticism.”
For Bellah, see Religion.
19 Castelli, Martyrdom, 50.

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of other life spheres like the political, the economic, kinship, and the enter-
tainment system.20 If one understands that pre-modern forms of religion
comprised many of those elements like law and custom, which many today
conceive of as non-religious, there is no problem in using the category. In fact,
this is corollary with Boyarin’s point that a notion of religion can only appear
from the time it becomes possible to see religion as something independent,
i.e., from the beginning of secularization in the late 16th and 17th centuries.21

6 Epistemological Flaws in Confining Historical Studies to the

Descriptive Level

Just as we may examine sports and economy in the ancient world and use these
categories despite the entanglement of the phenomena with numerous other
cultural spheres, we may use the religion, which we, dependent upon the spe-
cific theme of our investigation, may define in different ways. Boyarin’s worry
that, thereby, we run the danger of becoming closet Platonists should not pre-
vent us from using the category. Potential abuses and misunderstandings of
terms are not an argument against their use. Boyarin, however, places much
emphasis on this and argues that to claim that religion exists only means that
the term has meaning. This is a fair reproduction of the late Wittgensteinian
understanding of use of language, but Boyarin infers from this, what to me
appears a truism: “Where there is no word for ‘religion,’ religion is not mean-
ingful as a concept, ergo ‘religion’ does not exist in that linguistic system and
similarly for Judaism” (24; cf. 39; 61). This is true at the second order level, but
Boyarin’s assumption comes close to arguing that the Wittgensteinian notion
of Lebensform implies untranslatability between cultures:22 “A form of life that

20 See especially Weber, “Zwischenbetrachtung,” 543-53; 564-67. Durkheim, similarly, empha-

sised the differentiation and autonomisation of different cultural spheres as characteris-
tic of modernity. See Formes, 12; 545-46. Today, most scholars speak of secularisation in
continuity of for instance the early Berger, Imperative. Here the term means the fading
away of religion. He later changed his view on the extent of secularisation, but that does
not relate to his basic understanding of the phenomenon, see Berger, Desecularization.
This, however, is a recent understanding and not part of classical secularisation theories
as embraced by Durkheim and Weber.
21 Nongbri, Before Religion, 118-29.
22 Boyarin builds on Hacker, “Forms,” 11; but his way of interpreting the late Wittgenstein
resembles Peter Winch’ reading popular among anthropologists of the late 1970s and
the subsequent two decades. Such a reading has been severely criticised in Wittgenstein
scholarship. Winch and Boyarin overlook that Wittgenstein does not negate understand-
ing between cultures based on shared experiences, cf. his use of the notion “übersichtliche

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has no word that means ‘religion’ cannot have religion in it nor can there be a
‘Judaism’ without a word that refers to it” (25). This argument can only be cor-
rect, if we qualify it. Practitioners of a Lebensform that does not have a word
for religion cannot reflect upon the phenomenon, but it does not imply its
absence as a phenomenon from the form of life (cf. 29), if examined from a
fourth order perspective. As scholars, we use fourth order terms like religion
to refer to phenomena we have theoretical criteria for designating as such, but
it is tightening the argument to require from pre-modern people the ability
to entertain identical notions with ours in order to be able to talk about the
presence of, for instance, religion. The aim of science lies not least in mov-
ing beyond people’s self-understanding. If this were not the case, we would
be confined to a descriptive level only enabling us to reproduce people’s self-
understanding, but thereby we cannot account for the epistemological basis
on which scholars found their descriptions.

7 The Fight against Essentializations Fosters New Ones

Mason and Boyarin’s argument that no genus existed called religion in ancient
languages is trivial viewed in light of classical sociology. Durkheim and Weber
were keen to emphasise the emergence of religion as a relatively independent
sphere of life as intrinsically linked to modernity. To understand that a given
form of life exists without being categorised as such can be seen only on the
premise that there is translatability between life forms that allow us to detect the
absence of the notion in question. In other words, there needs to be a shared con-
cept independent of the different conceptions as Putnam argues. When Boyarin
asserts that Greek terms like thrēskeia and eusebeia do not equal the modern
notion of religion, he is right, but he misconstrues the point when adding:

One of the dangers of invoking the term “religion” where it is not wonted,
so to speak, is precisely evaluating a form of life by its nearness or dis-
tance to Christianity, especially of the Pauline variety in which personal
salvation is the very center of value. Among Jews, Indians, Romans, and
myriad—nearly all—others, it is exactly the value of the “doings” that

Darstellung” in Bemerkungen. Wittgenstein was not concerned with explanation. His

interest lay in examining a way of thinking preceding theorising and, in his view, eliciting
a distinct realm for philosophical thinking. Winch and Boyarin put Wittgenstein before
their cart, but this is to take Wittgenstein as hostage in a discussion, which he for different
reasons had no interest in interfering.

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count: group adhesion, cohesion, effervescence (to use Durkheimian lan-

guage), participation in a sacralized narrative, intimacy with the “ances-
tors” by doing their doings, and not individual emotion, belief, or the
“salvation” of the individual (26).

The fight against essentializations seems to lead to a new one, but is it neces-
sary that a definition of religion should be founded on a fideistic, individual
criterion rather than on a broader basis? Is it not Boyarin’s criticism against
anachronistic definitions of ancient religion that makes him disclaim any
notion of religion regarding past worlds? The formulation excludes early
Christ-religion from Israel religion, but this runs counter to some of Boyarin’s
own great work in which he emphasises early Christ-religion’s Judean or Israel
character.23 I fully agree with him that a proper definition of religion should
not be identified with that of the kosmos type, but the fact that this is and has
often been done should not lead us to the equally problematic conclusion that,
therefore, any definition of religion is worthless. Obviously, a comprehensive
definition of religion should include both hunter-gatherer, agrarian, urban,
kosmos, early global and global types of religion. In the final paragraph of the
chapter, Boyarin returns to the issue of commonality between ancient cultures
and present ones:

A statement about a putative religion, “Judaism” in the Second-Temple

period could only mean either that there was a meaningful term in their
language semantically cognate with our “Judaism/Jewish religion” or that
there is something in our form of life for which we want to claim an ances-
try in antiquity even though they did not recognize its existence (29).

Boyarin dismisses the first option and characterises the second as implying:
“that we wish to claim that something in our concept world is the same as
something that existed then and to claim that sameness as “Judaism,” even
though it had no meaning in their language” (29); but is this not an exaggera-
tion? To use an identical term with respect to two periods does not necessarily
imply sameness, but only that something pertaining to the two phenomena is
alike, which is what family resemblance is about. I can point to two chairs and
say that both are chairs without implying that they are the same type. Similarly,
to speak of Buddhism in the contemporary world and in the fifth century BCE
does not imply sameness. It merely designates a connection in terms of shared
signs, which I, contrary to Boyarin, do not see to imply a normative stance (30).

23 See, in particular, Boyarin, “Semantic Differences” and Border Lines.

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In part two, Boyarin discusses with Philip Davies. Similar to Boyarin, Davies
criticises scholars adhering to the term Judaism for not specifying the genus,
but his remark that numerous Jews of antiquity were converts to “a religion
that previously existed” challenges Boyarin (35).24 He refers to Mason that
conversion was a process of naturalization, free or forced, into something anal-
ogous to a nation to counter the notion religion (35; cf. 39), but again the prob-
lem does not lie in the category, but in a narrow definition of it. What Mason
describes characterises urban forms of religion revolving around ethnicity, but
they differ from the kosmos type. Boyarin’s argument shows that the kosmos
form of religion is different from what Davies refers to, but it does not prove
exclusion from the category religion. There is no need to fight essentializations
by introducing new ones.
To come through with his argument, Boyarin demonstrates that ioudaismos
does not equal any modern notion of Judaism. He shows how its use in 2 and
4 Maccabees “was formed as the opposite to Hellenizing disloyalty to mean
Judaizing loyalty” and “that loyalty and adherence to Jewish (or Judean) ways
is not reducible to being a member of a religion that we (now) call Judaism”
(44). Boyarin contends ioudaismos and ioudaizein in Paul is a matter about
ethnicizing and not about religion (49-52, cf. 58), but again this drives in an
anachronistic wedge between ethnicity and religion. True, Paul’s castigation
of ethnicizing does not exemplify the urban type of religion, but rather than
claim that this excludes the phenomenon from the notion religion, it dem-
onstrates Paul’s kosmos religion turned against Peter, John, and James’ more
urban form of religion. To hammer his point home, Boyarin includes Josephus
and convincingly shows that what we call government, ritual, religion, politics,
and law are encompassed under the Josephan rubric nomos. I find this entirely
convincing, if one realises that Josephan religion is predominantly the urban
form implicating a mixture of numerous elements that in the secular world are
different from each other, but which in urban religion all comprised what we,
in fact, designate religion.
I shall briefly pass the discussion of Medieval Yahadut in chapter three, but
the reasoning centres on parallel issues. In Rabbi Yehuda Halevi’s The Book of
Refutation and Defense of the Despised Din, Boyarin finds that Judeo-Arabic dīn
corresponds to the Josephan use of nomos and, ceteris paribus, to Torah. He
adds that: “the argument is not that these words don’t mean ‘religion’ but that
they mean something else—‘law,’ ‘custom,’ and so on—which would still pre-
suppose that in the medieval Judeo-Arabic and Hebrew, there was ‘religion’
but that it wasn’t called dat or dīn” (61). This is reasonable, but again I think

24 Boyarin quotes Davies, Origins, 12.

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the argument rests on an erroneous definition of religion, ultimately identify-

ing the kosmos type as the only form of religion that can be denoted by the
category. It resembles an essentializing mistake.

8 Judaism as a Result of Christian Discursivisation

The last part of the book targets on Boyarin’s contention that Christianity
is responsible for the invention of Judaism. Chapter four, entitled “‘Judaism’
out of the Entrails of Christianity,” elaborates upon David Nirenberg’s argu-
ment that: “‘Judaism,’ then, is not only the religion of a specific people with
specific beliefs, but also a category, a set of ideas and attributes with which
non-Jews can make sense of and criticize their world,”25 but Boyarin sharpens
the assertion:

“Judaism” is always a product of Christian guts. Just as “the Jew”—as

opposed to Jewish individuals—is always/everywhere necessarily a
product of non-Jewish discourse, and given the absence of any Jewish
talk of “Judaism” until very recently, there is no “really real,” “no religion”
from within, no Judaism, at all, but only a construction from the outside.
“Judaism” following Marx is a projection of non-Jewish discourse, projec-
tile vomiting from their entrails (106).

To substantiate the claim historically, Boyarin refers to Lactantius, the

Theodosian Code and Ignatius: “Ignatius produced his Ioudaismos in order to
more fully define and articulate the new identity for the disciples as true bear-
ers of the new name, Christianoi.”26 From here, Boyarin proceeds to the period
in which early Christ-religion evolved into Christianity. Jerome and Epiphanius
illustrate how ioudaismos as the anti-ekklēsia rhetorically became the distant
other of christianismos despite that in reality it constituted the proximate other
without which the latter could exist. Christianity needed Judaism as a straw-
man to cultivate its own identity. With Marx and Nirenberg, Boyarin concludes
that the rhetorical device of ioudaismos, iudaismus, and, hence, Judaism never
was a self-reference but a creation of Christianity, in fact, “the excrement, the
abject of Christianity” (129).
The final chapter in Boyarin’s fall-narrative takes the last step down the
ladder by showing how Jews obtained religion and how it came to be known

25 The quote is from Nirenberg, Anti-Judaism, 3.

26 See also Boyarin, “Why Ignatius.”

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as Judaism: “From Yiddíshkayt to Judentum; From Judentum to Yahadut; or

Philology and the Transformation of a Folk.” Boyarin drives his point home
by arguing that Judaism did not exist in Yiddish either. With support in
Leora Batnitzky, Boyarin points to Moses Mendelsohn (1729-1786) and Aaron
Halle-Wolfsohn (1756-1835) as thinkers incipiently contributing to the devel-
opment. The understanding of Judaism as religion reaches a peak in Leopold
Zunz’ Etwas über die rabbinische Litteratur (1818). Although Zunz fought to dis-
entangle his topic from Christian linguistic engulfing, he could not escape it:
“Wissenschaft des Judentums, nevertheless, is as Christian as anything that the
term ‘rabbinic’ has to offer, and it’s the Judentum that is Christian here, much
more than the Wissenschaft” (137). The fact that Judentum during the 18th
and 19th centuries gave rise to debates concerning its status as respectively a
nation, a religion, or a culture demonstrates the shift in view conducive to the
modern idea of Judaism as religion. True as this may be, it is during the same
period that the notions culture, nation, and religion emerged in Western dis-
courses in general. In this respect, one has to ask whether Judaism as religion
is necessarily a result of Jewish thinking immersed in Christian discourse or a
development resulting from processes of modernization, which also applied
to Christianity.

9 Conclusion

Boyarin’s book is fascinating and intellectually challenging. The argument is

consequential and dense with several fronts. I have concentrated on the schol-
arly side not paying attention to the religious and political issues inherent in
the argument. The view on Judaism will unquestionably provoke many by
its dismissal of main tenets of traditional Judaism. Much of the argument is
persuasive and eloquently formulated; but as I have sought to argue, it suffers
from a certain blindness in terms of philosophy of science. Boyarin holds that
the notion religion does not apply to Judaism, since no Jews used the word, but
he ignores that the same applies to Christianity until modernity. It is the dif-
ferentiation of culture into relatively autonomous spheres of life that allowed
the category to emerge denoting something different from culture in general
and from other life forms. We can discuss whether existing definitions of reli-
gion are applicable to Judaism, past or present, which they ought to be, insofar
as we are talking about definitions claiming universal extension regarding the
phenomenon religion in toto; but the problem runs deeper. It lies in the rejec-
tion of fourth order categories as a lens for understanding worlds in which the
notions do not exist. With Asad, Boyarin contends: “The attribution of implicit

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meanings to an alien practice regardless of whether they are acknowledged

by its agents is a characteristic form of theological exercise, with an ancient
history” (153).27 Fair enough, although I would call it a scientific exercise; but
Boyarin inevitably runs into a translation problem. If ancient categories and
forms of life were so markedly different from our contemporary ones, how can
we possibly make them understandable in the present and acknowledge their
foreignness if we do not share concepts that allow us to see the difference with
respect to conceptions?
Boyarin thinks that a notion of religion implies a fideistic, individualised
salvation-oriented understanding of religion, but he seems blocked on such
an (essentialised) view as the only possible one. Jewry encompasses numerous
other cultural aspects. I agree, but so did any other pre-modern form of reli-
gion. Boyarin quotes Max Weinreich: “There is no element of human conduct
that is too trivial for the culture-system of Jewishness; there are details, but no
trifles. Therefore, traditional Jewishness is not religion and its language is not
necessarily the language of religion, unless we say that all life is religion,”28 to
which Boyarin adds Weinreich’s point that if all of life is religion, then noth-
ing is. I share the concern about flawed definitions, but that does not speak
against definitions per se. To argue that pre-modern religion coalesced with
culture is not a trivial contention. It is an important point highlighting the dif-
ference between modern and pre-modern forms of religion, although also in
secular modernity religion does not cover as autonomous a life sphere as we
often think. Based on Boyarin and Weinrich’s understanding, one cannot use
the notion religion with regard to any pre-modern form, but this is an absurd
conclusion and one that is intuitively difficult to entertain. Rather than reject
any notion of religion regarding pre-modern forms, it seems more fruitful to
work on the definition to allow it to encompass not only modern but also
past forms. Moreover, it is analytically important to differentiate within the
genus religion between different types also as regards pre-modern forms. Early
Christ-religion exemplified one of the clearest examples of the kosmos type
within Israel religion, while others remained more of the urban form.29 The
one form was not more “religious” than the other one, but they represented dif-
ferent types of religion. To see that, one needs a clear notion of what religion is
past and present and a theoretically informed knowledge of different forms of
religion and their emergence due to different selection mechanisms.30

27 The quote is taken from Asad, “The Concept,” 161.

28 Weinreich, History, 202.
29 See Petersen, “Unveiling the Obvious.”
30 See Turner et al., Emergence.

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Of course, one may adopt Boyarin’s self-imposed ascetic imperative to stay

within the linguistic framework of the cultures studied (154), but the endeav-
our has its costs and challenges. It raises several hermeneutical problems con-
cerning translatability between cultures and comes dangerously close to if not
entertaining the idea of theory-independent data. These problems, I think,
can be solved only, if we continuously develop and refine our theories, defini-
tions, models, and categories in close interaction with the data studied. I rec-
ognise Boyarin’s adherence to a post-structuralist thinking concerned about
the alleged hegemonic power of science (cf. the incipit text from Achebe); but
I think the effort of letting “English speak Greek” is more complicated than
Boyarin grants as regards philosophy of science. I am not persuaded by his
understanding due to its basic suspicion against the, in my view, inevitable
scholarly need for theoretically informed categories and definitions located
at the fourth order level. Despite my occasionally harsh criticism, I cherish
the book. It presents a challenging and cogent argument. It is intellectually
stimulating, because it forces one to rethink the whole question of the emer-
gence of the notion of Judaism, of Judaism as religion and the wider questions
of nomenclature, the stage at which theory should begin, and what cultural
translation is ultimately about and how to accomplish it. These questions are
as pivotal to scholars of Second Temple Judaism as they are to anyone working
in the humanities. Therefore, the book is an obligatory read.

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Anders Klostergaard Petersen

Department for the Study of Religion, University of Aarhus, Aarhus,
Denmark
akp@cas.au.dk

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