Israel In Prophecy

Review by H. D. Betz in History of Religions, v. 19, No. 3, Feb 1980

W.D. Davies's exhaustive study examines the background of one of the most intriguing and politically controversial phenomena of our times--Jewish territorial doctrine with regard to the land of Israel. Why does the land of Israel play such a powerful role in the history of Judaism, and why is that doctrine so much neglected in Christianity? "Can the separation of Church and Synagogue be illumined by reference to the problem of the land?" (p.5). Davies's final answer to the question is affirmative: Christianity shows no real concern for Israel, and this stance has its origin with Jesus of Nazareth who "paid" little attention to the relationship between Yahweh, and Israel and the land" (p. 365). In his work, Davies tries to explain by painstaking historical examination of the pertinent Jewish and Christian literature how these different stances came about.

Part 1 examines the Hexateuch, the Hebrew prophets, the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, the Qumran writings, and the rabbinic sources. The emerging picture is more complex than expected, but it is more or less the one traditionally held. "There was no one doctrine of the land, clearly defined and normative, but, as usual in Judaism, a multiplicity of ideas and expectations variously and unsystematically entertained" (p. 157). Despite these complexities, however, "the certainty of the ultimate indissoluble connection between Israel and the land was living and widespread in the world within which Christianity emerged" (ibid.).

Part 2 investigates how Christianity came to terms with these Jewish doctrines. Davies begins by looking at the letters of Paul, and then turns to the gospels of Mark and Matthew, Luke-Acts, and John. Again the emerging picture is complex, but it is also different from the Jewish sources in that "the Christian faith is, in principle, cut loose from the land, that the gospel [is] demanding a breaking out of its territorial chrysalis" (p. 336). This Christian stance has its roots in Jesus' aversion to Jewish nationalism and "his concentration on a loving, universal community," so that "the land itself played only a minor part in his mind" (p. 354). Such transcendance of the land, in turn, has its roots in older Jewish traditions, while the later church, after some confusion in Jewish Christianity, developed Jesus' attitude toward the logical conclusion, deterritorialization. Does Davies's reaffirmation of this more or less traditional picture of the relationship between Judaism and Christianity hold up against the nagging questions of the historical critic? I, at least, have a number of questions.

The book lacks a methodological chapter at the beginning, asking the question as to how the problem under discussion should best be approached. Investigating the sources, as Davies has shown, does affirm that they contain "myths" about the existence or lack of historical relationship between Israel and the land. Since these documents have in fact been produced by the myths, one should not be astonished to find the evidence in them. But what does this explain? Should not questions of phenomenology and sociology of religion be raised in addition? The author briefly touches upon them, but he never admits them to the discussion of the texts themselves. As a result, in spite of the wealth of the assembled data there are serious omissions. In the section on Paul, for example, the question is not discussed whether his position with regard to the land of Israel is due to his Roman citizenship and his upbringing in the Diaspora (cf. pp. 180 ff., 210 ff.)? What about the political dilemma of Jewish Christianity (cf. pp. 371 ff.). In the section devoted to Jesus of Nazareth, I find a strange discrepancy between the importance of Jesus' attitude for Davies's concept and the small space given to the founder of the Christian religion (pp. 336-65). The fact that the image of Jesus in the New Testament is that of gentile Christian writers who are most likely Roman in their political outlook is never really faced (cf. p. 344). The interest of these authors was, of course, to detach Jesus as much as possible from the embarrassing Jewish adherence to the land of Israel and to emphasize his apolitical appeal to the whole world. Does not Jesus' style of a wandering teacher better reveal his relationship to the land (cf. the recent work by G. Theissen, Sociology of Early Palestinian Christianity[Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1978])?

Finally, while the author rightly complains that "the discussion between Judaism and the Gospel has been governed almost entirely by those concerns that Christian themselves have deemed important" (pp. 3-4), he can nevertheless call detachment from the land of Israel an "achievement" (p. 375). Did not the detachment of Christianity from the land of Israel also go hand in hand with new attachments to other lands? Is not the Jewish attachment to the land of Israel accompanied by the cosmopolitanism of the Diaspora? Does the very word "land" not have a different meaning in Judaism and Christianity? Questions such as these should not, however, discourage potential readers of the book. The subject matter is still with us, and no end is in sight. Truly historical problems are those which we cannot afford to neglect.