Ascetic Theology Before Asceticism?

Jewish Narratives and the Decentering of the Self

Lawrence M. Wills

Downloaded from jaar.oxfordjournals.org at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki on November 18, 2010

The study of early Christian asceticism, which formerly focused strictly on ascetic practices, has been transformed in recent years. In addition to ascetic practices, scholars analyze the discourse of asceticism, which emphasizes the decentering of the self, the problematizing of the persons ability to govern the body and be considered righteous before God. Although this approach has pushed back the origins of ascetic discourses in Christianity, the decentering of the self can be observed in Qumran texts. In the present article this ascetic discourse of the decentered self is traced in other pre-Christian Jewish texts and in an unexpected contextnovelistic texts. This approach allows for an exploration of literary, ritual, and ascetic aspects of the texts, and some consideration is given to the social context of these important developments.

T IS HARDLY SURPRISING that scholars of early Christianity have focused so strongly on asceticism. Renunciation of the bodys desires for food, sex, warmth, or sleep dominated much of the churchs religious life from the third century on. As Goehring (1997) describes these spiritual practices,
Lawrence M. Wills, Talbot Professor of Biblical Studies, Episcopal Divinity School, 99 Brattle Street, Cambridge, MA 02138. I first presented some of the ideas found here at the Society of Biblical Literature Annual Meeting, 23 November 1998, and in a lecture at Brown University, 12 February 2000; I would thank those who responded in both venues. I am also very much in debt to Andrew McGowan, Carol Newsom, Joan Branham, David Frankfurter, Laura Nasrallah, Allen Kerkeslager, Richard Valantasis, David Brakke, and J. Albert Harrill, as well as two anonymous readers of JAAR, for responses and pre-publication drafts of their work at various stages in the development of this paper. Journal of the American Academy of Religion doi:10.1093/jaarel/lfl001 The Author 2006. Published by Oxford University Press, on behalf of the American Academy of Religion. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

2 of 24

Journal of the American Academy of Religion

Monks extended their fasts to the entire week, mixed ashes with their food, slept standing up, burned fingers rather than give in to sexual desire, subjected their bodies to harsh physical discomfort and pain as acts of contrition. One hears of those who wore hair shirts or chains, who lived naked, who wandered, begged, and ate grass. (129)

Scholars of asceticism have understandably focused upon developed ascetic practices such as these from the third century and after, with less attention to the asceticism to be found in Jewish, Greek, Roman, or even first- or second-century Christianity. But this is partly because scholars have often employed a narrow definition of asceticism and sought to restrict it to those practices that are indicative of an entire lifestyle set apart: fasting as a continuous discipline of spiritual transformation or the celibacy that is intended to last throughout life, especially when lived separate from society in a convent, monastery, or in the desert. A number of recent developments, however, have re-defined asceticism, pushed the discussion of this phenomenon earlier in Christian history, and allowed for the investigation of asceticism in Roman, Greek, and Jewish contexts. First, Michel Foucault (1997) dramatically altered the landscape by describing Christian ascetic acts as a means of disciplining or even remaking the self. The focus shifted from external ascetic practices to technologies of the self, or decentering the self, what Elizabeth Castelli calls transformative work on the self (2004: 235, n. 27). In modern and postmodern thought, decentering of the self arises when the human being becomes aware that views of reality that place the self at the center of the plane of consciousness are socially constructed. Foucault succeeded in showing that a similar decentering occurred on a moral plane in early Christian asceticism: the self on its own is not capable of self-mastery and meeting the requirements of a moral life. To make a simple distinction, Greek self-mastery (enkrateia) presumed a self that was fully capable of ordering and controlling itself, a self-centered view. The decentered self, on the contrary, is acutely aware, by a sort of fracturing of the psyche, that the self stands condemned and unworthy, in need of a more radical redemption. A further turn in the investigation of western asceticism was initiated by Geoffrey Galt Harpham (1987, 1992). In his analysis, asceticism is not just a radical deprivation practiced by a few outside the bounds of society; it should be viewed as a wider cultural phenomenon that is present in all cultures. Where there is culture, says Harpham, there is asceticism (1987: xi). Developing Max Webers idea (1992) of an inner-worldly asceticism (or better, a this-worldly asceticism), Harpham argues that all sorts of acts of renunciation can be seen as ascetic if they involve

Downloaded from jaar.oxfordjournals.org at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki on November 18, 2010

Wills: Ascetic Theology Before Asceticism?

3 of 24

silencing the demands of the body and questioning or even condemning the self as it stands, that is, decentering the self as an adequate controlling faculty of morality. Far from moving outside of culture, asceticism defines the boundaries of culture and is also part of the ideology of everyday life. As a result, Harpham does not marginalize asceticism as strange, aberrant, or pathological, but points out the purposeful action of asceticism, and emphasizes that asceticism is correlated to the problematizing, unsettling, or decentering of the old self and the construction of a new self in its place. And it can be supremely rational: one is trading comfort now for a spiritual goal in the future. Foucault (1986; 1997) and Harpham have thus enabled scholars to think about a broader array of ascetic practices. Following upon the work of Foucault and Harpham, Castelli (1991: 358; 2004: 707) and Richard Valantasis (1995a,b) took up this broader definition, describing asceticism as the creation of a new subjectivity. And whereas Castelli argued that the roots of Christian asceticism should be investigated in the second and third centuries C.E., over a century before Foucault wanted to begin the discussion,1 here we will find that the analysis should be pushed back two centuries before that, and in a Jewish rather than a Christian context. One can see why scholars of Jewish, Greek, and Roman history had not previously emphasized asceticism. The extent of ascetic practices in these cultural worlds paled in comparison to the high period of Christian asceticism. The ascetic practices found in the Hebrew Bible, for example, are few. There is at most an occasional, ad hoc, or preparatory asceticism. Fasting and sexual abstinence are not regularly practiced but are only engaged in as preparation to come before God. In fact asceticism, and in particular continuous fasting and celibacy, is often declared to be a form of spirituality alien to Judaism; if it occurred at all, it was an aberration. Ephraim Urbach (1975: 1214) argued that asceticism presupposes a Platonic, dualistic conception of mind and body, with the goal of transcending the body. The rabbis, by contrast, focus on impurity and the sanctification of everyday life, with no attempt to overcome the confining bonds of the body (Cohen 1989; Moore 1958: 2.26366; Urbach 1975: 4478). The rabbinic doctrine of the resurrection of the body (on which see Stroumsa 2005) may have

Downloaded from jaar.oxfordjournals.org at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki on November 18, 2010

1 Castelli (2004: 71, 77), Elizabeth Clark (1999: 1827). Lefkowitz (1985) suggests that Foucault relied too heavily on philosophical texts and not on other windows into popular belief and practice. True enough, but the question of the place of the earlier Jewish texts in this process remains paramount. See also Wyschogrod (1995: 989), Cameron (1986), and the suggestive but undeveloped comments of Stroumsa (2005: 183): Foucault sought the Christian techniques of the self in Greek philosophy but ignored the Jewish background.

4 of 24

Journal of the American Academy of Religion

served to keep body and soul together in everyday Jewish practice. Although an article by Steven Fraade (1986) opened the door to a series of investigations on the occasional examples of rabbinic celibacy, to be fair to Urbach, these discussions have uncovered only a few passages and even fewer celibate rabbis (Biale 1992b; Boyarin 1993: 67, 345, 467, 1346; Diamond 2004; Satlow 1995: 31520). Urbachs conclusions about Platonic dualism might lead one to assume that asceticism resulted from a Hellenistic influence on early Christianity. But in the Greek tradition as well there was little of interest in the way of continuous ascetic discipline, only occasional fasting and celibacy, especially for priests and priestesses, as preparation for ritual sacrifices. This is the same sort of preparatory asceticism encountered in the Hebrew Bible: athletes in training for the Olympic games, whose preparation included a thirty-day period of vegetarian diet and abstention from sex, and the fast of the women who participated in the Thesmophoria festival of Demeter. Only a few groups in the Greek and Roman worlds, such as the Orpheus cult, the Pythagoreans, the eunuch priests of Artemis, and the Vestal Virgins practiced ascetic discipline to any extent. When practiced too fervently, asceticism was viewed with suspicion (Elizabeth Clark 1999: 1427, esp. 19; McGowan 1999: 6981, 25767; Parker 1983: 281307; Stowers, 1995: 330). Platos dualism of mind and body certainly laid the groundwork for ascetic theology, but we cannot say that Christian asceticism simply resulted from a Hellenic-Platonic intervention in a Jewish sect. Something else happened. Around the turn of the common era, in Greek, Roman, and Jewish culture, there can be seen an increase in the number of new groups who exhibit ascetic practices. Pythagoreanism finds a rebirth in Neopythagorean strictures on diet and sacrifice, mystery religions involved preparatory fasts and abstinences, and the Cynics advocated a lifestyle of cultural resistance that has been called a rejection of the symbolic centre of society (McGowan 1999: 737; Vaage 1992). Among Jews as well in this period, certain groups adopted developed ascetic practices. The Essenes at Qumran and the Therapeutae/Therapeutrides in Egypt were separatist Jewish communities that practiced various forms of asceticism, and Josephus even volunteers, with no hint of the exotic, that for three years he had been a disciple to a hermit named Bannus (Life 11). Other instances of Jewish ascetic practices have been catalogued by scholars (Hoenig 1957; Horsley 1979; Lowy 1958). Even where we lack direct references to these practices we note that Christian polemical statements are illuminating: Matthew, Luke, Didache, and Tertullian are all involved in debates on Jewish fasting practices, and in the process give us important information about

Downloaded from jaar.oxfordjournals.org at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki on November 18, 2010

Wills: Ascetic Theology Before Asceticism?

5 of 24

them.2 Furthermore, we should not forget that the negative statements concerning fasting found at Sir 34:31 or in the Talmud (b. Ta`an. 11a, b. Bat. 60b) also indicate that other Jews were engaged in these acts. References to Jewish ascetic practices in the Greco-Roman period thus remain murky but intriguing.
Downloaded from jaar.oxfordjournals.org at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki on November 18, 2010

THE DECENTERING OF THE SELF IN JEWISH TEXTS

The newer developments in the study of asceticism have now been applied to pre-rabbinic Judaism. Carol Newsom has pointed out that the Hodayot or thanksgiving psalms from Qumran also begin to reflect a decentered self. Knowledge of the mysteries of God is constantly asserted, but by a speaker who is also aware of his own depravity (1992: 1517; see also 2005: 21926):
I am a creature of clay, and a thing kneaded with water, a foundation of shame and a well of impurity, a furnace of iniquity, an edifice of sin, a spirit of error, perverted, without understanding, and terrified by your judgments of righteousness. (1QH 9:2122; see also 1QH 5:2021)

The Hodayot reflect the theology of the core Qumran texts: sectarian separation, the awareness of human depravity, and the double predestination of the saved members and the damned outsiders. Newsom refers to this extreme confession of depravity as the masochistic sublime (2005: 220). However, the decentered self is not simply a more extreme awareness of depravity. There is in addition a split between I as subject and me as object: the speaking voice judges itself, even recoils in horror from itself. The decentered self is characterized by an out-of-self experience, in which the self views and condemns itself. One might say that the percipient self is viewing itself from Gods perspective and only in this way can be saved. Newsom rightly emphasizes the distinction between the decentered self of the Qumran hymns and the centered self of the penitential psalms of the Hebrew Bible.3 The biblical Psalms reflect a

2 Mt 6:1618, Lk 18:12, Didache 8.1, Tertullian, On Fasting 16. Latin authors of the period note the importance of Jewish fasts, but the references also reflect much misinformation: Tacitus, Histories 5.4, Suetonius, Augustus 76.3. 3 Ricoeur (1967) in general internalizes a Christian perspective and assumes a level of confession and guilt in the Hebrew Bible, even though at pages 2379 he seems to recognize a distinction. At any rate, his notion of confession and guilt (78, 1023, 1067, 128, 14650, 2359) is a description of a decentered self.

6 of 24

Journal of the American Academy of Religion

centered self that acknowledges sin without emphasizing depravity, while the extreme focus on depravity at Qumran serves to unsettle the self. The decentered self is distinguished from mere self-consciousness or even the penitence of the biblical psalms. It is not the body or even sin that is the problem, but the self realizes that the self must be remade. This focus on the decentered self allows us to turn from evidence for Jewish practices to discussions of Jewish literary depictions in narratives of self-abnegation and self-criticism. The ideals of self-abnegation and transformation that are typical of asceticism can also be found in Jewish novelistic literature. In fact, the literary presentation of Jewish identity combined ritual and ascetic themes, a three-point convergence that has been overlooked by scholars of literature, ritual studies, and asceticism when these areas were studied separately. Between about 200 B.C.E. and 100 C.E., a number of Jewish narratives appeared which were probably read as fictitious entertainments (Wills, 1995, 2002). In this category are the Septuagint version of Daniel or Greek Daniel (with its additions of Susanna, Bel and the Dragon, and Prayer of Azariah and the Song of the Three Jews), Tobit, the Septuagint version of Esther or Greek Esther (with its additions of, among other things, Mordecais and Esthers prayers), Judith, and The Marriage and Conversion of Aseneth (or Joseph and Aseneth). Although they may have arisen out of oral narrative traditions, they are characterized in their textual forms by narrative techniques adapted to a written medium. They are like the Greek novels in many ways, but in fact the early ones pre-date the Greek novels by over a century. Although we will never know the scope of the audience of these texts, the number of different novels, as well as the variant versions of each, coupled with the fact that there was never any institutional reason to produce them, all suggest that these texts were popular literature. Fragments of novelistic texts found at Qumran were in fact copied in smaller scrolls than the others, what one scholar refers to as the paperbacks of antiquity (ditions de poche de lantiquit; Milik 1992: 3635). In their desire to entertain, these works utilize a host of techniques typical of novels cross-culturally; most important for our investigation, the interior life of characters is explored, especially through the additions of prayers and hymns (see Williams 1993: 434 on the discovery of interior life in Plato). Some are short, such as Susannas reflection at her moment of decision, or long, as in the additions found at crucial points in Greek Daniel or Greek Esther. And just as the Greek and Roman art and literature of this period was learning how to express emotion (Fowler 1989), the Jewish novels depict the pathos of Susannas situation or Aseneths weeping. Unlike the Greek novels, however, which focus on the

Downloaded from jaar.oxfordjournals.org at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki on November 18, 2010

Wills: Ascetic Theology Before Asceticism?

7 of 24

young marriageable couple (Konstan 1994), the Jewish novels feature a central female protagonist who becomes the psychological subject in a struggle over Jewish identity. The gendered aspect is important: although there are strong male figures, for instance, Daniel or Mordecai, the woman becomes the subject who experiences the emotional issues of the drama; in fact, in many cases she pushes the male character completely offstage. The dramatic focus on the heroine increases over the evolution of the genre, as each succeeding female protagonist assumes a greater share of the narrative. In several of these novels we find a strikingly similar scene, the womans scene of repentance, prayer, and symbolic rebirth. At a turning point near the middle of the narrative, but before the climax, the heroine commences a process of self-abasement and cleansing. In Greek Esther, Judith, and Aseneth, the female protagonist enters into a penitential process, condemns her beauty, takes off her rich garments, puts on the apparel of mourning, prays, and only afterwards re-beautifies herself to reenter the world. These central scenes, through literary means, take on a ritualized aspect and suggest an ascetic renunciation of the bodythe convergence of three types of discourse. Consider Greek Esth 14:12; 15:12, 5:
Esther the queen turned to the Lord for refuge, gripped by the fear of impending death. She stripped herself of her rich garments and robed herself in clothes of mourning and tribulation, daubing her head with ashes and dung in place of her expensive perfumes. She debased herself, covering her entire body, which she had earlier adorned with such delight, with her fallen tresses. Then she called upon the Lord God of Israel. . . . [Here there is a prayer of praise of the mighty acts of God; penitence and petition] On the third day she ceased praying, and taking off the clothes in which she had worshipped, she put on once again her beautiful attire. Thus clothed in splendor, she called upon the all-seeing God and savior. Blushing and in the full bloom of her beauty, her face seemed bright and cheerful, as though she were basking in her loves affection.

Downloaded from jaar.oxfordjournals.org at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki on November 18, 2010

Here we will focus on Greek Esther (although almost identical scenes can be found in Jdt 9:1, 10:14 and Aseneth 10:911, 1417; 14:1415). In the older Hebrew Bible version of Esther it is Mordecai alone who rends his clothes and puts on sackcloth and ashes (4:1); he does not debase himself as Esther here is said to do, but only engages in the same occasional asceticism that is found in the Hebrew Bible. In Greek Esther, however, the heroines beauty, long emphasized, and only made more

8 of 24

Journal of the American Academy of Religion

spectacular through the use of the worlds most expensive cosmetics, must be stripped away. Simply taking off her beautiful robes and jewelry and putting on garments of mourning will not do; she must undergo a profound psychological experience of self-abnegation. These scenes are depictions of grief, based on the ritualized gestures of mourning: rending ones clothes or wearing sackcloth and befouling ones head with ashes. In the Jewish novel, however, what is new is the combination of the death and rebirth of the mourning event with a change of identity, the creation of a new self. The rending transformative work on the self (Castellis term) that Esther engages in is expanded further in the other novels. In Aseneth, the heroine wallows in ashes and her tears for days, repenting of her idolatry. The scene is not simply about repentance, nor simply about preparedness and heroism. The sin of the woman is not contingent and removable but requires a deconstruction of the old self and the reconstruction of a new. It is not the occasional asceticism of the Hebrew Bible that is being described, but a process of personal transformation. The transformation depicted seems to tap a growing Jewish concern about sexuality and the sin inherent in the body. The debasing of the heroines beautiful garments, her perfume, her head, her body, and her hairin other words, every part of her that the reader would likely associate with her sexuality is similar to what would later be applied to women in Christian ascetic practices. As Gillian Clark (2004) notes (38), for the Christian woman ascetic, the first step was not to look desirable. . . . It was their dress and hairstyle and makeup which proclaimed wealth and status, demanded attention, and thereby stimulated desire. Edith Wyschogrod has pointed out that in the later Christian biographies of the saints, asceticism is narrativized (1990: 613); here the Jewish narratives are being asceticized. The similarity is not coincidental; as she says, [t]here is for every psycho-social practice (for example, asceticism) an episteme, a cluster of ideas often invisible, that is both the conceptual backdrop and the enabling mechanism for the emergence of ascetic life in situ (1995: 16). While these scenes begin in mourning rituals, they end with re-robing rituals. Dressing in new garments has obvious significance as a symbol of transformation, and there are many parallels from the ancient world. But even these models are ad hoc ascetic practices for particular rituals; it is the combination of mourning models and re-robing rituals that in the Jewish novels signals something more in terms of the recreation of a self. The transformation from mourning to beauty is also depicted as a rite of passage as analyzed by Arnold Van Gennep (1960) and Victor Turner (1967), in which there are three distinct stages to important rituals marking a change in life: separation from society, a

Downloaded from jaar.oxfordjournals.org at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki on November 18, 2010

Wills: Ascetic Theology Before Asceticism?

9 of 24

liminal period in which social markers are erased or reversed, and reincorporation or aggregation back into society. Each part is marked by clear outward indicators of role or status. The woman begins in the clothing of wealth and position, takes off these clothes, debases or marks herself with the signs of mourning which eliminate the indicators of social and gender roles, and even the indicators of culture versus nature (separation), and begins to pray (liminal period); she then bathes and reclothes herself in new garments like the old, but even more splendid (reincorporation). The scene depicts a woman consumed with her own sin who remakes herself in the course of the ritualnot loses her sins, as in the penitential psalms, but remakes herself. Even in the liminal state of prayer, gender differences are prominent. Although Esther and Mordecai are both given important new prayer scenes in Greek Esther, only Esther prays during a liminal state, and her prayer is quite different from Mordecais. The tribulations of the heroine are explored more fully, as an expression of the audiences sense of vulnerability. Where Mordecais prayer begins in broad, universal theological assertions, Esthers prayer contains a more personal appeal to God: Help me, I who am all alone, and have no helper but you, for my life is in mortal danger (Greek Esth 14:34). In Esthers prayer, but not in Mordecais, the particular history of the Jews sins is also given: But now we have sinned before you, and you have handed us over into the hands of our enemies, because we glorified their gods. Her state of debasement is penance for past sins. Her prayer has contained a plea for Gods help in delivering the Jews from their oppressors, but it ends on a note of her own vulnerability: Save me from my fear! Her prayer is a sort of revelation in reverse, from human to divine; what is revealed or confessed upward is the true abject self. Mordecai intones the rulership of God, while Esther humbles herself, so that the reader can experience a pious selfabnegation and penitence through her. The reader sees a hero in Mordecai, but a penitent in Esther. The penitential theology that had been developing for three centuriesEzra 9, Neh 9, and Dan 9has here been concentrated on the individual praying soul, who can now, in the narrative, find transformation. Perhaps it was the combination of Platonic dualism and the penitential theology of Ezra 9 and Neh which made ascetic discourse possible. At any rate, the centuries-long gap between the penitential texts in the Bible and later penitential practices is partially filled in. Of course, important differences can still be discerned among the three texts as well. Unlike Esther and Aseneth, Judith is one of the least vulnerable woman in world literature. She skillfully manipulates Holofernes, gets him drunk, and beheads himsymbolically castrating him to save her people. Furthermore, Judith never confesses her own sin, only

Downloaded from jaar.oxfordjournals.org at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki on November 18, 2010

10 of 24

Journal of the American Academy of Religion

that of the nation. Indeed, one may wonder whether this text is describing a decentering of the protagonists self at all, yet in other ways there are more elements here of proto-ascetic practices. Judith lived in a state of ritual mourning for her dead husband far longer than was required, and after her mission, Judith proceeds to another form of purposeful action new to Judaism: at the conclusion of the novel, after freeing her handmaiden, she apparently lives out her days in seclusion on her estate, as if she has taken on the life of a cloistered nun. Although it is not clear, she may return to her sequestered tent of mourning of chapter 8. This narrative suggests a certain enactment of ascetic discipline, but without a rending questioning of the protagonists goodness. A structure that is clearly organized around the narrative theme of the decentering of the self is interpreted here in a more confident way. We shall find that corresponding to texts that depict a stricken, decentered self are others which depict a confident self that performs ascetic acts. The former is perhaps a psychological correlative of the latter. Scholars of asceticism, literature, and ritual have in general missed this nexus where all three areas converge.4 Some scholars of ritual note that a ritual performance can be read like a text; here, a text is read like a ritual performance. 5 This can be pressed further: what if the entire novel of Greek Esther or Judith or Aseneth was considered a ritual of reading or oral performance? There may or may not have been a corresponding ascetic action, but the reading experience itself may have been a sort of ascetic actionironically, even if the performance were accompanied by drinking and festivity. The womans prayer scene would be the important core ritual, but it is only the core of a much larger ritual experience. Catherine Bell tries to erase the usual distinction between ritual as action and speech as thought. In her view ritual is a thought process, and thought is a form of action. The actions of the ascetic may in fact seem on the surface to be divorced from ritual, but the apparently individualistic and socially disconnected actions of the ascetic may express a ritual

Downloaded from jaar.oxfordjournals.org at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki on November 18, 2010

4 But see Payne (1996: 74). He perhaps comes close when he investigates the Buddhist and analytic psychology concepts of self and transformation in a Japanese Buddhist initiation ritual; however, even he does not tie the ritual and transformational process explicitly to asceticism, but only to ritual practice. 5 Ritual read as a text: Marcus and Fischer (1986: 61), Ricoeur (1971). Text read as a ritual: Grimes (1993: 134). Eliade (1963: 202) had also pointed out half a century ago that fairytales tell the story of a kind of initiation. On meditative reading, see Griffiths (1999: 406). Bell (1992: 94117, 209), Comaroff (1985: 68) note that in a ritual the body is remade, but they do not tie this to the ascetic remaking of the self. In addition, Bell argues that ritual is the switch point between external social issues and internal thoughts and feelings of the individual. Can this dynamic also occur when the ritual is contained within a reading experience?

Wills: Ascetic Theology Before Asceticism?

11 of 24

language of opposition to typical social actions, a language of opposition and deviance that is ritually repeated by other ascetics, as Valantasis (1995a,b) has argued. Clearly, work in the study of asceticism, literature, and ritual is converging around some of the same issues.

DECENTERING OF THE SELF IN TESTAMENT OF JOSEPH AND TESTAMENT OF JOB

The decentering of the self as a narrative theme can be found in other Jewish texts as well. Although Testament of Joseph (one of the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs) and the Testament of Job are not technically speaking novels, they have a narrative component and are becoming novelistic (Wills, 1995: 16270, 1813). The testament of a dying patriarch was a common genre in the Greco-Roman period, often dominated by ethical issues and hortatory rhetoric. Developments can sometimes be detected in the testaments that combine a novelistic story-telling technique with a psychologists analysis of the complexities of the self (Bickerman 1988: 210). It is in this psychological discourse that we find further evidence of the decentering of the self. The Testament of Joseph falls into two separate halves, probably written by different authors (Wills, 1995: 16270). In the first half, Joseph is a straightforward hero of virtue, exhibiting restraint and strength of character in the face of any temptation. Joseph here has a centered self that asserts control over his body. The second half, however, has a more claustrophobic tone: Joseph is sold by his brothers and passively moved about, all the while mysteriously refusing to tell anyone, even when the opportunity arises, that he is not really a slave but a free man. The story illustrates the virtues of makrothumia and hypomone, long-suffering and patient endurance, in the love and self-abnegation Joseph has for his brothers. His love is so great that, enduring any indignities that may come, he is determined to remain silent and not divulge that his brothers had kidnapped him and sold him to the Ishmaelites. Everyone in the narrative recognizes that Joseph cannot be a slavea motif found also in the Greek novelseven as he insists upon it all the more to protect his brothers:
My inner being was dissolved and my heart melted, and I wanted to weep very much, but I restrained myself so as not to bring disgrace on my brothers. So I said to the Ishmaelites, I am a slave. (T. Jos. 15:34)

Downloaded from jaar.oxfordjournals.org at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki on November 18, 2010

Josephs protective silence goes beyond the sort of self-sacrifice that would normally be admirable, and his protection extends beyond his

12 of 24

Journal of the American Academy of Religion

family to undeserving, even reprehensible people who are introduced into the story. In each of the episodes Joseph maintains his moral identity by lying more and more fervently to protect those who are betraying him. He concludes his testament, So you see, my children, how many things I endured in order not to bring my brothers into disgrace, while the story describes a protagonist mired in passivity and self-abnegation. Furthermore, Joseph willingly takes on a slave identity, an experience that is often forced upon the beautiful young protagonists in the Greek novels. Joseph willingly enters into a state of humiliation for others. The Testament of Job likewise reflects a development of the testament form in a novelistic direction. As in the Testament of Joseph, the virtues treated are makrothumia and hypomone, long suffering and patient endurance, and as in the Testament of Joseph, we find an extreme degree of self-abnegation. The text breathes the ethos of a new kind of purposeful action: Job denies the bodys desires and sublimates them to a higher goal. As in the biblical version, when Satan first attacks Jobs flocks, takes his possessions, destroys his house, and kills his children, Job refuses to condemn God for his misfortune. But in the biblical version, when Satan comes a second time and attacks Jobs own body, Job suddenly turns and charges God with injustice, initiating the plaint that takes up the body of the work. In the Testament of Job, however, the protagonist never turns on God; he remains steadfast and uncomplaining, no matter what happens to him and his wife. This would not be unusual in a Jewish testamentcompare the first half of the Testament of Joseph (the part not analyzed above)but the Testament of Job explores a new means of unsettling the traditional self. The lesions and worms that afflict Jobs body force him to leave his city and live on the dung-heap outside of town, and this perch becomes his place of residence for forty-eight years. Job discovers a new ascetic discipline:
My flesh was full of worms, and if a worm fell off, I would pick it up and return it to the same place saying, Remain there in the spot where you were placed until you are instructed by the one who commands you. (T. Job. 20:89)

Downloaded from jaar.oxfordjournals.org at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki on November 18, 2010

This hero of virtue proves his determination to endure by not evading his sufferings. There is no emphasis on sin and depravity in Testament of Job, but the self as is is inadequate and must be transformed through ascetic discipline. Never does he waver, and he receives a higher reward of insight into heavenly realities, which he passes on to his three daughters. The main theme of this work, in fact, is that the knowledge of the heavenly realities is a special awareness that he attains after his patient

Wills: Ascetic Theology Before Asceticism?

13 of 24

endurance is proven. This is a level of reality that his friends are not capable of seeing, and we can perhaps consider this two-level discourse as quintessentially ascetic: there is a level of actionthe worldly plainand a level of rewardthe heavenly plainand his transformative work on the self is the means from the former to the latter. The result is a text very different from the Book of Job in the Hebrew Bible. The biblical Jobs complaint is not with his self, but with God, who does not conform to Jobs self; the Testament of Job sacrifices the self to enter into Gods eternal realm. While the biblical Job wants to recenter the self, to re-establish the self in the world, and make God conform to that, Testament of Job affirms a decentered self. Job here wants to engage in the discipline of privation that will allow him to perceive reality from two separate perspectives: from the earthlythe perspective of his friends, where there is no immortalityand the heavenly, where his sufferings are a test that will result in eternal life at the right hand of God. The distinction here between the centered self in biblical Job and the decentered self in Testament of Job is thus analogous to that between the two halves of Testament of Joseph, and as Newsom (1992) demonstrated, that between the biblical psalms of lament and the Qumran psalms. Although we have examined together five texts, we must note a distinction among them. Three texts present a stricken selfGreek Esther, Aseneth, the second half of Testament of Josephwhile two present a confident self that nevertheless engages in ascetic practicesJudith and Testament of Job (and compare the first half of Testament of Joseph). Confident here is not the same as centered. What we notice about the confident techniques in Judith and Testament of Job is that they are extraordinary measures, enacted apart from society. Both the stricken and the confident texts narrate a mode of asceticism that is different from centered discipline, one in terms of psychological debasement, the other in terms of a confident remaking of the self in ascetic practices. One may ask whether the latter engages the decentered self at all, but it seems clear that the development of ascetic theology required both the stricken and the confident modes. As noted above, the former is perhaps a psychological correlative of the practices of the latter. But it is also important to note that both modes are described here in a narrative context. They are both idealized projections that are rendered in a fictitious situation. Neither mode is presented as a real description of actual practices. What they mean for Jewish practices of the period is impossible to say with certainty, although the comparison of Greek Esther with, for example, Philos description of the Therapeutae/Therapeutrides warrants further consideration.

Downloaded from jaar.oxfordjournals.org at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki on November 18, 2010

14 of 24

Journal of the American Academy of Religion

COMPLICATIONS IN THE PRESENT DISCUSSION

There are three questions concerning this theory of an early development of a Jewish decentered self that must now be addressed. The first concerns the dates of the texts. Although Greek Esther and Judith can both be dated with confidence to about 100 B.C.E. (Wills, 1999: 10769; 2002: 29), Aseneth, Testament of Joseph, and Testament of Job cannot be dated to a pre-Christian period with certainty and may conceivably be Christian and not Jewish (Kerkeslager 2004; Kraemer 1998). Thus, although the starting points of our series are fairly definite, the midpoints are not. But if Aseneth, Testament of Joseph, and Testament of Job are dated later and considered Christian, it cannot be argued on the basis of the proto-ascetic mindset. That phenomenon is attested already by 100 B.C.E. The second question has to do with the nature of the explorations of akrasia, or weakness of will, in Greek and Roman philosophy. Do these discussions amount to an awareness of a decentered self in Greek philosophy well before the Jewish texts discussed above? If so, that would not alter our analysis of the Jewish texts, but it would indicate that the discourse of the decentered self may have had a different point of origin. Greek and Roman philosophy returned time and again to the problem of how it was possible that a wise person could know the good and yet lapse, even occasionally, into bad actions. Socrates stated the paradox simply: no one willingly does wrong (oudeis hekon hamartanei; Protagoras 345d e). That is, knowledge is the basis of moral choice; the one who knows the good will choose it. Despite occasional reflections (e.g. Republic 439e440b), Plato does not seriously entertain the cry of the akratic, while Aristotle presses the question of akrasia more seriously (Nicomachean Ethics 1145a52a). Akrasia is often defined simply as the defeat of reason by appetite, but Aristotle lingered over the possible causes of akrasia and succeeded in making it the philosophically interesting category: it suggests an anatomy of the soul as a complex of potentially warring elements (Broadie 1994: 229, 241; Sorabji 2000: 30332; Williams 1993: 435). Unlike Socrates and Plato, who emphasize that wrong actions must result from an involuntary ignorance of the Good, Aristotle subdivided the kinds of ignorance and distinguished an involuntary ignorance which could be considered a culpable ignorance (Rorty 1980: 2678, 279). An akolastos or fundamentally intemperate person is bad but not weak; he or she has the wrong ends in view. An akratic, however, has the right ends in view but may at times act impulsively, or perhaps be mistaken in the minor premise of a moral syllogism (the major premise being the general principle or ends). In regard to aspects of habit and

Downloaded from jaar.oxfordjournals.org at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki on November 18, 2010

Wills: Ascetic Theology Before Asceticism?

15 of 24

training, the akratic person has voluntarily allowed him or herself to be placed in a position where there is a danger of being distracted in regard to pleasures and be led to wrong action. Aristotle thus modifies Socrates paradox and Platos interpretation in two subtle but significant ways. For Aristotle, on the one hand, the passions that can distract or confuse a person are understood as forces outside oneself, but on the other hand, because there are voluntary choices that place one at risk, the culpability can lie within the person. It is possible to see in Aristotles subdivisions in the causes of akrasia and his accounting for culpability a kind of decentering of the self: The akratic is precisely the sort of person who is conflicted because his moral development is uneven (Rorty 1980: 283). But the wavering of the akratic from the path of virtueunlike that of the akolastosis only slight for Aristotle. The decentered selfs obsession with its own depravity would for Aristotle be an inexplicable breakdown or neurosis. The decentered self may in fact be an akratic by Aristotles definition, but it perceives a depravity in the self that is not merely akrasia but something worse. A decentered self is suspended between the philosophers akratic self and the akolastos, but not fitting either category. For Aristotle as well, then, there is a protracted fascination with akrasia, but no sympathetic examination of what for him would appear to be a philosophically uninteresting category, the decentered self. The Stoics went beyond Aristotle, devoting even more attention to prohairesis, reasoned choice, and the hegemonikon, controlling reason, as the focuses of the moral decision process. The development is so dramatic that Gretchen Reydams-Schils (2005) argues that it is the Stoics who are responsible for the discovery of an isolatable self (1526; see also Engberg-Pedersen 1990: 122, 1516; but contrast Taylor 1994: 127 42; Gill 1996: 118, 45569; Irwin 1992; Williams 1993: 2146). The Stoics developed a clearer concept of self because of the need to assert, not a transcendent soul, but a grounded and embedded controlling reason. Whereas Socrates would arrive at truth through dialogue, for the Stoics the conversation was with oneself. The Stoic would even withdraw and examine himself: I examine my entire day, and review my deeds and words. I hide nothing from myself, I omit nothing. For why should I recoil from any of my mistakes? (Seneca, De ira 3.36.3). By this process of self-examination the Stoic re-centers, re-aligns. Despite the interior dialogue, the self here is never allowed to waver out of center. It is clear that a general view prevailed in Greek and Roman philosophy that moral choice is a process of rational deliberation, sometimes disturbed by error, ignorance, emotion, or compulsion. The fundamental centeredness of the self in Greek philosophy can be attributed to the

Downloaded from jaar.oxfordjournals.org at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki on November 18, 2010

16 of 24

Journal of the American Academy of Religion

fact that most philosophers assumed that reason could lead the philosopher to a correct balance and a moral life (Dihle 1982: 37, 69). The philosophers viewed akrasia from the centered philosophers point of view, the decentered self views akrasia from the point of view of the akratic. The decentered self does not represent a crisis of heteronomy, but the triumph of heteronomy. The decentered self takes distress as an acute and accurate state of awareness, perhaps even a discipline. One must acknowledge, through self-abnegation, the degenerate state of ones soul. This is why one text can voice the cry of the stricken self, and another can confidently describe ascetic techniques: the depiction of crisis in one text presents the psychological correlative or praeparatio for the practices of the other. Regarding Greek and Roman philosophers, then, it can be concluded that they did not engage in a meaningful exploration of a decentered self (at least, not until the later Stoics, after our period of concern). A third question concerns the precise nature of Jewish asceticism as reflected in rabbinic texts. Eliezer Diamond and Michael Satlow agree with Fraade (1986) that rabbinic asceticism was more common than once believed. Diamond introduces a distinction between essential asceticism and instrumental asceticism (2004: 517). The former is an avoidance on principle as an end in itself; the latter is avoidance as a conscious means to a spiritual goal. One wonders whether this distinction can always be maintained, but there is likely at least a quantitative distinction between rabbinic ascetic practicesunderstood as more instrumental and Christian practicesunderstood as more essential. Furthermore, this distinction between instrumental and essential asceticism allows Diamond to compare rabbinic instrumental asceticism to the nonChristian environment as well. The daily discipline and practices of Stoic apatheia or freedom from emotion is an instrumental asceticism very similar to that of the rabbis, and Diamond notes as well that rabbis under Roman rule in the land of Palestine favored ascetic practices while Babylonian rabbis did not. Each group was similar in this regard to the practices of their environment. These findings are mirrored by Satlow, who argues that This rabbinic anthropology owes more to Greek and Roman concepts than it does to anything within the Jewish tradition (1995: 1720, 31520; 2003: 210; see also Biale 1992a,b). The discipline of the study of the law, talmud torah, was analogous to the daily discipline of Stoic philosophers. Satlow recognizes the dual essential and instrumental nature of rabbinic discipline, but like Diamond would note the difference between this and high Christian asceticism. As in the question of Greek and Roman philosophy, so here as well the ambiguities actually sharpen my original thesis. Rabbinic asceticism is indeed like Stoic discipline, and they are both centered. It is not simply

Downloaded from jaar.oxfordjournals.org at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki on November 18, 2010

Wills: Ascetic Theology Before Asceticism?

17 of 24

a quantitative measure of how much privation? but a difference in perspective on the redeemability and improvability of the person, and a question of whether redemption can come by volition or by the grace of God. The rabbis addressed this explicitly and reconciled the two theological options, volition or grace, with a doctrine of the good and evil yetzers or inclinations that God had placed in human beings. God had balanced these opposing tendencies in such a way that the person had responsibility for controlling the evil yetzer (b. Qid. 30b, m. Ber. 9:5). But this theological postulate of Gods leveling of the scales was explicitly described as a guarantee that, from the human point of view, God provides an opportunity for centered volition. Just as Greek and Roman philosophers did not really entertain the cry of the decentered self, neither did the rabbis: Philosophy was a bodily praxis; the immoral or licentious sage was as much an oxymoron for these Greek and Roman philosophers as it was for the rabbis (Satlow 2003: 224). Other segments of Jewish society differed, of course; the Qumran community and the novelistic texts affirmed a decentered self.6

Downloaded from jaar.oxfordjournals.org at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki on November 18, 2010

SOCIAL CONTEXT OF JEWISH DISCOURSE OF THE DECENTERED SELF

It would help at this point to be able to say something about the social context of pre-rabbinic Jewish asceticism, and indeed there are some suggestive possibilities for further investigation. Stowers (1995) describes three groups in the ancient Mediterranean who did not sacrifice: Neopythagoreans, Cynics, and Christians. All were characterized by ascetic practices that were more marked than that of most other groups. Furthermore, Jean-Pierre Vernant (1991) suggests that, because sacrifice in the ancient Mediterranean was a form of mediation with the divine, the elimination of sacrifice made way for a process of unmediated communion in the form of the worship of savior gods and asceticism (296). The same countervailing relation with sacrifice obtains in Judaism; Satlow (2003) notes that rabbinic asceticism is sometimes considered a compensation for the temple sacrifice that was now no longer possible (b. Ber. 17a), and Diamond points out that the mishmarot and ma`amadot fasts were intended to correspond to the sacrifices in the temple. The Qumran sect and the Therapeutae/Therapeutrides also conducted their rites as a compensation for being away from the temple. There is, then, a strong

6 Satlow (2003: 223) notes similarities and differences between the rabbinic view and the Dead Sea Scrolls; see also Fraade (1993).

18 of 24

Journal of the American Academy of Religion

negative correlation between sacrifice and public ascetic practices, and ascetic practices as a form of unmediated communion with God. There is also another possibility concerning the social context of the Jewish decentered self. Although Dihle (1982: 534, 601, 189) and Reydams-Schils argue convincingly that the Stoics and Middle Platonists introduced a sense of self and of will in the form of prohairesis, Dihle also adds (715, 89) that it seems pale in relation to that inherited from the biblical tradition. The Hebrew Bible praises the following of Gods commandments apart from any rational deliberation of the good. The human will mirrors Gods will; as God commands absolutely, humans respond absolutely. Did the Jewish decentered self arise from the meeting of Gods absolute demand and Greek considerations of rational self-perfectionism, much as we noted above the combination of penitential theology and Platonic dualism? The Jewish decentered self could then be seen as a form of colonial alienation, a conscious or unconscious rejection of the popularized views of Stoic and Middle Platonic enkrateia. The decentered self in the Jewish texts recognizes that God makes a dramatic and external demand that no one, not even a Stoic, could control. The Jewish decentered self was the mirror image of Stoic discipline. Nativist protest may at first seem very distant from the wretched state of the decentered self, but in the womans transformation scene in Greek Esther and Judith (less so in Aseneth) the content of the prayer at the center of the scene is the recital of the mighty acts of God in Israelite history. Esthers story represents, in Esther Menns words (2005: 834), a fundamental conflict between two competing kingdoms (God as king versus the gentile king). This suggests a political aspectspecifically a colonial resistancein Esthers transformation of self. Schwartz (1998: 378) argues that the reason that Hellenization could proceed so successfully was that public changes were imposed on native peoples while a private indigenous consciousness was allowed to remain. Like other contemporary Jewish literature (apocalypses, histories), the novelistic literature reflects a Jewish response to this process.7 Although Erich Gruen (1998, 2002) sees Jewish responses to Hellenism as more positive and self-assured, we should note that, first, Jewish texts likely reflect a variety of attitudes, but second, the decentered self may ironically be a very assertive response. The redactor of Greek Esther would have the Jewish readers

Downloaded from jaar.oxfordjournals.org at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki on November 18, 2010

7 It is also possible that another indigenous ascetic response may be reflected in what appear to be very early quasi-monastic practices at the Serapeion at Memphis in Egypt in the second century B.C.E., on which see Lewis (1986: 6987). The colonial situation in Egypt, similar to that in Judea, evidently gave rise during the second century B.C.E. to a similar array of apocalypses, indigenous rebellions, exportable savior deities (Isis), and proto-ascetic practices.

Wills: Ascetic Theology Before Asceticism?

19 of 24

know that prohairesis (or its popular understanding) would not provide a means of becoming righteous before God and that a stricken conscience in the face of Gods absolute demand is the appropriate response. In regard to the Jewish texts analyzed above, asceticism should be viewed not just as a practice of a small elite who vacate society but as an ideal whose implications can be contemplated by desert practitioners and comfortable urban Jews alike. The decentered self can be detected in sectarian works from the desert community at Qumran and in the elite world of urban Jews reflected in the novels. In the latter case, asceticism may exist in a purely idealized, fictional context. If narrative asceticism arose in Jewish literature at approximately the same time that intentional ascetic communities such as the Essenes and Therapeutae/Therapeutrides were being organized, this opens up the possibility of theorizing about the relation between the exploration of the decentered self in the projected and fictional worlds of art and literature and the real-world practices that were taken up to sculpt a new self in the desert.

Downloaded from jaar.oxfordjournals.org at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki on November 18, 2010

REFERENCES
Bell, Catherine 1992 Biale, David 1992a Biale, David 1992b Bickerman, Elias 1988 Boyarin, Daniel 1993 Broadie, Sarah 1994 Cameron, Averil 1986 Castelli, Elizabeth A. 1991 Castelli, Elizabeth A. 2004 Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. Eros and the Jews: From Biblical Israel to Contemporary America. New York: Basic. From Intercourse to Discourse: Control of Sexuality in Rabbinic Literature. Berkeley: Center for Hermeneutical Studies. The Jews in the Greek Age. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Carnal Israel: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press. Another Problem of Akrasia. International Journal of Philosophical Studies 2: 22941. Redrawing the Map: Early Christian Territory after Foucault, Journal of Roman Studies 76: 26671. Imitating Paul: A Discipline of Power. Louisville: Westminster/John Knox. Martyrdom and Memory: Early Christian Culture Making. New York: Columbia University Press.

20 of 24

Journal of the American Academy of Religion

Clark, Elizabeth 1999 Clark, Gillian 1995

Reading Renunciation: Asceticism and Scripture in Early Christianity. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Women and Asceticism in Late Antiquity: The Refusal of Status and Gender. In Asceticism, 3348. Ed. by Vincent L. Wimbush and Richard Valantasis. New York: Oxford University Press. Be Fertile and Increase, Fill the Earth and Master It: The Ancient and Medieval Career of a Biblical Text. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Body of Power, Spirit of Resistance: The Culture and History of a South African People. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. Holy Men and Hunger Artists: Fasting and Asceticism in Rabbinic Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press. The Theory of Will in Classical Antiquity. Berkeley: University of California Press. Myth and Reality. New York: Harper & Row. Stoic Philosophy and the Concept of the Person. In The Person and the Human Mind: Issues in Ancient and Modern Philosophy, 10935. Ed. by Christopher Gill. Oxford: Clarendon/New York: Oxford University Press. The Care of the Self. Vol. 3: The History of Sexuality. 3 vols. New York: Pantheon. Technologies of the Self. In Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth. Vol. 1: Essential Works of Foucault, 19541984, 22351. Ed. by Paul Rabinow. 3 vols. New York: New Press. The Hellenistic Aesthetic. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Ascetic Aspects of Ancient Judaism. In Jewish Spirituality: From the Bible Through the Middle Ages, 25388. Ed. by Arthur Green. New York: Crossroad.

Downloaded from jaar.oxfordjournals.org at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki on November 18, 2010

Cohen, Jeremy 1989

Comaroff, Jean 1985 Diamond, Eliezer 2004 Dihle, Albrecht 1982 Eliade, Mircea 1963 Engberg-Pedersen, Troels 1990

Foucault, Michel 1986 Foucault, Michel 1997

Fowler, Barbara Hughes 1989 Fraade, Steven 1986

Wills: Ascetic Theology Before Asceticism?

21 of 24

Fraade, Steven 1993 Gill, Christopher 1996 Goehring, James 1997 Griffiths, Paul J. 1999 Grimes, Ronald 1993 Gruen, Erich 1998 Gruen, Erich 2002 Harpham, Geoffrey Galt 1987 Harpham, Geoffrey Galt 1992 Hoenig, Sidney 1957 Horsley, Richard 1979 Irwin, Terence H. 1992 Kerkeslager, Allen 2004

Interpretive Authority in the Studying Community at Qumran. Journal of Jewish Studies 44: 4669. Personality in Greek Epic, Tragedy, and Philosophy: The Self in Dialogue. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Asceticism. In Encyclopedia of Early Christianity, 1.12730. Ed. by Everett Ferguson. 2 vols. New York and London: Garland. Religious Reading: The Place of Reading in the Practice of Religion. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. Reading, Writing, and Ritualizing: Ritual in Fictive, Literary, and Public Places. Washington, D.C.: Pastoral, 1993. Heritage and Hellenism: The Reinvention of Jewish Tradition. Berkeley: University of California Press. Diaspora: Jews amidst Greeks and Romans. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. The Ascetic Imperative in Culture and Criticism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Old Water in New Bottles: The Contemporary Prospects for the Study of Asceticism. Semeia 58: 13548. Historical Inquiries: I. Hebir Ir; II. CitySquare. Jewish Quarterly Review 48: 12339. Spiritual Marriage with Sophia. Vigiliae Christianae 33: 3054. Who Discovered the Will? Philosophical Perspectives, 6, Ethics: 45373. The Byzantine Christian Origin of Testament of Job. Presentation at the Society of Biblical Literature Annual Meeting, San Antonio, Texas, November 22. Sexual Symmetry: Love in the Ancient Novel and Related Genres. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Downloaded from jaar.oxfordjournals.org at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki on November 18, 2010

Konstan, David 1994

22 of 24

Journal of the American Academy of Religion

Kraemer, Ross S. 1998 Lefkowitz, Mary 1985 Lewis, Naphtali 1986 Lowy, S. 1958 Marcus, George, and Michael Fischer 1986 McGowan, Andrew 1999 Menn, Esther 2005

When Aseneth Met Joseph: A Late Antique Tale of the Biblical Patriarch and His Egyptian Wife, Reconsidered. New York: Oxford University Press. Sex and Civilization. Rev. of Michel Foucault, Histoire de la sexualit. Partisan Review 52: 4606. Greeks in Ptolemaic Egypt: Case Studies in the Social History of the Hellenistic World. Oxford: Clarendon. Motivation of Fasting in Talmudic Literature. Journal of Jewish Studies 9: 1938. Anthropology as Cultural Critique. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Ascetic Feasts: Food and Drink in Early Christian Ritual Meals. Oxford: Clarendon. Prayer of the Queen: Esthers Religious Self in the Septuagint. In Religion and the Self in Antiquity, 7080. Ed. by David Brakke, Michael L. Satlow, and Steven Weitzman. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Les modles aramens du livre dEsther dans la grotte 4 de Qumrn. Revue de Qumrn 59: 321406. Judaism in the First Centuries of the Christian Era: The Age of the Tannaim. 3 vols. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. The Case of the Blinking I: Discourse of the Self at Qumran. Semeia 57: 1323. The Self as Symbolic Space: Constructing Identity and Community at Qumran. Leiden and Boston: Brill. Miasma: Pollution and Purification in Early Greek Religion. Oxford: Clarendon. Realizing Inherent Enlightenment: Ritual and Self Transformation in Shingon Buddhism. In Religious and Social Ritual: Interdisciplinary Explorations, 71104. Ed. by Michael B. Aune and Valerie DeMarinis. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Downloaded from jaar.oxfordjournals.org at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki on November 18, 2010

Milik, J. T. 1992 Moore, George Foot 1958 Newsom, Carol 1992 Newsom, Carol 2005 Parker, Robert 1983 Payne, Richard 1996

Wills: Ascetic Theology Before Asceticism?

23 of 24

Reydams-Schils, Gretchen 2005 Ricoeur, Paul 1967 Ricoeur, Paul 1971 Rorty, Amlie Oksenberg 1980 Satlow, Michael L. 1995 Satlow, Michael L. 2003 Schwartz, Seth 1998 Sorabji, Richard 2000 Stowers, Stanley K. 1995

The Roman Stoics: Self, Responsibility, and Affection. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. The Symbolism of Evil. Boston: Beacon. The Model of the Text: Meaningful Action Considered as a Text. Social Research 38: 5416. Akrasia and Pleasure: Nicomachean Ethics Book 7. In Essays on Aristotles Ethics, 26784. Ed. by Amlie Oksenberg, Rorty. Berkeley: University of California Press. Tasting the Dish: Rabbinic Rhetorics of Sexuality. Atlanta: Scholars Press. And on the Earth You Shall Sleep: Talmud Torah and Rabbinic Asceticism. Journal of Religion 83: 20425. The Hellenization of Jerusalem and Shechem. In Jews in a Greco-Roman World, 3743. Ed. by Martin Goodman. Oxford: Clarendon. Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Greeks Who Sacrifice, and Those Who Do Not: Toward an Anthropology of Greek Religion. In The Social World of the First Christians: Essays in Honor of Wayne A. Meeks, 293333. Ed. by L. Michael White and O. Larry Yarbrough. Minneapolis: Fortress. From Master of Wisdom to Spiritual Master in Late Antiquity. In Religion and the Self in Antiquity, 18396. Ed. by David Brakke, Michael L. Satlow, and Steven Weitzman. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press. Sources of the Self: The Making of Modern Identity. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites de passage. In Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual, 93111. Ed. by Victor Turner. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Downloaded from jaar.oxfordjournals.org at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki on November 18, 2010

Stroumsa, Guy G. 2005

Taylor, Charles 1994 Turner, Victor 1967

24 of 24

Journal of the American Academy of Religion

Urbach, Ephraim 1975 Vaage, Leif E. 1992 Valantasis, Richard 1995a Valantasis, Richard 1995b

The Sages: Their Concepts and Beliefs. Jerusalem: Magnes. Like Dogs Barking: Cynic Parrhesia and Shameless Asceticism. Semeia 57: 2539. Constructions of Power in Asceticism. Journal of the American Academy of Religion 63: 775821. A Theory of the Social Function of Asceticism. In Asceticism, 54452. Ed. by Vincent L. Wimbush and Richard Valantasis. New York: Oxford University Press. The Rites of Passage. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Mortals and Immortals: Collected Essays. Princeton: Princeton University Press. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. London: Routledge. Shame and Necessity. Berkeley: University of California Press. The Jewish Novel in the Ancient World. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. Judith. In New Interpreters Bible, 3.1073 1183. Ed. by Leander E. Keck. 12 vols. Nashville: Abingdon. Ancient Jewish Novels: An Anthology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Saints and Postmodernism: Revisioning Moral Philosophy. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. The Howl of Oedipus, the Cry of Hloise: From Asceticism to Postmodern Ethics. In Asceticism, 1630. Ed. by Vincent L. Wimbush and Richard Valantasis. New York: Oxford University Press.

Downloaded from jaar.oxfordjournals.org at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki on November 18, 2010

Van Gennep, Arnold 1960 Vernant, Jean-Pierre 1991 Weber, Max 1992 Williams, Bernard 1993 Wills, Lawrence M. 1995 Wills, Lawrence M. 1999 Wills, Lawrence M. 2002 Wyschogrod, Edith 1990 Wyschogrod, Edith 1995