Carnal Isræl: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture

cover

Carnal Israel

title	:	Carnal Israel : Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture New Historicism ; 25
author	:	Boyarin, Daniel.
publisher	:	University of California Press
isbn10 \| asin	:	0520203364
print isbn13	:	9780520203365
ebook isbn13	:	9780585138817
language	:	English
subject		Sex in rabbinical literature, Body, Human, in rabbinical literature, Women in rabbinical literature, Rabbinical literature--History and criticism, Sex--Religious aspects--Judaism, Body, Human--Religious aspects--Judaism, Women in Judaism, Judaism--History
publication date	:	1995
lcc	:	BM496.9.S48B69 1995eb
ddc	:	296.1/2
subject	:	Sex in rabbinical literature, Body, Human, in rabbinical literature, Women in rabbinical literature, Rabbinical literature--History and criticism, Sex--Religious aspects--Judaism, Body, Human--Religious aspects--Judaism, Women in Judaism, Judaism--History

cover

next page >

< previous page

cover-0

next page >

The New Historicism: Studies in Cultural Poetics Stephen Greenblatt, General Editor

Number 25
Daniel Boyarin
Carnal Israel: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture

Of related interest in the series:

Nancy Armstrong and Leonard Tennenhouse
The Imaginary Puritan:
Literature, Intellectual Labor, and the Origins of Personal Life

Caroline Walker Bynum
Holy Feast and Holy Fast:
The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women

Stephen Greenblatt
Shakespearean Negotiations:
The Circulation of Social Energy in Renaissance England

Francçois Hartog
The Mirror of Herodotus:
|The Representation of the Other in the Writing of History
translated by Janet Lloyd

Debora Kuller Shuger
Habits of Thought in the English Renaissance:
Religion, Politics, and the Dominant Culture

Gabrielle M. Spiegel
Romancing the Past:
The Rise of Vernacular Prose Historiography in Thirteenth-Century France

cover-0

page_1

Page 1

Introduction

Carnal Israel

In his
Tractatus adversus Judaeos
, Augustine lays the following charge against "the Jews":

Behold Israel according to the flesh
(i Cor. 10:18). This we know to be the carnal Israel; but the Jews do not grasp this meaning and as a result they prove themselves indisputably carnal.


(vii, 9)

Augustine knew what he was talking about. There was a difference between Jews and Christians that had to do with the body. He begins by quoting a hermeneutic remark made by Paul in the Epistle to the Corinthians in reference to a verse of the Hebrew Bible that speaks of "Israel." Paul claims by this statement that the verse refers to Israel "according to the flesh," that is, "Israel" understood literally. Paul here is alluding to his platonizing doctrine that external realitiesthings in the fleshall have spiritual signifieds. This is as true of the words of the text as it is of the things of the world. Just as there is an Israel in the flesh, there is also an ''Israel according to the spirit," the Gentile (and Jewish) believers in Christ. Augustine here argues with fine paradox that Israel according to the fleshi.e., the Jews
by its very insistence that it is the true Israel
demonstrates that it does not understand that there is both a carnal and a spiritual sense to scripture, and by this demonstration, this people condemns itself to remain forever and indisputably carnal and not spiritual.
¹The carnality of Israel's understanding is what consigns it forever to the realm of the flesh. That is to say, the hermeneutic practices of the rabbinic Jews,
²their corporeal existence as a people and their emphasis


1. For a brilliant interpretation of Augustine's hermeneutic of Judaism and Christianity, see Robbins (1991, 2170). My reading of Robbins also supplied the title for this book.


2. Rabbinic Judaism is, by Augustine's time, virtually the only kind of Judaism extant, although, as Brian Stock reminds me, it is quite unlikely that Augustine refers

(footnote continued on the next page)

< previous page

page_1

next page >

Other books

Mary Connealy by Montana Marriages Trilogy

Turkish Gambit by Boris Akunin

Amy Phipps - Amanda Blakemore 01 - A Bazaar Murder by Amy Phipps

A Boy's Own Story by Edmund White

Poems for Life by The Nightingale-Bamford School

In Search of Hope by Anna Jacobs

Night Shadow by Adair, Cherry

ROMANCE: BILLIONAIRE ROMANCE: Royal's Romance (Billionaire New Adult Contemporary Romance) (Billionaire Boys Club Romance Short Stories) by Anna London

Dead Over Heels by MaryJanice Davidson

The Tenant: A Very Naughty Hotwife Novel by Butler, Arnica