Showing papers in "Journal of the American Academy of Religion in 1977"

The Żaddiq as Axis Mundi in Later Judaism

Abstract: The symbol of axis mundi, as delineated in the writings of Mircea Eliade, is said to be religious man's central principle for the organization of sacred space. The present paper, originally offered as a contribution to an AAR session devoted to "Mircea Eliade and the Study of Judaism," seeks to expand the use of that symbol by pointing to a link between the imagery of axis mundi and the tradition of the zaddiq or holy man in the mystical sources of Judaism. In the writings of the Kabbalistic and Hasidic masters, the holy man is often described in various terms highly reminiscent of the notion of sacred space. The zaddiq may be Zion, Temple, Jacob's ladder, or Holy of Holies. While the transference of sacred space imagery to another realm might seem especially apt for the Jews, given their long history of exile, it is pointed out that such transference never meant the replacement of the geographical Jerusalem or Holy Land by the zaddiq, but rather an additional locus of divine presence: the cosmos of homo religiosus may know more than one center (e.g., Jerusalem and Rome for the Catholic). It is also briefly noted that the transference of sacred space imagery to that of sacred person takes place in Christianity and Islam as well, a point which is meant to invite further discussion. Notions of singular leadership and the place of the zaddiq in Jewish cosmology are traced from first century rabbinic sources down to rival Hasidic claims in the mid-nineteenth century. Finally, one particular Hasidic reading of the zaddiq as sacred center is offered as an example of the power of religious language to transcend its own formal categories in order to emerge as a profound and painful description of one man's own situation in life. Arthur Green teaches the history of Judaism in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. His anthology of Hasidic prayer instructions, Your Word Is Fire, has just been released by the Paulist Press. This content downloaded from 207.46.13.149 on Mon, 03 Oct 2016 04:46:47 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Generic Studies: Their Renewed Importance in Religious and Literary Interpretation

Abstract: In recent years, the need for a critique of "reader" as rigorous as that which has been developed for "text" and for "author" has become increasingly acute. Whether in the study of religion as story and biography or in interpretative reading in general, a critical notion of reader is essential if the act of reading is to be anything other than mere consumption of texts. Some new way of understanding the hermeneutical circle is required to avert the narcissism latent in the Anselmian model. The notion of "genre" as developed by four recent theorists is helpful in the task of constructing a critique of "reader." E. D. Hirsch, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Tzvetain Todorov, and Paul Ricoeur have each surpassed the idealist notion of genre as a classificatory device and developed in its place the notion of genre as a generative pinciple. Todorov, for example, illustrates how "form" is a theoretical, as distinct from a descriptive or explanatory, issue. According to both Hirsch and Todorov, somewhere between empirical details and metaphysical thematizations lie generic formulations which can assist the reader to organize his/her response to the text and to recognize the probable understanding toward which the conventions of the text are directed. In Gadamer's theory of interpretation, the notion of genre acquires historicity. After Gadamer, genres can no longer be regarded as timeless a priori categories. Rather, because they are constituted by historical reflections, their rise and decline are intrinsic to text-interpretation. Finally, in Ricoeur's theory that generic considerations are correlative principles of production and interpretation, we find a basis for understanding genre as praxis. If we understand reading to be isomorphic to authoring, it becomes clear that the reader can no longer be regarded as the self-evident recipient of text-signification. Genre, in Ricoeur's theory, transforms

Buddhist Emptiness and the Christian God

Abstract: It is often assumed that since the ultimate is understood by Buddhists to be Emptiness and by Christians to be God, Emptiness and God must be competing interpretations or designations of the same reality. There may, instead, be diverse ultimates. The quest for the ultimate in India first led to Brahman; in the West, to Being. Buddhism dissolved Brahman into Emptiness. In this century Being has been dissolved into the being of beings or what Whitehead calls creativity. There are other traditions, especially Judaism and Confucianism which have sought the ultimate as the ground or principle of rightness. Unlike Judaism and Confucianism, Christianity stresses that true rightness can be attained only as a gift, but Christianity does not thereby turn away from the principle of rightness. On the contrary, this principle is the giver. In both the Judeo-Christian and Confucian traditions, there have been efforts to assimilate the metaphysical ultimate to the ultimate of rightness, but the resultant syntheses have proved unstable. Nevertheless, in Christianity the idea of God was long associated with such a synthesis. With the dissolution of the metaphysical Being into the being of beings and with the collapse of the synthesis between Being or being and the principle of rightness, the idea of God has become problematic. It is best to reaffirm its identification with the principle of rightness; for worship is directed to this. The metaphysical ultimate is realized rather than properly worshipped. God can then be recognized as categorically distinct from being or creativity or Emptiness. The question now is how faith in God is related to the realization of Emptiness. God can be conceived as the supreme and everlasting Empty One in distinction from Emptiness as such, thus as the one cosmic Buddha. The realization of Emptiness is the realization of oneself as an instance of dependent co-origination or the concrescence of all things. This is often held to be beyond the distinction of good and evil, right and wrong. Nevertheless, from the perspective of the concern for rightness, the realization of Emptiness appears as a fulfilment of this principle. This can be explained if we assume that God as the principle of rightness participates in every instance of John B. Cobb, Jr., is Ingraham Professor of Theology in the School of Theology at Claremont and Avery Professor of Religion in the Claremont Graduate School. He is director of the Center for Process Studies. Prof. Cobb wrote this paper while a fellow of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. This content downloaded from 40.77.167.48 on Thu, 09 Jun 2016 06:56:07 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 12 John B. Cobb, Jr. dependent co-origination, that to be empty is to be open to each element in the concrescence playing its own proper role, and that God's proper role is to guide the concrescence. In this case, the realization of Emptiness is at the same time conformation to the principle of rightness. It may be that faith in God as conformation to the principle of rightness can also lead to the realization of Emptiness. M topic is quite ambitious: it is the ultimate. In Buddhism the ultimate is often designated as Emptiness. In Christendom, at least traditionally, the ultimate has been declared to be God. One view of this situation is that Emptiness and God are but two names of the same reality, such that understanding between East and West is a matter of clarifying terminology. Another view is that these two names express opposing views of what the one ultimate reality is. In that case we can either engage in disputation or seek some sort of dialectical reconciliation. My own view is that Emptiness and God name two quite different ultimates to which we are related in two quite different ways. Indeed, there may be still other ultimates, such as the Whole or Cosmos, in relation to which segments of humanity have taken their bearings. If so, the question is whether human beings can develop their relations to this multiplicity of ultimates in ways that are not mutually exclusive. In this paper this question will be pressed only in terms of the Buddhist and Christian ultimate. I propose to develop my position as follows. First, I will consider briefly the quest for the ultimate as it has led to Being in the West and to Brahman in the East. I will note how in Buddhism and in twentieth century philosophy Brahman or Being has been dissolved into Emptiness. Second, I will discuss the sense of rightness as pointing to another ultimate that has come most clearly to expression in Confucianism and Judaism. I will evaluate the efforts that have been made by the heirs of these traditions to assimilate the metaphysical ultimate to this ultimate principle of rightness. Third, I will consider the status of the idea of God in light of the dissolution of the ultimate into two ultimates, urging its renewal as a designation of the principle of rightness. Fourth, I will consider whether the realization of Emptiness and faith in God are mutually exclusive states, or whether they can be achieved in

Form and Meaning in Mishnah

Abstract: The social aspect of the linguistic character of Mishnah-Tosefta, one of the two principal documents of Judaism, with special reference to the Order of Purities, is analyzed. Mishnah is formulated within a few tightly disciplined formulaic patterns. What do we learn about the minds of people who redacted and formulated the document in that way? First, they proposed that Mishnah would be transmitted through memorization and not through writing, even though there were no technical disadvantages to the preservation of materials in writing. Second, the system of grammar and syntax distinctive to Mishnah expresses conventions intelligible to the members of a particular community, the rabbis who stand behind and later preserved Mishnah. It is not a public and ordinary language at all, even though Middle Hebrew, of which Mishnaic Hebrew is only one exemplum, may have been a spoken language. Mishnaic language is expressive and conative. Mishnaic forms are rhetorical, empty of content, serviceable for a wide variety of themes. They are based on deep syntactical recurrences, not on surface-patterns of rhyme, rhythm, or sound. Mishnah's susceptibility to memorization rests principally upon the utter abstract of recurrent syntactical patterns, rather then on concrete repetition of particular rhythms, syllabic counts, or sounds. The people who memorized conceptions reduced to these forms were capable of extraordinarily abstract perception. They perceived, beneath the diversities of language, the unstated principle and the unsounded pattern. Mishnah's formalized grammatical rhetoric creates a world of discourse quite distinct from the concrete realities of a given time, place, or society. Unchanging and enduring patterns lie deep in the inner structure of reality and impose structure upon the accidents of the world. Reality for Mishnaic rhetoric consists in the deep syntax of language: consistent and enduring patterns of relationship among diverse and changing concrete things or persons. What lasts is not the concrete thing but the abstract principle governing the interplay of concrete things. Just as we accomplish memorization by perceiving not what is said but how it is said and persistently arranged, so we speak to undertake to address and describe a world in which what is concrete and material is secondary to how things are Jacob Neusner is University Professor, Professor of Religious Studies, and The Ungerleider Distinguished Scholar of Judaic Studies at Brown University. He is author of A History of the Mishnaic Law of Purities, Vols. I-XX, and The Academic Study of Judaism, Essays and Reflections, 2 vols. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.104 on Sun, 19 Jun 2016 06:03:23 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Constitutions, Courts and the Study of Religion

Abstract: Court deliberations and decisions have some bearing on the study of religion in colleges and universities which are supported in some way from tax monies. U.S. Supreme Court "doctrine"on religion and the state involves a threefold test of constitutionality. There must be: (1) a clear "secular purpose"; (2) a "direct and immediate" (formerly "primary") "effect" of neither advancing nor inhibiting religion ("neutrality"); and (3) avoidance of undue "entanglement" of religion and government. The Court language which has become controlling in the application of this "doctrine" to the study of religion is: "objectively as part of a secular program of education .. ." This language was appealed to extensively in the one court case in which a state university course relating to religion was directly challenged. The court records and opinions in that case, in which two Bible Presbyterian clergymen attempted unsuccessfully to force the University of Washington to discontinue the course "The Bible as Literature," are examined. So also are those in two recent cases in which public support of the study of religion and theology was the object of some inquiry in connection with constitutional challenges of public support of certain religious or church-related colleges in Connecticut and Maryland. In one of these cases the courts found that the courses in religion and theology at the four defendant Catholic colleges in Connecticut were constitutionally acceptable because academic freedom was espoused at those colleges, there was no evidence of efforts to indoctrinate or proselytize, the courses covered a wide range of human religious experiences and involved teachers of various faiths, and they fitted into the "predominant higher education mission" of those institutions "to provide their students with a secular education. ..." In the other case the District Court, while ruling that public aid to the defendant Maryland colleges is constitutional, excluded courses in theology and religion from that aid. Despite the testimony of an expert witness that these courses were academically legitimate, the Court concluded that a "possibility" existed that they were designed primarily to deepen "religious experiences in a particular faith" and hence might not be taught in accordance with accepted academic canons. Since the U.S. Supreme Court