Weber, part 2

1. Weber, part 2 AncientJudaism and Rationality

2. For Weber, which of these concepts crosses historical epochs • A) Rationality • B) Bureaucracy • C) Capitalism • D) Charismatic Authority • E) impersonal, rule based administration

3. Judaism and rationality • A highly rational religious ethic of social conduct; it was free of magic and all forms of irrational quest for salvation; it was inwardly worlds apart from the paths of salvation offered by Asiatic religions. To a large extent this ethic still underlies contemporary Mideastern and European ethic. World-historical interest in Jewry rests upon this fact.

4. Ancient Judaism • For Weber ancient Judaism was important for its impact on western civilization • Jewish conception, God created the world and intervened in history, present state of world was a response of God to actions of humanity and particularly the Jews, the present condition of imperfection would give way to a truly God-ordained order. The whole attitude of life of ancient Jews was based on this conception of a God guided political and social revolution.

5. Everything depended on worldly actions and obedience to the commandments of god, in addition to ritual correctness, there was a highly rational religious ethic of social conduct; it was free of magic and all forms of irrational quest for salvation; it was inwardly worlds apart from the paths of salvation offered by Asiatic religions. • To a large extent this ethic still underlies contemporary Mideastern and European ethic. World-historical interest in Jewry rests upon this fact.

6. historical importance • The historical importance of Judaism lies in its rational-ethical character, and for this reason only the following phenomena can equal those of Jewry in historical significance: • the development of Hellenic intellectual culture; for western Europe • The development of Roman Law and of the Roman Catholic church resting on the Roman concept of office • the medieval order of estates • and finally, in the field of religion, Protestantism.

7. pariah-people • Weber refers to the social status of the Jews as a “pariah-people” a term which refers primarily to the social segmentation that resulted to a large degree from the ritualistic requirements of their religion. Weber understands the segregation of the Jews in that sense as self-imposed and long antedating their forced ghettoization in medieval Europe for economic and other reasons.

8. Influence of religious ideas on development • Weber is intent to show that Jews as a people have “highly distinct particularities” and that this is related to their religion, these would have never come into being in the absence of specific Jewish ritual and religious commandment, once again studying the influence of religious ideas on social existence and development.

9. Weber shows wealthy urban patriciate emerged in ancient Israel and there emerged wealthy urban patricians on one hand and impoverished strata and indebted strata on the other. • Conflict between peasants and urban creditors was there, in fact it was there “from the beginning of recorded history.” • Conflict between rich and poor was exacerbated, particularly with the emergence of the Monarchy, particularly under Solomon • Emergence of a corvée state, that is state based on payments in labor to the central authority, so it became a house of bondage like ancient Egypt

10. Egypt again • God had brought their forefathers out of bondage in the land of Egypt but now they were themselves increasingly subject to debt bondage, taxes and corvée duties. • Prophets are not direct spokesmen of the oppressed. They were generally NOT from the poorest strata, their real message is purely religious, i.e., God and his commandments had been violated.

11. Great transformation of social structure of Ancient Israel • The prophets were a relatively autonomous stratum in Israelite society. They were religious practitioners with strictly religious interests. However, their political orientation, was linked to social stratification and to the institutionalization of the monarchy. • It is no accident, according to Weber that the first appearance of the independent, politically oriented seers, who were succeeded by these prophets, coincided almost exactly with that great transformation which kingship under David and Solomon brought about in the political and social structure of Israel.

12. There was a definite relation between the message of the prophets and social conditions, and the fact that prophecy require a political character in a given period can be understood only by viewing it in relation to the general social changes that had come about. • The relative independence of the prophet was facilitated by the fact that in Israel the king was not a priestly dignitary at the apex of a hierocratic order and that the prophets received support and protection from wealthy Yahwistic families whom the monarchy could not suppress.

13. hierocracy • 1. The rule of priests or religious dignitaries; government by priests or ecclesiastics: = HIERARCHY 2. • 1794W. TAYLOR in Monthly Rev. XV. 184 Under the hierocracy of Palestine, and in the feudal ages of Europe. 1801T. JEFFERSONWrit. (1830) III. 469 Vermont will emerge next, because least..under the yoke of hierocracy. 1852GLADSTONEGlean. IV. viii. 146. 1892A. B. BRUCEApologetics II. viii. 280 The age of the hierocracy, when priests and scribes bore rule, not only failed to produce new prophets, but became incapable of appreciating the old ones. • 2.concr. A body of ruling priests or ecclesiastics: = HIERARCHY 3. • 1828SOUTHEY in Q. Rev. XXXVIII. 579 It is this hierarchy, or hierocracy, who..are to become the efficient and ruling instruments for tranquilizing Ireland.

14. rationalization • In Weber’s view , “rationalization” was a consequence of the prophets unceasing war against magical and orgiastic practices, that was not out of any rational, secular, or political considerations on their part; rather, it had to be explained on the basis of their unswerving devotion to Yawveh

15. Devotion was based on a belief in a unique relation of the Jewish people to God, based on the idea of a Covenant, interference in history—i.e. God intervening to save the Jews from Egyptian bondage, and the Covenant mediated by Moses, meant that Jews had “a lasting debt of gratitude to serve and worship Yahweh and to have no other gods before him. This rational relationship, unknown elsewhere, created an ethical obligation so binding that Jewish tradition regarded “defection” from Yahweh as an especially fatal abomination.

16. Devotion to gods laws would bring NOT some supernatural paradise or utopia, but rather what was promised was that they would have numerous descendants, so that the people could become numerous as the sand of the seashore, and that they should triumph over all their enemies, enjoy rain, rich harvests, and secure possessions.” • The God “offered salvation from Egyptian bondage, not from a senseless world out of joint. He promised not transcendent values but dominion over Canaan which one was out to conquer and a good life.”

17. Rational Character • The point is that the RATIONAL character of Judaism could be explained by the convergence of a number of circumstances 1) The Jews loathed everything that emanated from Egypt, including the cult of the dead 2) Bedouin practices were also rejected, for Amalek was the traditional enemy of Israel 3) as for Baal, once the Jews became a settled agricultural people in Canaan, the attributes of Baal and other functional deities were soon syncretized with those of Yahweh so that he was no longer merely the “war god of the confederacy”

18. relatively rational mode of raising and answering the question • Yahweh was angry and failed to help the nation or the individual, a violation of the berith with him had to be responsible for this. Hence, it was necessary for the authorities as well as for the individual from the outset to ask: which commandment had been violated? • Irrational divination means could not answer this question, only knowledge of the very commandments and soul searching. Thus, the idea of a berith flourishing in the truly Yahwistic circles pushed all scrutiny of the divine will toward an at least relatively rational mode of raising and answering the question. Hence, the priestly exhortation under the influence of the intellectual strata turned with great sharpness against soothsayers, augurs, day-choosers, interpreters of signs, conjurors of the dead, defining their ways of consulting the deities as characteristically pagan.

19. Thus, although magic was never eliminated from popular practice, it was dislodged from its position of dominance in ancient Judaism—a fact that contrasts with all other ancient religions. • NOTE HERE on Zeitlin’s Ancient Judaism—supra divine force, force beyond the deities, that could be manipulated and the deities could in fact be coerced into doing what one wanted; this supra divine force was eliminated, there was nothing above Yahweh and the deity cannot be manipulated.

20. “prophets” • The prophets were neither defenders of democratic ideals nor spokesmen for the “people”, and their main support came not from the oppressed but from individual, pious, and distinguished families in Jerusalem. • A problem was how Jews came to be a pariah community: This, according to Weber, must be viewed as a result of both prophecy and the special ritual requirements of Judaism that the Jews took with them to exile and held to stubbornly and tenaciously. • The Diaspora retained rational elements of Judaism, particularly as Diaspora was temporary and ritual purity and guarding themselves against all pagan practices and worship were required.

21. Thus, Weber traces rationalization in the West to its Jewish roots. • Western institutions are a product of a long process of rationalization. • Weber posits a fundamental difference between western tradition and Asiatic religions, which he regards as non-rational, and he refers to Asia as an “enchanted garden.”

22. Zeitlin: • The general character of Asiatic religion, Weber concluded (on the basis of his studies of China, India Korea, Ceylon, and so on) was a particular form of gnosis—that is, positive knowledge in the spiritual realm, mystically acquired. Gnosis was the single path to the “highest holiness” and the “ highest practice.” • Such knowledge, far from becoming a “rational and empirical means by which man sought with increasing success to dominate nature,” became instead “ the means of mystical and magical domination either through asceticism or, and as a rule, through strict, methodologically ruled meditation.”

23. Eurocentric Bias? • Asiatic religions, according to Weber, “led to an other worldliness.” • [I have serious reservations about these generalizations; they would seem to FAIL to explain, for instance, why throughout most of history until 1700s the most technologically advanced societies were those of Asian civilizations]. • At any rate, the point is that Weber, as he did in the Protestant Ethic, traced the roots of western rationality to Jewish rationalism, inherited in the West via Christianity and eventually transformed in the Protestant Ethic.

24. For Weber • A) “rationality” and religion are incompatible • B) the origins of western rationality are to be sought in religion • C) the Jewish people people were irrational because they were tribal • D) the religious beliefs of ancient Judaism are at the root of western rationality • E) B and D

25. Further Reading • Zeitlin, Irving M. Ancient Judaism : Biblical Criticism from Max Weber to the Present. New York: Polity Press, 1984.