Appeasing or Resisting the Oppressor

I

Probably you expect some advice on how to handle University Chancellors or Law School Deans. But I shall talk on a more sombre subject which has overshadowed a large part of my life: the choice between appeasement and resistance if you belong to a group under the rule of another one fiercely hostile and with absolute power. My main discussion will focus on events of one and a half to two millennia ago; some guidelines from Jewish experience at various stages of Roman supremacy are still worth pondering.

To ease you into the atmosphere of this field, let me begin with a personal reminiscence. I live with a woman^[1]

[1] Between delivery and publication of this address we got married.

with whom I have never won an argument. Once only I came close and even then was routed. Here is what happened. Soon after World War II, in 1948 or '49—years before I knew her—I was lunching in a Strasbourg restaurant with friends. It was a lively place. Yet all conversation came to a sudden halt as the door opened and three elderly men walked in, one of them obviously central. This reverential hush lasted till well after they had sat down at a table. Then, gradually, people started talking again. I asked my companions for the meaning, and the following story emerged. During the occupation of the city, in retaliation for an act of sabotage, the Commandant of the occupying troops sent out a detachment to conduct a razzia ; that is to say, the soldiers sealed off four or five blocks downtown, picked up there any males who looked like between fifteen and fifty and took them to the courtyard of headquarters—where they were to be shot. As it chanced, the two sons of the dignitary—ex-Mayor or the like—who had just entered were walking together in the area and got arrested. Somebody immediately informed him. He gained access to the Commandant, the window of whose office in fact gave out to the yard with the twelve or so victims already lined up for the firing. He set forth his plight. The Commandant, nonchalantly waving towards the window, said: 'All right, you can have one of them'. But he could not bring himself to act on this direction and both were executed. It was that drama, my hosts explained, which accounted for the reaction of the lunchers.

When, in the early seventies, I reported this to Helen, she—then at the height of her psychoanalytic venture—did not acclaim the protagonist. He deserved pity, she held, but not homage. He was made a cruel offer, to be sure. But he declined it, not from love of his sons or for the sake of their welfare, but selfishly, because he was afraid of the guilt he would feel later towards the one abandoned to die. The truly heroic thing would have been to act as instructed and

then cope, or maybe fail to cope, with the pangs of self-reproach. Certainly his response was very understandable and, yes, meriting compassion, but not admiration. Well, she put this to me of an evening, when I am generally not so good at sustained reasoning with her. As usual, I recovered in the morning, on my way from North Beach to Boalt Hall, and I sensed something off in her thesis. Those people in the café were not all taken in by what would be, basically, an evasion of responsibility. Soon it became clear to me that what they honoured was a refusal of collaboration. By accepting, the petitioner would have involved himself in the entire operation of which, indeed, this sideshow would be a particularly ugly part, bringing out to the full the arbitrary playing with human life.

Before stepping down from my bus, I had worked out to my satisfaction solid proof that it must be his rejection of the tyrant's lure, at enormous cost, which moved the Strasbourgers. Contrast the following case, alike in all respects but this one. A father strolls along the shore with his two children, aged six and four. An unexpected wave sweeps both into the sea. He may just be able to rescue one. If he remains passive because he cannot make up his mind between them, the situation does approximate Helen's assessment; and we shall pity him but not pay him homage. What is the difference? It is that here the calamity is due to a force of nature when, normally, we do our best and deal with the consequences as they unfold. The Strasbourg father was faced by a devilish man-made scheme; and, rather than participate, he sacrificed his progeny. Had the stroller who lost his babes to the ocean appeared at the restaurant, there might well have been some manifestation of sympathy but not conceivably that profound awe. Back with Helen at the end of the day, I expounded it all. She listened—which she does not always do—but what did she say? 'Yes, that is correct. But a mother would have taken one home with her'.

She is right, of course. Those soundly, nobly motivated objections to ever doing business with Satan are, au fond, of a political nature, the ultimate aim being to ensure decent government. In a conflict between such principles and concrete, close, personal bonds, the latter, for women—those not turned into men at any rate—take precedence. Even that abominable thing, collaboration, is outer, means nothing compared with the inner, the immediate, natural tie. Though, for once, having to strike the flag of the mind, she hoisted in its place the more stirring one of the heart. The public at the restaurant was predominantly male. I shall briefly come back to the feminine approach at the close, when adverting to a Marxist one which now and then looks deceptively similar.

A rider about this episode, however, should be added. I have long come to realize that its star ought not to be idolized. How did he get to be warned of what was going on without a moment's delay? A graver question: how did he get to be admitted to the enemy chief, and in the midst of a precarious exploit? Plainly, he had dubious connections. Again, what was the purpose of his visit? To save his sons. Ergo: he would happily have gone off with them, leaving the other innocents to perish; at best, he might feel sorry for them. His anti-collaborationist impulse was triggered by having a ghastly dilemma forced upon him. Still, let us not be too hard: we most of us are not saints ourselves. For that matter, who knows?, besides all the malevolence in the Commandant's proposal there may have been a flicker of mercy.

II

Moving back now in history, the problem before the Rabbis I shall concentrate on was: what ought a collective—a

town, a congregation—to do if the reigning power, enraged maybe by signs of insubordination, or for the fun of it, orders it, say, to hand over that same day three members for public hanging; in the event of defiance, the entire community or half of it or sixty persons will be wiped out. I have published a little tract on this topic.^[1] At the time, I bracketed out the relevant New Testament material, reserving it for subsequent consideration.^[2] Today is my opportunity.

The initial Pharisaic stand—I shall deal with the Sadducees further on—was unbendingly negative: no one to be surrendered ever, even though extinction will ensue. Clearly, no such scruples are entertained by the Judeans in Judges who, fearing what their mighty Philistine neighbours might do to settle accounts with the indomitable Samson, propose to deliver him up in fetters. It is only his

[1] Collaboration with Tyranny in Rabbinic Law , 1965. The chief texts are Mishnah Terumoth 8.12, Tosephta Terumoth 7.20, Jerusalemite Terumoth 46b, Genesis Rabba 94 on 46.26f. E. J. Schochet supplements them by medieval ones in his searching treatise A Responsum of Surrender , 1973, an edition and analysis of a sixteenth-century Rabbinic advice on a tragic case in Poland. A summary was already furnished in his Bach = Rabbi Joel Sirkes , 1971, p. 132.

[2] Collaboration with Tyranny , p. 18. John Noonan complained at once. E. Bammel has inspected the New Testament side, first in a review in Theologische Literaturzeitung 93 (1968): 833ff., then in a major paper, 'Ex illa itaque die consilium fecerunt . . .', in The Trial of Jesus, Cambridge Studies in Honour of C. F. D. Moule , ed. E. Bammel, 1970, pp. 11ff. While alive to the strength of his argumentation, I differ in my general approach. A rough overview may be found in my Civil Disobedience in Antiquity , 1972, pp. 97ff. Huge gaps remain. If, twenty years hence, Michael, Philippe and Sandy desire an encore, I shall try to assess Josephus's contribution to this terrain. For a minuscule specimen see below, under V, footnote 21.

giant strength lent him by the Lord that saves him.^[3] A proper ruling was first formulated with regard to heathen thugs asking a company of travellers to let them have one for killing (for having sport with him, would be a likely sixteenth-century euphemism) otherwise they will kill the lot; an astonishing variant of this collision in the Old Testament will be presented in due course.^[4] A demand by the Roman masters, the Pharisees contend, is no better. The dogma may indeed have hastened the outbreak of the war against them in A.D. 66. Florus, the procurator, ordered the Jewish leaders of Jerusalem to give up a number of men who had abused him in public; he was told that it was impossible to identify them; whereupon he had his soldiers sack the 'upper market', three thousand six hundred persons were slaughtered and chances for a settlement rapidly vanished.^[5]

Scriptural support was found in Deuteronomy, which makes it a capital crime to sell a fellow-Jew, scil. to abroad. More precisely, it condemns sale of 'any of your brothers, the children of Israel', the redundant 'your brothers' no doubt alluding to the saga of Joseph, sold to the Ishmaelites by his brothers literally.^[6] For the Rabbis, in this context, to deliver up a person in return for safety is a selling just as much as if it were done for money. The ruling prevailed both before A.D. 70, while a measure of self-government remained under Roman suzerainty, and for several decennia after.

It became untenable, however, in the Hadrianic persecu-

[3] Judges 15.9ff.

[4] See below, under V, item 5.

[5] Josephus, Jewish War 2.14.8.301ff.

[6] Deuteronomy 24.7. See C. Carmichael, The Laws of Deuteronomy , 1974, pp. 212ff., Law and Narrative in the Bible , 1985, pp. 261f., 305.

tion following the defeat of Bar-Kochba in 135, when circumcision, Sabbath services, religious instruction were interdicted on pain of death. That these activities continued underground goes without saying, and the Romans went all out to stop them. To go on rigidly disregarding an ultimatum of theirs of the kind in question would in no time have put an end—really an end, no metaphor—to Palestinian Jewry, decimated already. Accordingly, at a secret synod of the Sages, the majority established a distinction. If the authorities request an unnamed victim or number of victims—let us have one or five of you to be executed, or else you will all go—the old maxim applies: the answer is No. However, if they specify—give us Avrom or Avrom, Baruch and Gedaliah—they are to be obeyed. The former demand is utterly barbarous, treating humans like cattle, fungibles. A secondary objection is that the selection is imposed on the community and, whatever procedure it might resort to, trust would be undermined—not to speak of the inevitable burden of guilt. (Volunteers cannot solve the problem, but I shall not go into detail.) Obliteration is better than descent to this level. The latter demand evinces a glimmer of justice, being for someone they have a quarrel with: even if they want a pious scholar because he has taught Torah, at least he is not simply an object replaceable by any other of the same description. Neither will there be the evil selection by the group. Here, then, though the price is horrendous, it may be paid to ensure survival of the whole. (I suppose, under this formula, the head of a congregation of three hundred in 1943, notified to have ready by next morning twenty of them for a transport to extermination, otherwise everybody will be despatched, had to refuse; ordered to have ready twenty designated persons who had contributed to pacifist journals, he had to yield. What about the dread predicament in Bosic's The Judge ?) The Biblical text invoked in favour of this concession was

the narrative of Sheba, a rebel against King David. David's general prepared to storm the city in which he was holding out but offered peace if he were delivered up to him. The residents did toss his head over the wall and the general withdrew: surrender of a named person for the sake of the universality.^[7] Evidently, the use of this precedent implied a degree of recognition of Roman rule.

A minority declined to budge. Deuteronomy's was the only right way. Jewry would not go under: God could work a miracle at any time and his people should move him to do so by a sincere return. As for Sheba, he defected from the legitimate, heaven-appointed sovereign, nothing to do with the foreign usurpers. It is worth observing that the two factions of the synod were agreed that an individual, threatened with death unless he kills someone, unnamed or named, must choose death—actually, irrespective of whether the other is Jewish or not.^[8] The limitation to 'any of the children of Israel' does not here apply.

By the third century, the danger had abated and the trend was towards greater firmness. This comes out clearly in a case giving rise to a legend. A Jew sought by the Romans^[9] for what must have been something like terrorism was given shelter by a leading Rabbi at Lydda. It should be noticed right away—in view of what will follow—that, palpably, the Rabbi was risking his life. The Romans found out that the criminal was hiding in that city and proclaimed that, unless he was handed over, it would be sacked. At this the Rabbi persuaded his guest to willingly accept his fate. So much for the case: here legend takes over. Up to this incident, the prophet Elijah had paid regular visits to the Rabbi, so they might exchange news about goings-on in

[7] II Samuel 20.

[8] Jerusalemite Sanhedrin 21b, Babylonian Sanhedrin 74a.

[9] Or, less probably, by Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra.

paradise and on earth. Now the visits stopped. The Rabbi, disconsolate, prayed and fasted and finally Elijah returned. Asked why he had stayed away, he replied that he did not use to consort with betrayers—the term is familiar from the deed of Judas, masar, paradidomi . The Rabbi defended himself by citing the resolution of the synod. But Elijah declared that those truly devout would not follow that teaching. Strong criticism, and it is not surprising—at this junction we return to reality—that before long another influential scholar advocated a mighty limitation to the synod's concession: even a specific person claimed by the alien power may be transferred only if he is actually deserving of death. (By this criterion, the pacifist journalists were not to be turned over.) The Biblical Sheba, after all, was guilty of armed high treason. Unless the condition is satisfied, the community must allow itself to be slaughtered. The requirement foreshadows modern extradition clauses, but I shall not expand.^[10]

Virtually no room is left in the Rabbinic deliberations for the possibility that, now and then, it might be from genuine moderation or even sympathy that a collective is called on to give up a member in order to avoid worse. Whereas, for instance, in Second Samuel's original recital of the Sheba affair, this aspect predominates. Joab is here portrayed as fully concurring with the wise woman who interceded for the city. Though it had abetted the revolt, it remained a sacred constituent of the nation, and he would be dismayed if, because he could not otherwise get hold of the leader, he had to go to extremes. The reason for the difference is that the warring factions of Second Samuel were

[10] Below, under V, item 4, we shall find the Danaides begging for sanctuary at Argos, and the king taking pains to discover whether they are in the right. See my brother Benjamin's Zu den Rechtsproblemen in Aischylos' Agamemnon , 1938, pp. 78ff.

still linked by strong, old bonds.^[11] Not so those here under review. The Rabbis had little cause for thinking that a Roman commander, involved in a serious conflict with the Jews, would ever feel protectively about a community of theirs.

Of course, the high standards of the Sages were not always practised. In the Middle Ages, in particular, in many places sad breakdowns in spirit occurred. A frightened congregation would regard the slightest misbehaviour of a member in the outer world as menacing its existence—not without reason. Motivation mattered little: in fact, one acting from religious zeal was likely to do it again, hence a special threat, a troublemaker. He might be offered up almost before the authorities turned nasty. (There is a foretaste as early as during the serfdom in Egypt).^[12] Still, we have plenty of evidence of a collective, however pressured, faithfully approaching a respected Rabbi for guidance; e.g. when, in 1620, a Kalish Jew was charged with stealing the host,^[13] or even from the period of World War II.

III

Who stands where? The patricians incline to accommodation, their less attached colleagues to going through

[11] According to C. Carmichael, 'On Deuteronomic Legislation—Sparing the Mother Bird', Law and History Review 2 (1984): 288ff., Deuteronomy 22.6f. alludes to this campaign. If he is right, as I think he is, the lawgiver evidently sees there a worthy compromise: the mother, the city as a whole, is to be let off, and with this proviso, it is quite in order to dispose of undeserving nestlings such as the renegade. None of this is incompatible with my conjectures in Ancient Jewish Law , 1981, pp. 99f., but such refinements can wait.

[12] Exodus 5.21.

[13] See Schochet, Responsum of Surrender .

with it. The majority opinion of the assembly during the Hadrianic terror—viz. that to escape annihilation, a community should sacrifice a member specifically targeted by the government—was propounded by Judah ben Ilai, son of a famous father, an admirer of Roman civilisation, in the end awarded an honour by the Romans. The minority's spokesman, Simeon ben Johai, was a mystic, despised Rome and for many years lived with a price on his head. Nor should we overlook a personal hurt: it was an insider's denunciation which led to his being outlawed. And another: quite possibly, his own father's sympathies and even activities were in flagrant contrast with his.^[1] In the next century, Joshua ben Levi, reproved by Elijah, was president of the academy of Lydda, wealthy, on good terms with the proconsul. Similarly, the slightly younger Johanan, who also upheld that majority ruling, was president of the academy of Tiberias and traced his descent back to the preexilic epoch. By contrast, we know nothing about the ancestry of Resh Laqish who, by barring any extradition incompatible with justice, virtually preached return to defiance regardless of the consequences. High as he rose, he was never allowed to forget about his adolescence in abject poverty, when he sold himself as gladiator and acquired plebeian habits for good. (Elijah sided with the idealists: the saints in heaven always do that.) It would be simplistic to rush to judgment as to the relative merits, practical or moral, of the two camps; I hope my gut response is not too noticeable. Fortunately, for the purpose in hand, it is enough to locate them.

This brings me to the Sadducees, the aristocrats par excellence—and, indeed, they did anticipate the compromisers among the Pharisees by at least one hundred years. At some stage, Jesus's activity alarmed the more cautious

[1] Babylonian Shabbath 33b f., Pesahim 112a. His son stood by him.

ones of his compatriots: it seemed about to drive the Romans into 'intervening and taking away the place and the nation', into clamping down, that is, by paganizing the Temple and suppressing what self-government endured.^[2] The attribution of this misgiving to 'the chief priests and the Pharisees' sounds very plausible: the former would enlist as many of the latter as they could. (This kind of conscription is common throughout history. An efficient elite knows when it needs the backing of numbers. I have watched striking instances in my life, among states, among parties within a state, among strata within a denomination, a city, a university and so forth).^[3] Admittedly, there was no formal ultimatum threatening physical extirpation. But if what was feared came to pass, thousands of Jews would die and the loss of the Temple would be almost worse. Remember Philo's defence, less than ten years later, of the Judaeans preparing for collective suicide should Caligula put up a statute of himself in the sanctuary.^[4] Viewed thus, therefore, it was the life of a specific zealot versus the future of the entire body, and the high priest Caiaphas argued that 'one man should die for the people and the whole nation perish not'.^[5] He was a Sadducee, scion of an eminent dynasty, appointed not by the Jews but by Valerius Gratus, predecessor of Pontius Pilate. He took the line then to which the major-

[2] John 11.48.

[3] The corresponding phenomenon in reverse is the support a struggling subjugated group receives from wayward members of the governing one—saints, traitors, mavericks. The patrician Appius Claudius enabled a son of one of his freedmen to publish the secret archives of the pontiffs; Livy, From the Founding of the City 9.46.7ff.

[4] Embassy to Gaius 32.229ff. See my Civil Disobedience in Antiquity , pp. 92ff., and 'Three Footnotes on Civil Disobedience in Antiquity', Humanities in Society 2 (1979): 79f.

[5] John 11.50, 18.14.

ity of Pharisaic leaders found themselves reduced under Hadrian. One of the two sources relating the end of Ullah actually has Joshua ben Levi remind him that 'it is better to kill that man [= you] so they may not punish the congregation on his [= your] account'.^[6] Whether this detail is authentic or not,^[7] it does underscore the identity of the synod's position with that of Caiaphas.

Fundamentally, the entanglement was nothing new. Long before, in the second third of the second century B. C., Alcinus, a Hellenizer, elevated to the high-priesthood by the Syrian king, had abetted the latter's fight against the Hasmonaean rebels. The king's general ordered the Temple personnel, whom he knew to loathe Alcinus and be hand in glove with the rebels despite their outward subservience, to hand over Judas Maccabaeus. They swore they were ignorant of his whereabouts; whereupon he, infuriated, told them that unless they handed him over, their Temple would be replaced by one to Dionysos after victory. Well, he was defeated.^[8]

That Caiaphas was opposing the original, inflexible Pharisaic No is reflected in his angry language: 'You know nothing'. Furthermore, he called the abandonment of the person who imperiled them all 'expedient', 'beneficial', symphero . The term—of enormous importance in Paul—characterizes conduct deviating from hallowed principle,

[6] Genesis Rabba 94 on 46.26f.

[7] In all likelihood, alas, it is something in between: the maxim as such comes down from the beginning of the Christian era via inner-Jewish transmission—not the New Testament, that is—but is put into Joshua ben Levi's mouth after the event. Had he quoted it, it is difficult to see why it would have been dropped by the Jerusalemite Talmud.

[8] I Maccabees 7.6ff., II Maccabees 14.3ff., Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 12.10.1.389ff.

yet the decidedly superior one because of special circumstances. As things stood, he protested, it was misguided to make a fetish even of a warning with roots so deep in the past as Deuteronomy's against sale of an Israelite. This indeed explains the notable feature, that with not one syllable does he criticize the substance of Jesus's words or deeds: he argues entirely from raison d'état , from the overriding, public-necessity-geared reservation to the hard line. Quite likely, the Sadducees already in that period referred to Sheba in corroboration.^[9] When Caiaphas exclaimed, 'You do not consider, logizomai , that it is expedient' etc., he may well have used the verb in the sense of 'to draw the proper conclusions from the ancient reports'. At any rate, this account of his outlook belongs to the invaluable, historical items preserved by John alone.

(Re a twist in the end of Sheba. The appeasers invoked his treatment in support of their readiness to hand over a wanted person to the enemy if the alternative was extirpation of the group. Yet he was not strictly handed over, or better, was handed over only in an over-literal sense: Joab's request was satisfied by the citizens themselves cutting off his quarry's head and throwing it out to him—which had the advantage that none of the besiegers entered the place. The use made of the case is not, however, hard to understand. In most such confrontations, the tyrant would mind as little as Joab whether the individual he was after was surrendered or despatched on the spot; and quite reasonably, the Sages judged the latter a selling, a handing over, no less than the former. The narrow interrelation of the two modes of knuckling under is amply evidenced—not least in New Testament times. What chiefly worried Herod Antipas

[9] I had not gotten this far in my analysis when surmising—Collaboration with Tyranny , p. 60—that it was probably Judah ben Ilai who first held him up as illustrating a reservation to the taboo on sale.

about the Baptist's near-seditious activity may well have been the Roman reaction to be expected; so he ordered his execution.^[10] At some stage, to go by Luke,^[11] he had the same intention with regard to Jesus, but eventually found it politic to leave the final deed to the occupying power, handing him over stricto sensu . As for John,^[12] in the first Caiaphas session, chief priests and Pharisees determined to kill Jesus—presumably somehow or other, themselves or through a convenient agency. As things developed, they saw to his arrest but got the Romans to crucify him: again, an actual handing over. The Sages were realistic in having the precedent from Samuel cover all these situations.)

The evangelist adds a Christological interpretation: owing to divine dispensation, the high priest's utterance constituted a prophecy that Jesus would indeed die for the best, 'die for the nation, and not for the nation only but in order that he might gather together into one the children of God that were scattered'.^[13] Here the archetypal victim of the transaction outlawed by Deuteronomy is directly introduced: Jesus becomes a second, ultimate Joseph. The latter, reunited with his brothers, comforts them: 'God sent me ahead of you to preserve life', scil. among the heathens, in a famine, 'and to save your lives', scil. the chosen band.^[14] Again, 'God brought it to pass to save much people alive', referring to the Egyptians, and 'Now I will nourish you and your little ones', referring to his kin.^[15] The near-technical term, it should be observed, recurs in Jesus's farewell: 'It is expedient, beneficial, for you that I go away'.^[16]

[10] Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 18.5.2.117ff. No doubt personal rancune, of the sort brought out in the Synoptics (Matthew 14.3ff., Mark 6.17ff., Luke 3.19f.), was also involved.

[11] 13.31, 23.11ff.

[12] 11.53, 10.12ff.

[13] John 11.51f.

[14] Genesis 45.5ff.

[15] Genesis 50.20f.

[16] John 16.7.

IV

Obviously, from the moment of his arrest, Jesus must have reminded people of Joseph^[1] —not only the learned few acquainted with the latter's place in the discussion of relations with the outside world but also the unlearned many. As Joseph was disposed of by his real brothers, so Jesus was by one as good as a brother. What is more, his mercenary seller bore the same name as that brother of Joseph who instigated the deed, recommending it as more lucrative than an outright killing would be.^[2] Some ancient exegetes do draw the inference that Judah thereby forfeited his privileged rank;^[3] presumably this viewpoint was once more widespread than would appear from the sources, on the whole preferring to exonerate him. (To be fair, a later test proved him resolved to bear heavy vicarious affliction: he begged to be enslaved instead of Benjamin when Joseph—not as yet having disclosed who he was—proposed to keep the latter for the theft of the cup found in his sack while permitting the others to return to Canaan.)^[4] One might indeed wonder whether the name of the New Testament traitor is not an imaginative transfer from the Old. I think there is good reason—not here to be set

[1] Genesis 37.18ff., Matthew 10.4, 26.14ff., 21ff., 45ff., 27.3ff., Mark 14.10f., 18ff., 41ff., Luke 22.3ff., 21ff., 47ff., John 13.2ff., 21ff., 18.2ff. In my New Testament and Rabbinic Judaism , 1956, rept. 1973, pp. 3f., the role of Joseph is grossly underrated. I so strove to be cautious that the result was as wrong in one direction as overkill would have made it in the other.

[2] Genesis 37.26f.

[3] Genesis Rabba 85 on 38.1, Exodus Rabba 42 on 32.7.

[4] Genesis 44.17ff. This is a rough statement: no need here to enter into the exact function of the offer in the mind of the cycle's author.

out^[5] —for refraining from this conclusion. Anyhow, if we did have to do with a nickname (by now it definitely has become one), that would only strengthen my case for an immediate, general recognition of the parallel.

Let me add one more coincidence. Simeon ben Johai's violent propaganda came to the knowledge of the authorities through a favourite disciple, son of proselytes—whose name was Judah. And, for good measure, a dysincidence: you will have noted that it was the Maccabean Judas whom the foreign invader sought to get betrayed—yes, paradidomi .

Once the catastrophe was mastered, another analogy would be readily seen: in both cases a despicable wrong opened the road to triumph—to exodus, Sinai and the land in the one, redemption in the other. It is in fact this feature of Joseph's biography, its pointing far beyond itself, which radically distinguishes it from otherwise comparable Near Eastern commemorations of marvellous losings and findings. It is taken up in the Psalter: 'He [God] sent ahead of them a man, as a slave was sold Joseph. . . . And there came Israel to Egypt. . . . And he sent Moses . . . and he brought them out . . . and he gave them the lands of the nations'.^[6] An Ur -Christian brought up in this milieu could hardly miss the link to the present renewal.

John, however, goes much further with his elaborate filling in of Messianic features. (Nothing like it in the other evangelists, except for an isolated pericope towards the beginning of Luke.)^[7] When he dwells on the overarching

[5] W. R. Farmer's comments on naming in that era are pertinent. In Maccabees, Zealots and Josephus , 1956, p. viii, he writes: 'Then I noticed how frequently the leaders of seditious activity against Rome bore the same names as the early Maccabees—Mattathias, Judas, John, Eleazar, Jonathan, Simon'.

[6] Psalms 105.17ff.

[7] Luke 2.41ff.; see Appendix below. The way I hear John is greatly indebted to C. K. Barrett's seminal study 'The Old Testa-ment in the Fourth Gospel', Journal of Theological Studies 48 (1947): 155ff.

plan which the evildoers help to accomplish and which, in fact, makes their most abject wickedness result in the greatest blessing—to cite just Jesus's reply to the governor: 'You could have no power against me except it were given you from above'^[8] —the specific texts about Joseph are among his stimuli. 'It was not you that sent me hither but God'. 'You thought evil against me, but God meant it unto good'.^[9] It has been contended that Paul, in Romans and Galatians, and John, in his Gospel and the First Epistle, independently accord centrality to 'the Saviour sent in order that he perform his function': they must be drawing, therefore, on a primitive credal formula.^[10] A drawing on the Joseph paradigm is an alternative and, at least as far as John is concerned, preferable explanation, the tone is so alike. Joseph: 'God sent me ahead of you for [the furtherance of] life'.^[11] Fourth Gospel: 'God sent his son in order that the world should be saved', immediately following upon 'God gave his son in order that every believer should have eternal life'^[12] —near enough though with 'to give' in the place of 'to send'. First Epistle: 'God sent his son in order that we should live', 'God sent his son as propitiation', 'God sent his son as saviour'.^[13] I shall not speculate about a credal formula itself inspired by the miracle in Egypt: too remote a chance.

(It is true that Joseph's statement contains no 'in order that', but the emergence of this construction in the New Testament is easily accounted for by its generally increasing

[8] John 19.11. Samson's story, adverted to above, II, footnote 3, is also in point.

[9] Genesis 45.8, 50.20.

[10] John 3.17, Romans 8.3, Galatians 4.4, I John 4.9f., 14. See M. Hengel, Der Sohn Gottes , 1975, p. 24.

[11] Genesis 45.5.

[12] John 3.16f.

[13] I John 4.9f., 14.

popularity.^[14] As a matter of fact, two of the pertinent verses in the First Epistle themselves do without it^[15] even though, overall, John is affected by the general trend to an extraordinary degree.^[16] One difficulty with the other thesis is^[17] that Paul, though earlier than John, defines the mission in far more doctrinal fashion, as purposing a higher fulfilment of the law or a ransoming of those under the law. John speaks of to save, to live, propitiation, saviour. With the exception of propitiation—mentioned to remind us how the life celebrated in the previous sentence was made possible—this is all quite basic, and close to the Old Testament. A second objection: 'to send' appears as pempo in Romans, exapostello in Galatians. They are near-synonymous but, if a credal profession were underlying, one would expect no switch. The three passages from John claimed to base on the creed all employ apostello —employed as in Genesis; and in the psalm just cited, too, it is apostello or exapostello . Lastly, in Romans, 'in order that' is not really attached to 'to send' but to 'to condemn': 'God, having sent his son, condemned sin in the flesh in order that the higher law be fulfilled after the spirit'.)

That so sensitive a typologist should be captivated by those passages in the old narrative is to be expected. Here, within a minimal space—about three verses—are clustered these tremendous slogans of salvation history: 'God sends' a saviour from his home to a distant populace, for 'to keep alive a multitude of people' among the latter and 'maintain

[14] See F. Blass and A. Debrunner, Grammatik des neutestamentlichen Griechisch , 14th ed. by F. Rehkopf, 1976, pp. 314ff.

[15] I John 4.10, 'God sent his son as propitiation', 4.14, 'as saviour'.

[16] E.g. John 1.27, 4.34. See W. Bauer, Das Johannesevangelium , 2d ed., 1925, pp. 32, 69.

[17] As pointed out by Hengel himself; and I agree with him that it is by no means fatal.

a remnant' among his own, destined for 'a great deliverance'. ('Multitude', 'much', rabh in Hebrew, polys in Greek, often approaches an idealistic 'all';^[18] it may do so here, and if not, many a devout student will have assumed this sense. Amos hopes God will be gracious to 'the remnant of Joseph'.^[19] 'Remnant' and 'deliverance'—or other formations from these two roots—are coupled in a fair number of significant texts: 'From Jerusalem shall go out a remnant and a deliverance from mount Zion'.^[20] ) The whole of it set in the framework of fatherhood to the alien monarch and dominion over his realm^[21] —and, above all, forgiveness.^[22] What one might want to explore is how this vision, as sophisticated as generous, comes to occupy its place in Genesis, but this is outside my topic. As for sophistication, to get a full picture, one would have to pay attention to quite a few easily neglected details, such as the notion of 'to be angry' over your own misdeed.^[23] Nor shall I probe John's deviations from the model. One, at first sight surprising, is his far lesser emphasis on forgiveness. Joseph grants it before his brothers have time to request it, in the same breath as he reveals his identity; and when after his father's death they fear reprisals, acknowledge their culpability and ask his pardon, he weeps, impresses on them that he is a mere human, not God, and promises to care for them—all of them, not excluding Judah. The Johannine Judas is a devil, is lost.^[24]

There are further contacts with the Joseph tradition, though not all equally certain. John tells us that Judas, once Satan had entered into him, 'went out' into the night, i.e.

[18] See J. Jeremias, art. 'polloi ', in Theologisches Wörterbuch zum Neuen Testament , ed. G. Friedrich, 1957, 6:536ff.

[19] Amos 5.15.

[20] II Kings 19.31, Isaiah 37.32.

[21] Genesis 41.40ff., 45.8.

[22] Genesis 45.5ff., 50.15ff.

[23] Genesis 45.5. Where does it occur the first time elsewhere?

[24] John 6.70, 17.12.

ceased to belong.^[25] Some Rabbis go as far in their denunciation of Judah's crime as to see in the opening of the next chapter, 'And Judah went down from his brothers',^[26] an indication of his expulsion.^[27] My remark as to the self-censorship of our sources naturally applies with special force to such drastic interpretations: they would have wider currency two thousand years ago. Again, the city where Jesus meets the Samaritan woman is 'near the ground that Jacob gave Joseph'.^[28] Conceivably an alert, near the outset, to Jesus taking up Joseph's repudiation of narrowly fixed boundaries.^[29] It can be shown, I think, that the young Jesus's rejoinder in Luke that rather than cleave to his parents he must heed the concerns of his heavenly father connects up with Joseph's forgetting—being made to forget by God—his earthly father's house to fulfil his mission abroad.^[30] Some repetitive phrasing in the lesson appended to the meeting may be significant: 'My meat is to do the will of him that sent me to finish his work', 'The works that my father has given me to finish bear witness that the father has sent me'—to which we should add a line from near the end: 'I have finished the work that you gave me to do'.^[31]

Fresh light surely falls on Jesus's warning in John as he takes action against desecration of the Temple: 'Make not my father's house a house of trade'.^[32] Note both 'my father's

[25] John 13.30.

[26] Genesis 38.1.

[27] Genesis Rabba 85 on 38.1, Exodus Rabba 42 on 32.7, cited above, footnote 3. This possible ingredient in John's depiction I did ponder in New Testament and Judaism ; cf. footnote 1.

[28] John 4.5.

[29] This is not to rule out the impact of a general association of Samaritans and Josephites.

[30] Genesis 41.51, Luke 2.49; see above, footnote 7.

[31] John 4.34, 5.36, 17.4.

[32] John 2.16.

house', used by Joseph, and 'house of trade', recalling the foreigners to whom he was sold and who are described as 'traders'.^[33] The lower elements, we are given to understand, are back—or still—at their plots, about to do to the new Joseph what was done to the old. In this pericope, he acts prophetically, programmatically, at the start of his mission.^[34] His farewell discourse resumes the typology. 'In my father's house are many mansions'^[35] brings out the ampleness marking the house of Joseph's supreme father. (Side by side with numerous further references. One of them is to a yet earlier foretaste in the patriarchal cycle, the young Rebekah's welcome of a stranger who has just entered the town with his camels; she does not yet know that he is Abraham's servant. He asks 'Is there room in your father's house for us to lodge in?', to which she replies 'We have both straw and provender enough and room to lodge in'.^[36] ) The sequel speaks of Jesus leaving in order to prepare a place for those around him so that, after reunion, he may fulfil all their desires: the Joseph pattern. Actually, they ought to rejoice at his departure destined to lead to the highest blessings for him and them: just as God turned evil into good in the prefiguration. These gifts are bestowed by the Father, in answer to Jesus's wishes: so behind Joseph stood Pharaoh, occupying the throne.^[37]

Even such advanced theological propositions as that their future life in glory is assured by his own, or that they

[33] Genesis 37.28.

[34] See my 'Some Reflections on the Historicity of the New Testament', Catholic Commission on Intellectual and Cultural Affairs Annual 1986, pp. 3f.

[35] John 14.2.

[36] Genesis 24.23ff., cited at John 14.2 by D. Eb. Nestle, Novum Testamentum Graece , 22d ed. by D. Er. Nestle and D. K. Aland, 1956, p. 276.

[37] Genesis 41.40ff., 45.8ff., 16ff.

should believe and see the Father in him, if for no other reason in view of his works, belong here. We must bear in mind that, in a sense, Joseph too died and rose. Quite apart from the general affinity between enslavement-liberation and death-rebirth, to Jacob at least it would totally feel that way. He was presented with proof that he whom 'he loved more than all his children'^[38] had been torn to pieces by a wild beast; and he gave himself up to utter despair. 'He refused to be comforted . . . I will go down into the grave unto my son mourning'.^[39] Josephus indeed depicts him as mourning 'like an only son's father'.^[40] When, years later, his other sons told him that 'Joseph lives and is ruler throughout the land of Egypt',^[41] he would not listen and—if we interpret in 'fundamentalist' fashion—well-nigh died himself really from such lack of faith: 'His heart grew cold for he believed them not'. They kept filling him in with details, however, and showed him the carriages Joseph had sent him for his journey—he saw Joseph's works, we might say—so he revived: 'His spirit lived'. The briefest mention may be made of a verbal point from pursuance of which in earnest we might never return: while Jacob would not be comforted till, after a long time, his spirit lived on taking in the glad tidings, John in this chapter has Jesus promise a Comforter, the spirit of truth, the holy spirit, that will help in difficult periods.^[42]

Luckily, it is demonstrable that, for some at any rate of the first-century exegetes, Jacob's initial disbelief consti-

[38] Genesis 37.3.

[39] Genesis 37.35.

[40] Jewish Antiquities 2.3.4.38. If the dead is not an only son, or if he can be replaced, a parent will be comforted: II Samuel 12.24, Job 42.11.

[41] Genesis 45.26ff.

[42] 14.16f., 26.

tuted a serious lapse; demonstrable from Josephus's strenuous, direct contradiction of Scripture in this matter.^[43] Already the Book of Jubilees seems to have felt it necessary to exculpate the patriarch, ascribing his response to a blackout;^[44] and the Jerusalemite Targum and Pirqe de R. Eliezer 38 suppress the datum. Josephus's picture is extreme. Of the wonderful reports, he writes, Jacob 'deemed none unbelievable, taking into consideration^[45] God's power to perform great works^[46] and his benevolence towards him even if it was in abeyance for an interval'. What deserves particular attention is that Jacob's attitude strikingly accords with that prescribed for the disciples in John. Such is the resemblance, in fact, that one might suspect an old Christian interpolation. It is unlikely, in my view. Note, however, that even on that basis the passage would afford strong evidence in favour of the part the Fourth Gospel, I maintain, assigns to the Joseph drama—the interpolator representing a genuine tradition.

To conclude this section with what at the moment is just an impression: the epic from Genesis, as understood by later generations, may have contributed to facets of atonement in the New Testament. Jubilees, of the second century B.C., makes it dominant in this department of religion: the deed of the brothers took place on the tenth of the seventh month, and that is why the Day of Atonement was ordained for this date. What is more, the offence against the

[43] Jewish Antiquities 2.7.1.186f. See H. St. J. Thackeray, Josephus (Loeb Classical Library, 1930), 4:237 note a.

[44] 43.24. An interest in excuses of this type comes out also in 41.25, stressing Judah's ignorance of Tamar's identity when he had intercourse with her.

[45] Logizomai , as in Caiaphas's reproach 'You do not consider'; see above, with footnote 9.

[46] Megalourgia.

father is the most terrible element of the crime. The news that his son had perished made him weep on the tenth of the seventh month, the yearly atonement commemorates 'their grieving the affection of their father regarding Joseph his son'.^[47] The Dead Sea sect read Jubilees and so, surely, did other fringe movements. Indeed, non constat that similar constructions were not once more widespread than it looks from our expurgated Rabbinic material.

V

Here are five headings which do fall under my subject and I feel bad sidetracking them.

1. Nature of the rulings and sanctions. To quote myself: 'We are moving in an uncomfortably ill-defined region where law, morality, politics and practical wisdom combine into a strange mixture'. In Hebrew, the forms mostly employed for these directions are ambiguous, translatable by 'must', 'should' or 'may', and if negative by 'must not', 'should not' or 'need not'. I quote myself again: 'Usually, in legal writings, the context enables us to pick the right nuance. In the province here under consideration, however, owing to its peculiar, indeterminate description, such help is greatly attenuated and a good deal remains nebulous'.^[1] Take an advice that in such and such circumstances, 'they surrender a person'. Does this signify 'must surrender', 'should surrender', 'may surrender'? Interpretation will vary—and, up to a point, is meant to vary by the authors—according to period, general conditions, individual

[47] 34.12ff. Translation by R. H. Charles, ed. The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament , 1913, 2:65.

[1] Collaboration with Tyranny , pp. 93, 95.

philosophy. A mess, more durable than order. In the so-called Haustafeln of the Epistles, incidentally, one of these forms is detectable behind the faulty Greek.^[2] I would say that, on the whole, the obligations laid down there belong to the relatively stable category. A directive for slaves in I Peter, for example, doubtless means 'should': 'The slaves should subject themselves to their masters'.^[3] 'May' would be inappropriate.

There are few strict sanctions in the ancient sources for unjustified surrender and none for unjustified nonsurrender. Extra-legal punishment is a different matter. Judas found himself an outcast. He sought expiation in suicide in one version, suffered a violent death at the hand of heaven in another.^[4] Simeon ben Johai, having returned to civilized life after years in hiding, recognized the disciple through whom the Romans had obtained their information. He looked at him and he turned into a heap of bones.^[5] Whether modern attempts to bring such cases before the courts are a success, who can say?

2. The attitude of the victim. Calling for a study in depth. Isaac and Isaiah's Servant of the Lord are resigned and trusting. The former, it is true, starts out naively unaware,^[6] but he must have known soon enough. Joseph resembles them in meekness. Frightened and begging for mercy as his ordeal is about to begin,^[7] he ends up accepting it thankfully. Sheba surely fought to the end. Ullah acquiesced in his extradition, under gigantic pressure: besides the ultimatum as such, there were the representations of a host who up to then had protected him at heavy risk to himself. It is to Joshua ben Levi's credit that, called a betrayer by Elijah, he

[2] See my Ancient Jewish Law , 1981, pp. 83f.

[3] I Peter 2.18.

[4] Matthew 27.3ff., Acts 1.18ff.

[5] Babylonian Shabbath 34b.

[6] Genesis 22.7f.

[7] Genesis 42.21.

did not plead Ullah's consent in excuse. Among Greek playwrights, Euripides is a veritable specialist in the shades of willingness to lay down one's life for others.^[8] His Macaria prefers to be slaughtered straightaway to being chosen for slaughter by lot: the latter may be more just but is less gracious.^[9] (In the twelve years or so of involvement in medical ethics, I became very aware of the complexity of 'voluntarism', say, in donating a kidney to your brother or subjecting yourself to a dangerous experiment.)^[10] An extremely intricate case which would have to figure is Jonah:^[11] as the boat on which he was fleeing from God was about to sink in a tempest, he got the company to rescue themselves by throwing him overboard—the same man who, little later, resents the reprieve of Nineveh. I shall still have to say a word about another aspect of this near-disaster at sea.

Jesus offers himself up wholeheartedly. Yet, at Gethsemane, he does pray for the cup to pass from him—except in the Fourth Gospel, where his readiness is absolute.^[12] It displays the same tendency elsewhere. Thus, Jesus cooperates with Judas to a striking extent.^[13] Partly this may be due to the latter being a devil—as I mentioned before—less

[8] See J. Schmitt, 'Freiwilliger Opfertod bei Euripides', in Religionsgeschichtliche Versuche und Vorarbeiten , ed. L. Deubner, L. Malten and O. Weinreich, 1921, vol. 17, pt. 2.

[9] Euripides, The Children of Hercules 543ff.

[10] See e.g. my 'Transplantation: Acceptability of Procedures and the Required Legal Sanctions', in Ciba Foundation Symposium on Ethics in Medical Progress , ed. G. E. W. Wolstenholme and M. O'Connor, 1966, pp. 197f.; and 'Legal Problems in Medical Advance', The Hebrew University of Jerusalem Lionel Cohen Lecture 16, 1971, pp. 8ff., rept. Israel Law Review 6 (1971): 4ff.

[11] See my 'Jonah: A Reminiscence', Journal of Jewish Studies 35 (1984): 36ff.

[12] Matthew 26.39, Mark 14.36, Luke 22.42.

[13] E.g. John 18.2; see Bauer, Johannesevangelium , p. 203.

than human, a mere instrument for a purpose. But it also serves to underline the single-mindedness of the former. As for Gethsemane, John virtually criticizes the other tradition when he puts a rhetorical question into Jesus's mouth: 'The cup which my Father has given me, shall I not drink it?'^[14] It is uttered, by the way, to stop Peter's armed attack on the band come for his arrest. The incident, therefore, takes the place (of course, this is only a fraction of what it does) of one recorded in Matthew and Mark—and omitted by Luke—where Peter will not tolerate Jesus's fateful predictions, no doubt hoping for, if need be, a victorious battle, and is rebuffed: 'Away from me, Satan, you intend not the things of God but those of men'.^[15] This connection is verified by the fact that it is only John who identifies the violent disciple as Peter; in all three Synoptics he is anonymous.

In the appendix of the Fourth Gospel, Jesus foresees the crucifixion of Peter, by then grown old and feeble in body. What deserves notice here is the phrasing of his emotions as that ordeal occurs: he will be carried 'whither he would not want [to go]'.^[16] Human nature does assert itself—even in a genuine martyr.

A last point. In Matthew and Mark, as Jesus is taken, the disciples escape. Luke omits this detail. In John, they have no need to flee: Jesus requests the officers, since it is he whom they consider a threat, not to touch the rest.^[17] This version is widely assumed to aim at exonerating his companions.^[18] It is certainly one aim. But another, more conformable to the text—'of them whom you gave me I have

[14] John 18.11, cf. 12.27.

[15] Matthew 16.23, Mark 8.33, cf. Luke 9.22ff.

[16] John 21.18.

[17] Matthew 26.56, Mark 14.50, John 18.8f.

[18] See Bauer, Johannesevangelium , p. 204.

lost none'—is to have Jesus do for his proximate circle the same as for the world at large.^[19] He will sacrifice himself for the former no less than for the latter. Once more, a faint echo of the Joseph epic may be perceptible.

3. Bystanders. (Would be a good title for a reflective essay, taking in all varieties; for instance, that extreme character, the bystander to whatever befalls himself.) Two summary pronouncements in the New Testament are clearly relevant though going far beyond the specific situation of this lecture: 'He that is not against us is for us' (originally, Caesar's mode of assessment—secure, noble) and 'He that is not with me is against me' (originally, the mode Caesar attributed to his opponents—insisting on visible adherence to the party line).^[20] In our day, Hochhuth, his supporters and his critics are among those who have wrestled with the problem of passivity in dilemmas not unlike that here examined.

4. The line-up. Owing to the vagueness of the dicta, it is not too clear even what constitutes a collective for their purposes and what an outside foe. Caiaphas manoeuvred in defence of the nation, precariously holding up under its

[19] See C. K. Barrett, The Gospel According to St. John , 1955, pp. 431, 435.

[20] Matthew 12.30, Mark 9.40, Luke 9.50, 11.23, Cicero, Pro Ligario 11.35. In connection with Luke 9.50, H. L. Strack and P. Billerbeck, Kommentar zum Neuen Testament aus Talmud und Midrasch , 4 vols., 1924–1929, rept. 1969, 2:165, adduce Jose ben Bun, fourth century, who sees in Psalms 1.1, 'Blessed is the man that walks not in the counsels of the ungodly', the merciful assurance that shunning these counsels equals following those of the just. No doubt there are points of affinity but, on the whole, the setting and focus of the quote make it rather distant from the Caesar-generated proverb. On the Talmudic background, see C. G. Montefiore and H. Loewe, A Rabbinic Anthology , 1938, rept. with prolegomenon by R. Loewe, 1974, pp. 595f.

Roman overlord. According to John, we saw, Jesus surrendered himself also for the more intimate body formed by his disciples. Joshua ben Levi feared for the congregation of Lydda. Whether Ullah actually belonged to it, however, and indeed whether this datum mattered, we cannot say.^[21] Right at the beginning, you may remember, I catalogued a quite different, cruder case, a party of travellers given the choice by heathen brigands between handing over one and being murdered all. One common characteristic which does stand out is the vastly superior stength of the harasser. Without exception, the various solutions to the ghastly problem I have inspected were tried out by the Jews in the fixed role of underdogs.

Obviously, even of two more or less equal groups, one may threaten the other with dire consequences unless it delivers up somebody at discretion. My speaking of 'more or less equal' is an admission that the situation is not rigidly separable from my principal interest. Still, the Book of Judges offers a good enough illustration.^[22] An abominable deed was committed against a Levite visitor in a Benjaminite city. The other tribes gave Benjamin an opportunity to extradite the perpetrators. It was scorned and after prolonged, ruinous fighting Benjamin was defeated. It would indeed have ceased to exist had the victors not taken special measures towards its recovery—a fraternal posture which, as observed above,^[23] the Jews did not expect ever of their

[21] For Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 7.11.8.291, a consideration making it easier for the inhabitants of Sheba's last stronghold to throw him to the wolves was that he was an unknown: the Biblical text contains nothing to this effect. See my 'Nuances of Exposition in Luke-Acts', in Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt , pt. 2, Principat, vol. 25, ed. W. Haase, 1985, p. 2350.

[22] 19ff.

[23] Under II, towards the end.

masters. There is an entire genre of Greek plays about sanctuary to a fugitive from abroad in the face of his country's remonstrations. In the oldest one preserved, the Suppliant Maidens by Aeschylus, Argos grants the Danaides asylum though their Egyptian pursuers, claiming them as their brides, have given notice that this will mean war.^[24]

Again, nowadays, over a large part of the globe, if a man kills or robs, the public organs are charged with his punishment and his family is supposed to abide by the verdict. In many an ancient society, it was a matter between the two families.^[25] Change set in as, more and more frequently, the injured family would gain the cooperation of others. Even at this stage, not seldom the two sides might be fairly balanced, and it took time—and inducements of all sorts—for the abandonment of the malefactor to become automatic. As is well known, there are pockets of the previous system left in states with the most up-to-date judicial institutions.

For a really thorough evaluation of the Rabbinic canons, all these adjoining fields would have to be taken into account.

5. Theocracy. Somewhat akin to the Jewish wayfarers set upon by savages is the community in the Book of Jonah, and a truer stand on humanity it is difficult to imagine. The crew of the vessel were gentiles, yet far from religious harmony: in the storm, 'every man cried to his god'. Certainly nothing tied them to the person of Jonah who, immediately on being admitted, withdrew to sleep in a corner and only appeared when the captain woke him so he might implore his god too. The lots proved him to be the stirrer-up of

[24] See B. Daube, Rechtsprobleme im Agamemnon , pp. 74ff.

[25] Plenty of literature. I have tackled some questions in Studies in Biblical Law , 1947, rept. 1969, pp. 213ff., and The Defence of Superior Orders in Roman Law , 1956, pp. 19f., rept. Law Quarterly Review 72 (1956): 501f.

heaven's wrath. Now he introduced himself and exhorted them to hurl him into the waves, thus ensuring their safety. But so strong was their dedication to the bond between any aboard their ship that, notwithstanding the danger, they laboured long and hard before they could bring themselves to take this step. (I commute from San Francisco to Berkeley by the first bus about half past five in the morning. There is definitely a degree of comradery between the regulars—and of hostility to the occasional intruder—but I assure you that we do not come up to the standard of those pagan seadogs.) In terms of this discussion, here was a summons, on pain of universal extinction, to extradite a specific individual guilty, as he himself acknowledged, of the crassest dereliction of duty—and these "Noachides' felt like resisting.

Perhaps the most arresting feature of the embroglio is that the oppressor making the hateful demand was God. By rights, it should not need to be pointed out at all seeing that a large proportion of human sacrifices from inside a collective everywhere are designed to gratify a deity otherwise at odds with it, and often, indeed, the deity wants not a designated individual like Jonah but simply one or more victims no matter who they are—what the Rabbis would not submit to even in an epoch of terror. Thus, at one time, if Rome was in peril, anything born that spring, animal or human, was forfeit to Jupiter.^[26] The Theban general Pelopidas, bidden in a dream on the even of battle to slaughter a virgin—any virgin so long as she had auburn hair—refused.^[27] When Korah and other grandees rose against Moses and Aaron, the bulk of the people were ordered to distance themselves from them if they did not wish to share their

[26] Festus, De Significatu Verborum , Pauli Excerpta 379. Far be it from me to pronounce on the question of historicity.

[27] Plutarch, Parallel Lives , Pelopidas 21.1.

fate.^[28] Those condemned were manifestly guilty, not just an undefined crowd—though their innocent households, let us not overlook, were wiped out with them.^[29] In this case it was God himself who executed the sentence; as they had challenged the leadership, it was essential for the answer to come from one standing above both parties. Achan, who appropriated sacred booty from Jericho, was put to death—together with his innocent household—by the community.^[30] The latter, to begin with, had been unaware of his offence. But the army got into desperate straits. God informed Joshua that an impious theft was the cause, indicated a method by which to identify the culprit and declared that, unless he was burnt, the people would be rendered no more help. Arguably, in a theocracy, any capital punishment includes an element—from strong to faint—of duress from on high: the villain is offered up lest, if he is not, the community be doomed. Naturally, this is most conspicuous where a crime affects the deity directly, idolatry, for example. But it is traceable elsewhere too: 'If a man hates his neighbour and smites him that he dies, your eye shall not pity him but you shall put away the blood of the innocent from Israel, that it may go well with you'.^[31]

A through comparison of extradition to terrestrial potentates and extradition to supernatural ones would greatly further our understanding of both. Roughly, the latter started by being modelled on the former, but then developed its own momentum and, while constantly receiving fresh impulses from below, in turn exercised strong influence. Just as, say, the picture of God as judge took off from the this-worldly institution, then sprouted more and more traits of its own, and time came when the judge above would be held out for imitation to the original. Similarly, at

[28] Numbers 16.26.

[29] Mitigated in Numbers 26.11.

[30] Joshua 7.

[31] Deuteronomy 19.11ff.

first, 'the exodus was construed as an application, on a higher plane, of social usages familiar from the daily world; once the story in this form had gained currency, however, it in its turn had an enormous impact on social affairs'.^[32] Some proto-Pharisaic principle of defending to the last a fellow-member of your caravan from human raiders, whatever their motivation, must have been held in profound respect when the sailors of the first chapter of Jonah attempted to enforce it against the Almighty tracking down a deserter.

The extent of overlap may be gauged from narratives where it is scarcely possible to say whether a community confronts an earthly claimant or a higher one. Minos waged war against Attica, supported by the gods who sent pestilence and barrenness. It was the gods, too, who told the Athenians to accept his terms: a tribute every few years of a number of youngsters to be devoured by the Minotaur.^[33] Were they delivered up to the gods or to the foreign adversary? In David's reign there was a famine and the Lord informed him of the cause, a wrong done the Gibeonites by Saul.^[34] Asked what amends they desired, they replied that they wanted seven of Saul's sons whom they would hang up to the Lord—which was done. Extradition to the Gibeonites or to the Lord?^[35] I shall not proceed with this.

(Here is a warning should anyone do so. I have confined myself to the area of human sacrifice closest to the central conundrum of this lecture, i.e. where a collective, not to

[32] See my The Exodus Pattern in the Bible , 1963, p. 16.

[33] Plutarch, Parallel Lives , Theseus 15.1.

[34] II Samuel 21.

[35] As well as, in part, to David himself, so to speak, who would welcome their demise. The sacrificer's interest, crudely apparent in this case, will on scrutiny turn out not to be totally absent in quite a few others.

succumb, has to cede one or more of its members to the gods. From this, we must mark off the case where a person in power, not to succumb, has to cede a human possession—a father his son or daughter, a husband his wife, a monarch one or more of his subjects. Jephtha promised the Lord whoever of his household would welcome him first on his victorious return—happened to be his only child.^[36] Artemis, offended by Agamemnon, produced a calm so the Greek fleet under his command could not sail against Troy; whereupon he donated to her his daughter Iphigeneia. Though the two situations—a community abandoning a member, a person in power abandoning a subordinate—share obvious similarities, there are also huge political and moral differences and their histories are far from smoothly parallel. By and large, we have before us the distinction between communal responsibility and ruler punishment I advocated for ancient jurisprudence long ago.^[37] I noted then that intermediate and mixed varieties abound. Insofar as Jesus was betrayed in order to placate the Romans, his was the very type of extradition controversial between Pharisees and Sadducees. When the First Epistle of John has him sent by his father for a propitiation,^[38] he becomes more like Isaac whom Abraham, his father, the person in power, is willing to slay on mount Moriah. Needless to say, as the father in I John is God himself, this is not all.)

A final aside about the Book of Jonah. That God seem-

[36] Judges 11.30ff. Rabbinic exegesis, bent on mitigating his ruthlessness, makes him vow not 'whoever would first meet him' but 'whatever'—thinking of a goat or a dog: Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 5.7.10.263f., Genesis Rabba 60 on 24.13. See my 'Texts and Interpretation in Roman and Jewish Law', Jewish Journal of Sociology 3 (1961): 25.

[37] See my Studies in Biblical Law , pp. 160ff.

[38] 4.10.

ingly deals with the oarsmen like the grimmest tyrant is in keeping with the entire paradoxical constitution of the work. Its prophet tries to quit his service not because his master is cruel but because he is all-merciful: which makes it a fool's errand to preach that disaster will follow sin. He is forced back and does prove right again. Yet, as the curtain comes down, the wicked Ninevites have repented—for the moment at least—and he himself has learnt—for the moment at least—a lot about God's reasons. Just so, the mariners, having held out for brotherhood under severe testing, reach land and adore the Lord of creation—to the accompaniment, indeed, of a chant by Jonah in the whale's belly.^[39] Everything is stood on its head, yet comes out profoundly alright.^[40]

VI

In the late fifties and early sixties I talked on this complex to various audiences, and perhaps my most interesting lecture now would concern their various responses. My poor youngest son was around ten when I asked him what he would do as the mayor if bidden to supply two male citizens—any two—for a spectacular execution, otherwise all

[39] Jonah 1.16, 'The men offered a sacrifice unto the Lord and made vows', 2.9, 'I will sacrifice unto you, I will pay what I vowed'; see 'Jonah: A Reminiscence', p. 41.

[40] Familiarity renders one insensitive to a further, momentous contradiction, not relevant to the subject in hand. We hear of a boat battling a gale, a passenger thrown into the sea and swallowed by a fish, a city utterly depraved—but, throughout, not one person is killed. The same is true of another masterpiece in praise of the misfit: in the whole of Don Quixote , including part 1 and part 2, a persiflage, after all, of the knightly exploits then popular, there is not a single killing.

males of the town would be shot; and, of course, he was not allowed to offer himself. He replied that he must assume to have been elected for the town's welfare, so he would accede—and then commit suicide. No wonder he has taken himself off to Western Australia, safe from his father. My experience in general was that the less familiar my listeners were with the realities of tyranny, the more unhesitating they were in saying No. Occasionally, when meeting with a lively, informal undergraduate group, I took a vote: who would appease and who would resist? And felt real admiration for the handful with the courage of coming out for compliance.

American academics inclined to be overreliant on unilinear logic. At a law seminar, a number of colleagues took it for granted that the Strasbourg dilemma would remain the same if the Commandant, instead of conducting a razzia , had told the parents to bring one boy to be shot or else he would seize both: ergo a mother of the sort Helen had in mind would grab one and take him to headquarters. Utterly mistaken. No doubt she would thereby be avoiding a double loss. But this does not erase the huge difference of the scenario as a whole, involving—among other things—a brutal act. My hunch is that a mother would be almost less capable of it than a father.

A frequent Marxist approach in East Germany and Russia was to deny any special problem: you simply, as in every situation, take the course most helpful for continuing the war against the class enemy. The Strasbourg father should have saved a son: one more fighter on the right side. Looks superficially like Helen's impulse but is, at bottom, miles apart. In most cases—for example, that just posited: bring us one child in order to keep the other—even the outer results would be different. (I shall be content with hinting at a distinct, highly important aspect: the inadequacy, even within a thoroughly materialistic philosophy, of a mechani-

cal head-count for assessing gain and loss. One could imagine that the shooting of the two brothers, by creating widespread abhorrence, did the occupying power more harm than it would have suffered at the hands of a survivor.) I did, however, hear other views even behind the iron curtain: marxism is not one rigidly unitary system. Also, now and then, I got one answer from officials in the open debate and another from humbler folks afterwards, in conversation.

As I am putting the finishing touches to this paper, my friend Walter Weyrauch sends me a pioneering study of betrayal.^[1] While dealing in depth with Gestapo informants^[2] —the inducements, likely and unlikely candidates, their fate—he sketches a comprehensive theory of undercover operations, with glimpses at confidential information in answer to job or credit inquiries and, indeed, at any scholar's pursuit of truth qua gathering of hitherto secret data for 'intelligence' purposes. Which puts me in mind of the sixties, when John (now Lord) Butterworth, Vice-Chancellor of Warwick University, got into trouble with the students: they found out that he had scribbled on a youngster's application file which he passed on to the admission committee, 'Was co-editor of a radical school-magazine'. I was told of

[1] 'Gestapo Informants: Facts and Theory of Undercover Operations', Columbia Journal of Transnational Law 24 (1986): 553ff.

[2] Incidentally, the account—see above, under III, footnote 1—of how the Romans got to know about Simeon ben Johai's attacks shows that they had informants telling them not only of enemies but also of friends and neutrals: Judah ben Ilai is mentioned as on their side. It very much looks as if the Rabbi's disciple had in fact been such a general informant, though just conceivably he was but a careless talker—maybe among his gentile relations—and someone else made the damaging report.

this by Alan (now Lord) Bullock at Oxford who, a far more experienced hand at university government, added: 'He doesn't seem to know what the telephone is for'.^[3]

Occasionally the question is raised why Jewish suffering attracts more than average attention. I visited Cambodia before the Vietnamese war and fell in love with that civilisation—and I mean the whole civilisation, not just the famous sculptures. It is gone for ever, destroyed by invaders who had as little awareness as an ox that tramples over the black tulip. A holocaust; but, honestly, are there many who care? One factor, however minor, may be precisely what is exemplified by the material before us: a continuous, conscious turning over of the agonies throughout the millennia among those afflicted and within each of them, a never-ending re-experience, modified yet enhanced by changes in culture, often refined, at times debased, always rich far beyond the temporary, and—springing from it at once and fostering it—an attempt to draw lessons and provide signposts, tentative though they must be, for succeeding generations plunged into the same gruelling impasse. You cannot be in touch with this mood without feeling that not one sparrow is forgotten before God.^[4]

[3] Anticipating Nixon's 'Destroy all tapes'. The comment has more point in England than in the States, on two grounds. First, even yet, over there, the note has not lost out to the call, so it takes a clever guy to discover where the latter has advantages; and second, even yet, over there, bugging is not commonplace.

[4] Matthew 10.29, Luke 12.6. According to Jerusalemite Shebiith 38d, cited by Strack and Billerbeck, Kommentar , 1:582, Simeon ben Johai, when after thirteen years in a cave he had an inkling that conditions had improved, reached his decision to return by observing a man catching birds with a net. Each time a heavenly voice proclaimed salvation, the little creature escaped; and he concluded that since no bird could perish against the Lord'swill, surely no human could. How touching that, in this quandary, he made use of the established logic of the a fortiori.—On rereading, I cannot leave it at that. Babylonian Shabbath 33b is simpler and, I guess, later: no birds, and a heavenly voice just counsels the fugitive to go forth from his cave. His contact with the above is manifestly no less intimate in the Jerusalemite version, so why the complication, the indirectness? Because God here behaves like a great teacher with a gifted pupil, supplying a signal but leaving room for interpretation and choice of action. All over the world, wisdom instruction—especially if of an esoteric flavour—cultivates this method. As for Simeon's prowess in the art of inference, I have argued that he learnt from Labeo's ratio and regula ('Jewish Law in the Hellenistic World', Jewish Law Annual , suppl. 2, 1980, pp. 58ff.). With the particular deduction in this case, cf., for example, his gloss on Isaiah 65.22, 'As the days of a tree are the days of my people': the tree is the Torah and since the Torah, created in honour of Israel, will endure throughout this and the next worlds, all the more will the pious ones for whose sake the world was created (Siphre Deuteronomy 47 on 11.21, see W. Bacher, Die Agada der Tannaiten , 1890, rept. 1966, 2:146).—Clearly, this final footnote is destined to link up with the beginning. When I rhapsodized to Helen about that reticent, oblique kind of guidance, she remarked that men taught thus but not women; the latter came right out. This seems accurate. I suppose it is explicable by women, so far at least, having their vital teaching experience with infants, where you must be to the point: 'Don't touch the hot iron'. Men take over at a stage when the abler ones among their charges ought to be steered towards independence.

Appendix:
Jesus among the Sages

As is well known, the Lukan tale of the young Jesus among the teachers in the Temple^[1] calls to mind numerous cases of future greatness manifested in boyhood. J. M. Creed^[2] singles out Cyrus who quite early showed his royal qualities at play,^[3] Alexander who was not much older when making an impression on ambassadors he received in his father's absence,^[4] Apollonius who at age fourteen surpassed his tutors in wisdom and application^[5] and Josephus who in his autobiography relates^[6] that he was consulted at that age on points of law by high priests and other notables. Without disputing the relevance of these pieces, I think there is another which has directly contributed to the shaping of the story, namely, the dreams of Joseph, aged seventeen years, in Genesis.^[7]

For my purpose it is enough to quote the second one which he reports to his father as well as his brothers. In it, sun, moon and eleven stars prostrate themselves before him. His father rebukes him for his arrogance, at the same time storing the incident in his memory. In Luke, as Jesus's parents leave Jerusalem with their caravan, he, without informing them, stays behind to debate in the Temple. After a day's journey they notice his absence, return and are struck with amazement on finally locating him in the midst of an admiring audience. His mother reproaches him for his un-

[1] 2.41ff.; see above, under IV, with footnotes 7 and 30.

[2] The Gospel According to St. Luke , 1930, p. 44.

[3] Herodotus, Histories 1.114ff.

[4] Plutarch, Parallel Lives , Alexander 5.1.

[5] Philostratus, Life of Apollonius 1.7.

[6] Life 2.9.

[7] 37.5ff.

filial behaviour but he majestically overrides her complaint. The parents do not understand, yet his mother keeps everything in her heart.

That there are weighty differences is obvious. To name a few—Joseph is less far along his road than Jesus. Thus, whereas the former's break with the norm consists in a vision and his promulgation of it, the latter's consists in actions; and whereas the former does not refute the censure meted out to him, the latter does. Again, the dominant role of Joseph's father contrasts with that of Jesus's mother. This is just one illustration of a general datum: the father's attachment is to the fore throughout Joseph's life, the mother's throughout Jesus's. (I am speaking of earthly parents.) Still, the similarities are too striking to be due to chance. Apart from the main theme, i.e. an omen from heaven of glory to come, in both pericopes the hero commits an apparent wrong, upsets traditional authority within the family, assumes a status not yet recognizably his. In both one parent pleads with him and in both in the name of the other parent too: Jacob exclaims 'Shall I and your mother and your brothers bow down ourselves?', Mary 'Why have you thus dealt with us? Your father and I have sought you'. In both, the leading parent, while on one level offended and while far from thorough comprehension, does sense another dimension and will go on pondering the matter. The phraseology is much the same: the LXX writes ho de pater autou dieterese to rema , the evangelist kai he meter autou dieterei panta ta remata en kardia autes .^[8]

[8] Naturally, subsequent re-interpretation, too, presents similarities. According to Josephus, Jacob, far from protesting, expresses delight (Jewish Antiquities 2.3.3.15). J.-P. Migne explains (ed. Scriptura Sacra , vol. 22, 1862, col. 463) that Mary's 'Why have you thus dealt with us?' interrogatio est, non reprehensionis, accusationis aut querimoniae, sed admirationis.

With regard to phraseology, there is a further detail of interest. Jesus asserts that he must be 'in what are my father's', en tois tou patros mou . Creed, representing the prevalent opinion, rightly gives it the sense 'in my father's home'—on the basis of Septuagintal usage. Joseph, we learn in Genesis,^[9] calls his firstborn Manasseh, Menashshe in Hebrew, 'for God has made me forget, nashshani , all my toil and all my father's house'; the Septuagint renders the concluding words 'all that are my father's', panton ton tou patros mou . My point is that we have before us not a mere linguistic coincidence, but a harking back of the New Testament narrative to the Old Testament one. The latter brings out a moment when Joseph becomes so filled by his marvellous present as to no longer have a stake in the past. Something of this kind happens to the young Jesus at the Temple. Only Joseph by 'my father's home' designates his old world now, under God's direction, left behind, Jesus his new world now totally claiming him—'my true father's home', we might expand. In passing—Mary's address 'child', teknon , has a remarkable counterpart in Reuven's lament on finding Joseph gone from the pit:^[10] 'The child is not', with yeledh referring to a seventeen-year-old lad. The Septuagint does justice to the Hebrew though, to be sure, by means of paidarion , not teknon .

Thirty years ago I wondered^[11] whether New Testament writers connected Jesus's treacherous disciple with that brother of Joseph who devised his sale, both bearing the name Judah or Judas; and I said probably not, and indeed that Joseph appeared nowhere to be treated as prefiguring Jesus. By now I am certain that I was wrong on both counts. John's Caiaphas, for instance, in his prophecy about Jesus's

[9] 41.51.

[10] Genesis 37.50.

[11] See my New Testament and Rabbinic Judaism , pp. 3f.

death, can be shown to allude to Joseph's saving mission to the Egyptians threatened by famine.^[12] I am setting out the documentation in the preceding lecture; and am content here to point out that the episode under review evidently contains hints allied to those in the Fourth Gospel.

No doubt the bulk of the occurrence is pre-Lukan. The easy tone of the discourse with the Sages, highlighted by its elimination from the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, mid-second century,^[13] speaks for an early date. Moreover, had he been formulating on his own, he would hardly have depicted the parents as forgetful of the previous predictions by the shepherds, Simeon and Anna.^[14] Lastly, I have suggested^[15] that the final reference to Jesus's subjection^[16] is appended to the nucleus which had a tripartite structure familiar from many encounters: revolutionary action—protest—silencing of the remonstrants. By Luke's time, with a fair number of homes already fully Christian, Messianic zeal must be tempered with respect for worthy progenitors. Nevertheless, though he is not its author, his choice of the story does prove him to be in sympathy with it. Perhaps, to the considerations met in the literature, we may now add its universalist tendency, its linking Jesus's first public statement—uttered in the holiest of places—with Joseph's work for gentiles, in fact, gentiles who would soon oppress his people. J. Massyngberde Ford^[17] has recently argued a sharp division between the infancy legends,

[12] John 11.52, Genesis 45.5ff., 50.20, Psalms 105.17.

[13] 19.2.

[14] Luke 2.15ff.; see Creed, Gospel According to Luke , pp. 44, 46.

[15] See my Civil Disobedience in Antiquity , pp. 47ff.

[16] Luke 2.51.

[17] See My Enemy Is My Guest , 1984. Yes, her initial stands for Josephine.

reflecting traditional, nationalistic expectations, and the main Third Gospel. Simeon and Anna, she proposes,^[18] 'may have been anticipating a political leader'. Thereafter, however, 'Luke will . . . show that Jesus . . . is a preacher with . . . the powerful message of . . . loving one's enemy in word and deed'. The foregoing remarks seem to fit in with her thesis.

[18] See My Enemy Is My Guest , p. 35.