Aspects of the connection between Judaism and Christianity in Franz Rosenzweig's philosophy

Journal for the Study of Religions and Ideologies

Volumn 6, Issue 18, 2007, Pages 181-205

  Frunzǎ, Sandu ^a  

^a BABE BOLYAI UNIVERSITY   (Romania)

Author keywords

Atheistic theology; Christianity; Dialogue; Jesus; Judaism; Moshe Idel; Philosophy; Religion; Rosenzweig

Indexed keywords

EID: 61049364752     PISSN: 15830039     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (63)

1. Steven T. Katz, Jewish Philosophers (Jerusalem: Keter Publishing House Jerusalem LTD, 1975), 185
2. Samuel Hugo Bergman, Faith and Reason: An Introduction to Modern Jewish Thought, Translated and Edited by Alfred Jospe (New York: Schocken Books, 1961), 56
3. Bergman, Faith and Reason, 59
4. On relationship between philosophy and religion, reason and faith in Jewish philosophy see Michael Zank, "Zwischen den Stuhlen? On the Taxonomic Anxieties of Modern Jewish Philosophy", EJJS (Leiden Koninklijke Brill NV, 2007), 105-134
5. Sandu Frunzǎ, "Jewish Philosophy and the Metaphor of Returning to Jerusalem", Journal for the Study of Religions and Ideologies, 13 ( Spring 2006): 128-138
6. Franz Rosenzweig, "The New Thinking" in Franz Rosenzweig; His life and Thought, ed. by Nahum N. Glazer (New York: Schocken Books, 1961), 208
7. Ignaz Maybaum, "Franz Rosenzweig and the Existentialist Philosophers" in Jewish Philosophy and Philosophers, ed. by Raymond Goldwater (London: The Hillel Foundation, 1962), 178
8. Franz Rosenzweig, Understanding the Sick and the Healthy. A View of World, Man, and God, Edited with an Introduction by N. N. Glazer (New York: The Noonday Press, 1954), 61
9. Rosenzweig, "The New Thinking", 201
10. Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, "Prologue/Epilogue to the Letters - Fifty Years Later" in Judaism Despite Christianity, The "Letters on Christianity and Judaism" between Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy and Franz Rosenzweig, ed. by Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy (Alabama: University of Alabama Press, 1969) 72-73
11. Katz, Jewish Philosophers, 184
12. Franz Rosenzweig, "Selections from the Letters" in Jewish perspectives on Christianity, ed. by Fritz A. Rothschild (New York: Continuum, 1996), 169
13. Rivka Horwitz, "From Hegelianism to a Revolutionary Understanding of Judaism: Franz Rosenzweig's Attitude Toward Kabbala and Myth", Modern Judaism, 26, 1 (2006): 48
14. Rosenstock-Huessy, "Prologue/Epilogue to the Letters - Fifty Years Later", 75
15. Rosenzweig, "Selections from the Letters", 170
16. Moshe Idel, "Franz Rosenzweig and Kabbalah" in The Philosophy of Franz Rosenzweig, ed. by Paul Mendes-Flohr (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1988), 162
17. Other texts by Idel in JSRI: Moshe Idel, "«Unio Mystica» as a Criterion: Some Observations on «Hegelian» Phénoménologies of Mysticism", Journal for the Study of Religions and Ideologies, 1 (spring 2002): 19-41
18. Moshe Idel, "Abordǎri metodologice în studiile religioase", Journal for the Study of Religions and Ideologies, 18 (Spring 2007): 5-20
19. About Moshe Idel see Sandu Frunzǎ, "Aspecte ale raportului dintre filosofie şi esoterism în intepretarea lui Moshe Idel", Journal for the Study of Religions and Ideologies, 10 (spring 2005): 102-115
20. Idel, "Franz Rosenzweig and Kabbalah", 168
21. Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of Historical Jesus. A critical Study of its progress from Reimarus to Wrede, With a preface by F. C. Burkitt (New York: The Macmillian Company, 1910), 79
22. Peter C. Hodgson, Editor's Introduction: Strauss's Theological Development from 1825 to 1840 in David Friederich Strauss, The Life of Jesus Critically Examined, Edited and with an Introduction by Peter C. Hodgson, Translated from the Fourth German Edition by George Eliot (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1972), xvii-xviii
23. Marilyn Chapin Massey, Introduction In David Friedrich Strauss, In Defense of My Life of Jesus Against the Hegelians, Translated, edited, and with an introduction by Marilyn Chapin Massey (Connecticut: Archon Books, Hamden, 1983), xiv
24. Strauss, In Defense of My Life of Jesus Against the Hegelians, 21
25. Paula Fredriksen, "The Birth of Christianity and the Origins of Christian Anti-Judaism" in Jesus, Judaism, and Christian Anti-Judaism. Reading the New Testament after the Holocaust, ed. by Paula Fredriksen and Adele Reinhartz (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002), 8
26. See also, Paula Fredriksen, Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews. A Jewish Life and the Emergence of Christianity (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999)
27. David Friedrich Strauss, The Christ of Faith and the Jesus of History. A Critique of Schleiermacher s Life of Jesus, Translated, edited, and with an Introduction by Leander E. Keck (Philadelphia: Fortpress Press, 1997), 159
28. Edwina G. Lawler, David Strauss and His Critics. The Life of Jesus Debate in Early Nineteenth-century German Journals (New York: Peter Lang, 1986), 41-42
29. Marcus J. Borg, "The Historical Study of Jesus and Christian Origins" in Jesus at 2000, ed. by Marcus J. Borg (Colorado: Westview Press, Boulder, 1998), 128
30. Marcus J. Borg, Jesus A New Vision, Spirit, culture, and the Life of Discipleship (San Francisco: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1987), 199
31. See also Marcus J. Borg, Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time, The Historical Jesus & the Heart of Contemporary Faith (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1994)
32. Marcus J. Borg, Jesus in Contemporary Scholarship (Valley Forge, Pennsylvania: Trinity Press International, 1994)
33. Marilyn Chapin Massey, Christ Unmasked.The Meaning of The life of Jesus in German Politics (Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press, 1983), 119
34. Strauss, The Christ of Faith and the Jesus of History, 161
35. Strauss, 169. Marcus J. Borg has an opposite position from that of Strauss. From Borg's perspective, such a statement disregards an essential element that brings together the two characters. Borg singles out the existence of a founding experience of the transformation of Jesus as a Galileean into Jesus as a face of God: "By Easter, I do not mean a particular day or an experience confined to a few weeks after the death of Jesus. By Easter, I mean most centrally and simply that the followers of Jesus continued to experience him as a living reality after his death, but in a radically new way. Namely, they experienced him as being a spiritual, nonmaterial reality, and, increasingly in the years and decades after his death, as having the qualities of God," writes Marcus Borg in Marcus J. Borg, "From Galilean Jew to the Face of God: The Pre-Easter and Post-Easter Jesus" in Jesus at 2000, ed. by Marcus J. Borg, 13
36. Edwina G. Lawler, David Strauss and His Critics, 45
37. Ernest Renan, The life of Jesus, introduction by John Haynes Homes, (New York: The Modern Library, 1955)
38. Strauss, The Life of Jesus Critically Examined, 780
39. Marilyn Chapin Massey, Introduction in David Friedrich Strauss, In Defense of My Life of Jesus Against the Hegelians, x
40. Marilyn Chapin Massey, Introduction, p. xi
41. Marcus J. Borg, Jesus A New Vision, Spirit, culture, and the Life of Discipleship, 13
42. Warren Ze'ev Harvey, "How Much Kabbalah in The Star of Redemption?," Immanuel, 21 (1987), 129. In his response to the paper presented by Moshe Idel in 1980, Harvey wrote: "Students of Rosenzweig's theology have as a rule downplayed, ignore, or denied outright its relationship to Jewish mystical tradition ... This reticence has surely been encouraged by several anti-mystical remarks of Rosenzweig's, but these are far less in number than his anti-philosophical remarks, and no one would think of denying that Rosenzweig was influenced by the philosophic tradition. Harvey, 128
43. Franz Rosenzweig, "Atheistic Theology" in Franz Rosenzweig, Philosophical and Theological Writings, Translated and Edited with Notes and Commentary, by Paul W. Franks and Michael L. Morgan (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2000), 15
44. Idel, "Franz Rosenzweig and Kabbalah", 163
45. See Rosenzweig "Atheistic Theology", 23
46. Rosenzweig, The Star of Redemption, 171
47. See Franz Rosenzweig, Philosophical and Theological Writings, 10, note 1
48. See also Rivka Horwitz, Buber's Way to "I and Thou". The Development of Martin Buber's Thought and His "Religion as Presence" Lectures (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 1988)
49. Franz Rosenzweig, The Star of Redemption, Translated from the 2d ed. of 1930 by William W. Hallo ( New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970), 409. This comparison between the astrologist who reads the book of the sky and the cabbalist that reads the book of law reminds Idel of Mirandola. The similes are obvious. Even so, the influence of Christian mysticism is more likely a secondary one. They show the fact that Rosenzweig was familiar with this type of mysticism, more than the fact that they constitute elements that influence the philosopher's way of thinking
50. Idel, "Franz Rosenzweig and Kabbalah", 66
51. Warren Zev Harvey pay attention to a point that was not mentioned by Idel: "Professor Ernst Simon has called attention to a similarity between certain Kabbalistic view of Revelation and Rosenzweig's statement in a letter to Buber in 1925 that 'The only immediate content of Revelation ... is Revelation itself". Harvey, 132
52. Idel, "Franz Rosenzweig and Kabbalah", 164
53. In The Star of Redemption Rosenzweig writes: "The Jew, however, fulfills the endless customs and percepts "for the sake of uniting the holy God and his Shekina." With this formula, the individual, the remnant, prepares his heart, "in awe and love", to fulfill, "in the name of all Israel" whatever commandment is at the moment incumbent on him. He will gather the glory of God, dispersed all over the world in countless sparks, out of the dispersion and one day bring it back home to Him who has been stripped of his glory. Every one of his deeds, every fulfilling of a commandment, achieves a portion of this reunion. To confess God's unity - the Jew calls it: to unify God." Franz Rosenzweig, The Star of Redemption, 410-411
54. Idel, "Franz Rosenzweig and Kabbalah", 165
55. On anthropomorphism see Franz Rosenzweig, God, Man, and the World. Lectures and Essays, Edited and Translated from the German by Barbara E. Galli, With a Foreword by Michael Oppenheim (New York: Syracuse University Press, 1998)
56. Bernard Martin, Great Twentieth Century Jewish Philosophers. Shestov, Rosenzweig, Buber. With selections from Their Writings (London: The Macmillan Company, 1970), 156
57. Bernhard Casper, Introduction to Franz Rosenzweig, "Selections from the Letters", 164
58. Paul W. Franks and Michael L. Morgan in Franz Rosenzweig, Philosophical and Theological Writings, 10
59. On relationship between Christianity and Judaism in Martin Buber's philosophy see Iulia Grad, "Two Paradigms of Faith. Martin Buber on Christianity and Judaism", Journal for the Study of Religions and Ideologies, 17 (Summer 2007), 34-46
60. Rosenzweig, Philosophical and Theological Writings, 16
61. Rosenstock-Huessy, 71
62. Emmanuel Levinas, Preface to Stephane Moses, System and Revelation, The Philosophy of Franz Rosenzweig, Foreword by Emmanuel Levinas, translated by Catherine Tihanyi (Detroit: Waine University Press, 1992), 18
63. th Birthday of Franz Rosenzweig" in Steven T. Katz, Historicism, The Holocaust, and Zionism. Critical Studies in Modern Jewish Thought and History (New York: New York University Press, 1992), 22-23