Living Letters of the Law. Jeremy Cohen

romaine: Remarques onomastiques,” ibid., pp. 209–29. And cf. Robert L. Wilken, judaism and the Early Christian Mind: A Study of Cyril of Alexandria's Exegesis and Theology (New Ilaven, Conn., 1971), and John Chrysostom and the Jews:. Rhetoric and Reality in the Late 4th Century (Berkeley, Calif., 1983); and Wayne A. Meeks and Robert L. Wilken, Jews and Christians in Antioch in the First Fotrr Centuries of the Common Era, Society for Biblical Literature, Sources for Biblical Study 13 (Missoula, Mont., 1978).

      53. Recently, see Helmut Castritius, “Seid weder den luden noch den Heiden noch der Gemeinde Gottes ein Ärgernis (I. Kor., 1032): Zur sozialen und rechtlichen Stellen der Juden im spätrömischen Nordafrika,” in Antisemitismus und jüdischen Geschichte: Studien zu Ehren won Herbert A. Strauss, ed. Rainer Erb et al. (Berlin, 1987)pp. 47–67; and le Bohec, “Inscriptions juives,” p. 203.

      54. See Blumenkranz, Die Judenpredtgt, pp. 59–74, with nn. to numerous passages in the Augustinian corpus.

      55. See the passages cited ibid., pp. 110–12.

      56. Even Augustine's frequently cited Epistula 196 to Bishop Asellicus, which contains Augustine's most extensive attack on Judaizing Christians, manifests little sense of urgency. The letter notes at the outset that it originated at the insistence of a third bishop, Donatian, that Augustine formulate such a position. And until its concluding paragraph (16, CSEL 57:229), the letter makes no mention of a specific threat to the contemporary church; only then does it refer to one Aptus (otherwise unknown to Augustine) who, Asellicus wrote, “is teaching Christians to Judaize and thus…calls himself Jew and Israelite so that he might forbid them [non-kosher] foods.” Nowhere does Augustine's letter inveigh against the Jews of his day as the root of such evil within the church. Recent scholarly investigations minimize the extent to which Jews of the imperial period engaged in missionary activity; see Shaye J. D. Cohen, “Was Judaism in Antiquity a Missionary Religion?” in jewish Assimilation, Acculturation, and Accommodation: Past Traditions, Current Issues, and Future Prospects, ed. Menachem Mor, Creighton University Studies in Jewish Civilization 2 (Lanham, Md., 1992), pp. 14–23; and Martin Goodman, Mission and Conversion: Proselytizing in the Religious History of the Roman Entpire (Oxford, 1994), chap. 6. Cf., however, the differing views of Louis H. Feldman, Jew and Gentile in the Ancient World (Princeton, N.J., 1993), esp chap, 11.

      57. Karl F. Morrison has drawn a similar connection in “I Am You”: The Hermeneutics of Empathy in Western Literature, Theology, and Art (Princeton, N.J., 1988), pp. 81–97; see also his “'From Form into Form.'”

      58. Augustine, De Genesi contra Manichaeos 2.2.3, PL 34:197: “Secundum litteram accipere, id est non aliter intelligere quam littera sonat.” Augustine alludes to a carnal understanding of Sabbath observance in 1.22.33, col. 189; cf. G. Folliet, “L.a Typologie du Sabbat chez Saint Augustin: Son interprétation millénariste entre 389 et 400,” REA 2 (19561, 371–90.

      59. See Augustine, Retractrones 1.9.

      60. Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram 8.2, CSEL 28, 1:232–33, citing De Genesi contra Manichaeos 2.2.3.

      61. Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram liher imperfectus 2, CSEL, 281:461. To avoidunnecessary confusion, I have relegated an intervening development in Augustine's exegetical theory to this note. In De utilitate credendi (On the Utility of Believing, 391) 3.5, CSEL IS:?-8, Augustine distinguished between history, a record of things past-whether or not they have actually occurred-and allegory, a figurative, rather than literal, exegesis. To these he added two other modes of interpreting the Old Testament: etiology, that which explains the cause of an event or statement; and analogy, that which clarifies the correspondence between Old and New Testaments. At this point, however, even though history and allegory appear in the same list, they are not yet cast as opposites; for a historical passage may well relate that which never happened, “quid non gestum, sed tantummodo scriptum quasi gestum sit.” See also Robert A. Markus, Saeculum: History and Society in the Theology of St Augustine (1970; reprint, Cambridge, England, 1988), pp. 188–89 with nn., who argus that Augustine, at this early stage in his career, differentiated both between history and prophecy as “two kinds of texts” and between historical and prophetic “kinds of exposition” (as in the De Genesi contra Manichaeos above). According to Markus, within two years the De Genesi ad litteram lzber imperfectus manifested a convergence of these two distinctions.

      62. The steadfastness of this Augustinian orientation has been instructively considered by Joanne McWilliam, “Weaving the Strands Together: A Decade in Augustine's Eucharistic Theology,” in Collectanea augustiniana: Mélanges T. 1. van Bavel, ed. Bernard Brunig et al., Bibliotheca Ephemeridum theologiarum lovaniensium 92 (Louvain, Belgium, 1990), 2:497–506.

      63. Augustine, De doctrina christiana 2.2.3, ed. and trans. R. P. H. Green (Oxford, 1995), pp. 56–59 (with departures from Green's translations).

      64. Ibid. 1.39.43, pp. 52–53.

      65. Ibid. 3.9.13, pp. 144–47. In 3.6.10, Augustine explained that the Jews were somewhat better off than pagans in this regard; though the Jews were so enslaved, their servitude was to God, and thus pleasing to him whom they could not behold.

      66. Ibid. 3.2.2, p. 132: “Cum ergo adhibita intentio incertum esse perviderit quomodo distinguendum aut quomodo pronuntiandum sit, consulat regulam fidei, quam de scripturarum planioribus locis et ecclesiae auctoritate percepit.” See also the insightful analysis of Michael A. Signer, “From Theory to Practice: The De doctrina christiana and the Exegesis of Andrew of St. Victor,” in Reading and Wisdom: The De doctrina christiana of Augustine in the Middle Ages, ed. Edward D. English (Notre Dame, Ind., 1995), esp. pp. 85–89.

      67. Augustine, De doctrina christiana 3.10.15, pp. 148–49.

      68. Augustine, Contra Fattstum 6.7.

      69. Ibid. 12.39, CSEL 25:365.

      70. Ibid. 22.94, p. 701.

      71. Brown, Augustine of Hippo, pp. 253, zhoff. Among many other works, see also James J. O'Donnell, Augustine (Boston, 1985), pp. 81ff.; and Robert W. Bernard, “The Rhetoric of God in the Figurative Exegesis of Augustine,” in Biblical Hermeneutics in Historical Perspective: Studies in Honor of Karlfried Froelich on His Sixtieth Birthday, ed. Mark S. Burrows and Paul Rorem (Grand Rapids, Mich., 1991), pp. 88–99.

      72. Augustine, Confessiones 13.24, CCSL z7:263–64.

      73. As Signer, “From Theory to Practice,” pp. 88–89, has observed, the exegetical orientation of books 2 and 3 of De doctrrna christiana found additional expression in Augustine's Epistula 71 of 403 to Jerome, criticizing the latter's reliance on the Hebrew original of the Old Testament. In Signer's words, “Augustine's basis for interpreting Scripture is ecclesiastical unity and consensus. Part of this process seems to be the exclusion of the Jews from the process of consultation. From the perspective of the DDC the Jews are restricted to a single language and are ignorant of appropriate hermeneutical rules. Within the perspective of Augustine's letter, they are perverse and sow confusion in Christian communities”-a far cry, it would seem, from Augustine's subsequent portrayal of the Jew as valuable witness wherever Christianity might spread.

      74. Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram 1.17, CSEL, 281:24–25. Augustine renders the Latin of Genesis: “et facta est vespera, et factum est mane dies unus.” On the dating of this work, see below, n. 102.

      75. Cf. Augustine, De Genesi ad Manichaeos 2.2.3, cited above, n.58.

      76. Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram 1.19, CSEL, 281:28.

      77. Ibid. 1.21, p. 31.

      78. Ibid. 4.28.

      79. Ibid. 6.12, p. 185; cf the similar argument of Moses Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed 2.25.

      80. Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram 11.31, p. 364.

      81. Ibid. 8.1, p. 229. See Bertrand de Margerie, Introduction à l'histoire de l'exégèse, 3: Saint Augustin (Paris, 1983), chap. 2, on Augustine's