JQR, Wissenschaft, and Biblical Theology

The Jewish Quarterly Review (Fall 2020) Copyright © 2020 Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies. All rights reserved. T H E J E W I S H Q U A R T E R LY R E V I E W, Vol. 110, No. 4 (Fall 2020) 613–620 JQR, Wissenschaft, and Biblical Theology BENJAMIN D. SOMMER IT IS A COMMO N PL A C E that ­ until recently Jews ­ were not interested in biblical theology. That field was long the exclusive bailiwick of Christian scholars. When the Wissenschaft des Judentums emerged, scholars of Judaica ­ limited themselves to historical and philological description; constructive theological claims ­ were outside the Pale. (One can imagine some of­ these scholars speaking more literally: constructive claims might have been at home inside the Pale, but they ­ were unwelcome farther west.) As one who traverses the line separating descriptive claims from constructive ones, I was curious to see how this journal patrolled that boundary in its earliest years. What I found surprised me. Throughout its first de­ cades, JQR was open to constructive work. Essays discussing how modern religious Jews might relate to the Bible as Scripture ­ were common, and ­ these essays frequently anticipated the work of biblical theologians that appeared de­ cades ­ later. ­ These tendencies appear especially in essays by JQR’s cofounder, Claude Goldsmid Montefiore. It ­ will be helpful to sketch out some characteristics of biblical theology and its Jewish manifestations before turning to forerunners in JQR.1 Biblical theology involves, first, a description of the teachings of biblical texts. Given Christian theology’s emphasis on systematics, it is understandable that Christian biblical theologians produce lengthy tomes that summarize main ideas of the ­ whole biblical canon, usually or­ ga­ nized ­ under the “God-­ Man-­ Salvation” triad fundamental to Christian theology. Jews are less committed to laying out theological structures systematically, so Jewish biblicists who treat theological topics often examine par­ tic­ u­ lar ideas or texts: one thinks of work on divine retribution by Meir Weiss, Yochanan 1. For my approach to the field, see Benjamin Sommer, “Dialogical Biblical Theology : A Jewish Approach to Reading Scripture Theologically,” in Biblical Theology: Introducing the Conversation, ed. L. Perdue (Nashville, Tenn., 2009), 1–53, 265–85. 614 JQR 110.4 (2020) Muffs, and Joel Kaminsky, or the treatment of mono­ the­ ism by Yehezkel Kaufmann, or studies of revelation by scholars who could be described as theologians, biblicists, or both.2 Early contributors to JQR attend to precisely ­ these topics. Montefiore collaborated with J. Edwin Odgers (principal of the Unitarian College in Manchester) and Solomon Schechter on the essay “The Doctrine of Divine Retribution in the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the Rabbinical Lit­er­a­ture” (JQR 3.1 o.s. [1890]: 1–51).3 Multiple essays on mono­ the­ ism appeared in ­ these early years, including several focusing on the relationship between biblical or Jewish mono­ the­ ism and Unitarian Chris­tian­ity.4 Montefiore insisted that scholars and preachers should 2. Divine retribution: Weiss, “Concerning the Doctrine of Retribution in the Bible” (Hebrew), Tarbiz 31–32 (1962–63): 236–63, 1–18; Yochanan Muffs, “Who­ Will Stand in the Breach? A Study of Prophetic Intercession,” in Love and Joy: Law, Language and Religion in Ancient Israel (New York, 1992), 9–48; Joel Kaminsky, Corporate Responsibility in the Hebrew Bible (Sheffield, 1995). Mono­ the­ ism: Kaufmann, Toledot ha-­emunah ha-­Yisra’elit, 4 vols. (Jerusalem, 1937–56), 2:254–588, 2:589–624; Kaufmann, The Religion of Israel: From Its Beginnings to the Babylonian Exile, trans. and abridged by M. Greenberg (Chicago, 1960), 7–149. On Kaufmann as a classic example of a biblical theologian as that term is defined by Christian scholars, see Sommer, “Dialogical Biblical Theology,” 3–6. Revelation and scripture: In addition to the oeuvres of Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig, Abraham Joshua Heschel, and Louis Jacobs, see Moshe Greenberg, “Three Conceptions of the Torah in Hebrew Scriptures,” and “Jewish Conceptions of the ­ Human ­ Factor in Biblical Prophecy,” in Studies in the Bible and Jewish Thought (Philadelphia, 1995), 11–24 and 405–20; Baruch Schwartz, “The Giving of Torah: The Contribution of Biblical Criticism to Understanding the Concept in the Past

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