Jewish Post, Indianapolis, Marion County, 8 January 2003 — Page 13

January 8. 2003 NAT 9

On its own, not in dialogue with any other religious tradition, Judaism has a great deal to say about eschatology, including afterlife, and what it says is integral to its normative theology, law, and liturgy. It is not invented just to please the Christians. Eschatological doctrine of Judaism has its roots deep in pre-Christian times. "What little it has to say..." Indeed! Classical, normative Judaism has a great deal to say about the last judgment, the resurrection of the dead, the restoration of man to Eden, and the like. You will find a systematic discussion of eschatological issues in the standard expositions of normative Judaism, such as George F. Moore's Judaism, Solomon Schechter's Some Aspects of Rabbinic Theology, E. E. Urbach's The Sages: Their Beliefs and Opinions, not to mention my Theology of the Oral Torah (Cornell) and Theology of the Halakhah (Brill), and so on and so forth. All scholars of classical Judaism concur on the matter, since they are portraying what the authoritative documents of the Torah teach. That is not only the theologians' doctrines, but living faith embodied in obligatory prayer. The obligatory liturgy of the Prayer-book of Judaism, in all versions down to our own times, and in most versions today, including Orthodox, Reform, and Conservative prayer-books, is explicit that God raises the dead; that belief is repeated in the Prayer recited three times a day every day, 365 days a year, and sometimes four times. You will easily find it at the Prayer (Amidah); it is the second of the 18 benedictions. The Christians didn't provoke the Jews to develop an eschatology involving the resurrection of the dead at the end of days. It was there before Christianity came into being. Two creedal hymns sung in Judaic worship on a great many public occasions, Yigdal and Adon Olam, both refer to the resurrection of the dead as principles of the faith, summarized in song. The Mishnah, the authoritative code of law and foundations of the two Talmuds, hence the basis for the law of Judaism, is explicit at Mishnah-tractate Sanhedrin 10:1 (Bavli: 11:1): "All Israel has a portion in the world to come," and so on and so forth. Those that deny that principle of the faith are denied a portion in the world to come, that is, do not undergo resurrection out of the grave. Every formulation of the principles of the faith, Judaism, whether Maimonides, whether rabbinical councils, until nearly our own times, and most, though not all, of those adopted in our own times, affirm the resurrection of the dead and the eschatological narratives that convey that principle. The wording varies, but there is no Judaic system, no community of Judaism, that lacks an eschatology encompassing afterlife in some language or other. That is why 1 don't think your informant can have more grossly misinformed you, except as to the state of his personal opinion, which you surely do not set against the authoritative masters of Judaism from antiquity to the present day. Your problem was, you confuse public opinion — "my grandmother told me," "I met a Jew who said...." — with the teach-

ings of a religion. Amateurs tend to do that, and, for all your writing on religion, when it comes to the facts, you clearly know biology better than you know religion (and that has nothing to do with the state of your soul, your opinions on whether or not there is a God, etc. etc. etc.). The state of public opinion among Jews, whether religious or secular, does not always correspond to what the authoritative holy books and their qualified expositors set forth as authoritative doctrine. You explicitly spoke about Judaism, not about the state of Jews' public opinion, or even the opinions of practitioners of Judaism, as distinct from secular, atheist, agnostic, indifferent Jews. These are not matters of opinion; they are facts that characterize Judaism in its authoritative sources and statements, which you will find if you consult the sources, down to the great sages of our own day, and there you will find what Judaism teaches. You endorse the view that Judaic eschatology was fabricated "only because Christians asked them"! 1 do not know of a single doctrine of Rabbinic Judaism of the formative age, on which 1 concentrate, that was fabricated to respond to Christian interrogation. The works on the medieval disputations, by, e.g., the great scholar David Berger or even Haim Maccoby, and others, do not contain a single reference to a doctrine fabricated for the occasion. To be sure, there was a considerable effort to respond to the Christian challenge, as evidenced in the Adversos Judaeos literature of Christianity (Aphrahat is a fine example for you to consult). But you will look in vain for evidence of a Judaic invention of a doctrine, otherwise not found within the systemic logic of Rabbinic Judaism, specifically to have something to say whe the Christians came around and asked their questions. 1 also cannot point to a single contemporary scholar of the classical sources of Judaism who holds that Judaic doctrines are fabricated mainly for Christian consumption and then domesticated. And a great deal of work is going on even now on how Judaism responded to the Christian challenge, as in my Judaism and Christianity in the Age of Constantine (Chicago). True, there is diverse opinion in contemporary Judaisms on eschatology. But the Judaism represented today by Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform Judaisms is explicit on having an eschatological doctrine conforming to, or deriving from, the classical authoritative Torah. Reform interprets resurrection in a more this-worldly framework, but its liturgy renders the same blessing as the received prayer book, which says, "Who keeps faith with those that lie in the dust...blessed are you...who resurrects the dead." I don't see how eschatology can be more explicit than that. 1 am confident you treat the data and problems of evolutionary biology more responsibly than that remark suggests is your standard for religion. But here you seem to be happy to make things up as you go along and then philosophize. There really is a field, the academic study of religion, that takes its data as seriously as you take yours in biology; that produces scholarContinued on page 14