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Rating: 
Summary: Fascinating and Eye-Opening
Review: 'The Beginnings of Jewishness' seems like it ought to be essential reading for both Christians and Jews who wonder where they came from. In the book, Cohen avoids reading back into the Bible itself and considers a great deal of other historical and literary evidence to determine when being a Jew changed its meaning from 'being from Judea', the geographical location, to 'being a member of the Jewish religion'. He finds the first traces of this in the Hasmonean period, expansions of it in the Roman and up through history. Along the way he is also tracing the beginnings of Rabbinic Judaism after the fall of the Jerusalem Temple, which is quite different from what constituted Judaism before that event. All of this would probably be very surprizing to those who hold anachronistic visions of Jesus as a Rabbinic Jew!. Cohen also goes into quite a bit of detail on matrilineal descent and conversion, maybe more than some would want, but interesting nonetheless. Good book.
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Summary: A model of historical scholarship
Review: I am not a Jew. I bought this book thinking it would explain in good part how the religious culture of the Judeans in the Second Temple period became the enduring religion of a people spread far and wide and how, after the cleansing of Judea, it gave rise to the central documents of that religion, the Mishnah and the Talmud. (What Cohen calls moving from ethnos to ethnoreligion.)The book actually does little to answer that concern except glancingly. It iscentered on the period I was thinking of (with many extensions later), but the contents are better described by the subtitle, Boundaries, Varieties, Uncertainties, and especially Boundaries. Cohen is a rabbi and a professor of Judaic studies (more accurately a historian of Judaism); quite probably to him my original question was too elementary, and the general answer to it is a given, part of the background from which he speaks. From *his* point of view, the book does contribute seriously to the question of the beginnings of Jewishness. ("Contribute" -- the book is a collection of linked essays on very specific questions, not an overview.) From my original point of view, the book seems totally preoccupied with boundary questions, e.g,, when and how did the Romans stop thinking of Judai as people from Judea, and start looking at them as people sharing a religion, or how did non-Jews become Jews in different periods. Yet, despite having gone in beyond my depth, I found it impossible to open the book anywhere and not keep on reading, deeply interested. And, as I read on, I realised that the entire book is the best model of historical scholarship, on any topic, that I have ever seen. It could be read with much profit simply for the quality of the work, totally outside any question about Jewishness. If I taught history at the post-graduate level, certainly I would ask my students to spend some hours with the book and then judge by its standard all other scholarly works they will meet. One of Cohen's qualities is that he is an admirably clear and careful expositor, and that he writes very good prose. (So the book could also be proposed to social science postgrads, though it might push some to drop out.) This is why I got hooked in the first place. But the main quality is in the richness of the footnotes (probably two thirds of the text). When Cohen gets through with a question he has posed, you do not simply have his answer (which may be "I don't know"), but a good dossier of the sources that he thinks bear on the question, with luminous explanations -- always brief, Cohen is anything but a waster of words. Therefore, having followed his travails, you may well incline to a different conclusion. This is a touchstone for true scholarship. This quality of mastering his material and at the same time very candidly sticking to it, extends where Cohen deals with the Christian Fathers or Aquinas. If Cohen is situating and explaining a passage from Aquinas, for instance, you will feel that you are reading a thomistic scholar. (I have to admit, though, that Paul gets under his skin.) The book is more than worth buying even if you will make heads or tails of no more than a tenth of it. To go beyond this, however, you will need "elementary pre-yeshiva". "Mishnah", "tannaic", etc. are not defined (I had to go to an elementary book first to get up to speed). There is not a single Hebrew character in the book, only transliterations where needed, but obviously a Talmudic student, knowing Hebrew and Aramaic, would get more out of the discussions. Ancient Greek and especially Latin would also be helpful. Of modern languages, Cohen sometimes leaves French untranslated.
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Summary: Were They Different?
Review: Shaye Cohen, using literary criticism, sociological methodology, and history, has effectively demonstrated the evolution of what we call "Judaism." Who or what was a "Jew" is historically a Hellenistic construct developed as part of the Hasmonean regime's (the family behind the Maccabean revolt in the 2nd century B.C.E.) attempt to seperate Ioudiaos from Hellene; and what is well documented is the fact that in creating this religio-national group, the Hasmoneans resorted to the same tactics that Alexander imagined in his vision of a "ouranos" centered around Greek culture. Further, and of greater importance to this reader, is the fact that Cohen demonstrates that in the ancient world and late antiquity people generally looked alike (which forces various historical and theological paradigms to be revisited ... particularly in terms of texts used in our high schools and colleges). Another key importance of this analysis lies in the refutation of the sterotypical assumption that Jews somehow looked different and behaved (occupation, interpersonal relations) differently from nonJews in that world. Jews became different, lived apart and worked different occupations only as a result of Roman imperial edict, Church edict, and Medieval European political design. The belief that Jews were different and distinctive emerged as institutional antisemiticism in the 18th and 19th centuries (and reached fruition in the Holocaust) was of political and religious design AFTER the Church became the "official" religion of the state in late antiquity and not a historical fact prior to that occurence.. This book belongs with LATE ANTIQUITY (Bowersock, Brown, and Grabar), THE WORLD OF LATE ANTIQUITY (Brown), CHRISTIANITY & PAGANISM IN THE FOURTH TO EIGHTH CENTURIES (MacMullen), and EMPIRE TO COMMONWEALTH (Fowden). A must for students of late antiquity and the history of religions.
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Summary: A UNIQUE BOOK ON THE ISSUES OF JUDAISM
Review: Unfortunately, this book did not achieve attention and respect as it appropriately deserves. The author possesses an incredible knowledge on the issues of Judaism In this modern Guide for Perplexed a curious reader could learn all the lattitude of numerous controversies comprising the core of Jewish thought. This as an extraordinary book. I wish the author would present the discoveries he made in a more passionate manner. He deserves such a stance.
Rating:
Summary: A UNIQUE BOOK ON THE ISSUES OF JUDAISM
Review: Unfortunately, this book did not achieve attention and respect as it appropriately deserves. The author possesses an incredible knowledge on the issues of Judaism In this modern Guide for Perplexed a curious reader could learn all the lattitude of numerous controversies comprising the core of Jewish thought. This as an extraordinary book. I wish the author would present the discoveries he made in a more passionate manner. He deserves such a stance.
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