Living Letters of the Law. Jeremy Cohen

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      These arguments are blatantly interconnected, but not all of them appear together in every formulation of the doctrine of witness. A chronological review of the Augustinian corpus³⁷ reveals that, despite the importance attributed to Jewish history in Augustine's early works, like the De Genesi contra Manichaeos and De vera religione, the doctrine of witness is absent. It made its earliest partial appearances at the end of the fourth century, first in Contra Faustum and then in De consensu evangelistarum (On the Agreement of the Evangelists, ca. 400);³⁸ these works include the first three of the six arguments listed above—the testimonial value of Jewish survival in exile, of Jewish disbelief, and of Jewish books—and they begin to hint at the fourth—the value of Jewish persistence in the practice of Judaism. Yet, although they note the loyalty of the Jews to their law, Augustine's works of this period do not evaluate Jewish behavior in the positive terms of his later writings; nor do they understand God's protection of the Jews from extinction metaphorically, in terms of observance of the biblical commandments. Albeit with approval, Jewish survival is described, within the framework of biblical typology (for example, Cain or Ham), rather than preached as a matter of policy. Significantly, these texts make no mention of Psalm 59:12. They shy away from acknowledging postponement of the hope for the conversion of the Jews. And they include no deliberate mandate for anti-Jewish polemic.

      Only in the middle of the second decade of the fifth century did developments in Augustine's teaching begin to bring his doctrine of Jewish witness to its mature formulations, those that bore most dramatically on medieval Christian attitudes toward Jews and Judaism. In his exposition of Psalm 59 (ca. 414), Augustine included the fifth element of his doctrine on the list above, discerning in the psalm explicit instruction for the proper treatment of the Jewish people in a Christian world: “Slay them not, lest at any time they forget your law; scatter them in your might.” No longer was Jewish survival simply to be explained, after the fact, with reference to the typological significance of Cain and/or Ham. Augustine's later works present the continued existence of the Jews, given the service they perform, as the object of the psalmist's outspoken prophecy in its own right.³⁹ Curiously, Cain and Ham no longer figure in three such late considerations of the value of Jewish survival: in De civitate Dei 18 (420–425),⁴⁰ De fide rerum invisibilium (On Faith in Things Unseen, 420–425),⁴¹ and Tractatus adversus ludaeos (ca. 429).⁴² The De civitate Dei itself deals strictly with the historical sense of the story of Cain and Abel, not with its prophetic allegory, and it refers the reader seeking a typological exposition to the Contra Faustum,⁴³ As he explained in the De fide rerum invisibilium, Augustine beheld in the principle of “Slay them not,” not the allegorical fulfillment of the Old Testament, but practical guidelines for the implementation of the new order:

      Therefore it was made to happen that they would not be eradicated so as to have their sect completely cease to exist. But it was dispersed throughout the world, so that, carrying the prophecies of grace bestowed upon us in order to convince the infidels more effectively, it would benefit us everywhere. And this very point which I am stating—accept [acapite] it, inasmuch as it had been prophesied: “Slay them not,” he said, “lest at any time they forget your law; scatter them in your might.” Therefore they have not been killed in this sense, namely, that they have not forgotten those things which used to be read and heard among them. For if they were to forget the holy scriptures entirely (even though they do not now understand them), they would be undone in the Jewish rite itself, because, if they would know nothing of the law and the prophets, the Jews could be of no benefit.⁴⁴

      Beyond admonishing Christians to accept the dictates of Psalm 59, Augustine here clarified in unequivocal terms the fourth element in his doctrine of Jewish witness: that precisely their practice and knowledge of biblical law and prophecy afforded the Jews a valuable function in Christendom. Consequently, Augustine's later works interpret the mandate for Jewish survival to apply above all to the Jews' observance of their commandments—not merely to their physical protection, which had concerned Augustine in the Contra Faustum45 And, owing to this value of Jewish religious observance, Augustine now cast the Jews in somewhat praiseworthy terms, despite their grave theological error. As Augustine explained the prophecy of Psalm 59:12 to Bishop Paulinus of Nola in 414,

      That same nation, even after being conquered and subjugated, would not participate in the pagan rites of the victorious people but persisted in the old law, so that within it [the Jewish people] there would be witness of the Scriptures throughout the world, wherever the church would be established. For by no clearer proof is it demonstrated to the nations what is observed most advantageously—that the name of Christ is distinguished by such great authority in the hope for eternal salvation, not as a sudden contrivance, conceived by the spirit of human presumption; rather, it had been prophesied and recorded previously…. Therefore “slay them not”; do not destroy the name of that nation, “lest at any time they forget your law”—which would surely happen if, having been forced to observe the rites and ceremonies of the gentiles, they would not retain their own religious identity at all.⁴⁶

      Finally, only in these later works did Augustine enunciate the sixth element in his doctrine of Jewish witness: its implications for attracting the Jews to Christianity and for what might well be termed the “polemical imperative” of the patristic Adversus ludaeos tradition. Despite his call for the survival of Judaism, Augustine did not abandon the Pauline hope for the conversion of the Jews; instead, he was willing to postpone its fulfillment to the distant future. Expounding Psalm 59, he thus explained that only in the wake of their salutary dispersion (verse 12, disperge eos in virtute tua) would the Jews convert at the proverbial evening of time, suffering humiliation like dogs (verse 15, convertentur ad vesperam et famem patientur ut canes); joining ranks with the uncircumcised (illi de circumcisione, isti de praeputio), they would flock to the church—yielding exultation in God's mercy in the succeeding morning (verse 17, exsultabo mane misericordia tua) of salvation.⁴⁷ Augustine well understood the compromise that his policy entailed, and he could evenhandedly assess the resulting benefits and liabilities, as he did in the De fide rerum invisibilium: “Therefore they have not been killed but scattered, so that, although they lack the means to be saved through faith, they still keep in their memory that whereby we might profit—in their words our opponents, in their books our partisans, in their hearts our enemies, in their codices our witnesses.”⁴⁸ Notwithstanding such preservation of the Jews without faith or the means to salvation, their testimonial function mandated the citation of their own Bible against them, in order to validate the beliefs of Christianity. In the Tractatus adversus ludaeos, Augustine called repeatedly for anti-Jewish polemic independent of any mission to the Jews, entirely in the interest of Christendom: “But when these [biblical testimonies] are recited to the Jews, they despise the Gospel and the apostle; and they do not hear what we say, because they do not understand what they read…. Therefore [ergo], testimonies should be taken from the holy scriptures, whose authority is very great among them, too; if they refuse to be restored by the benefit which they offer, they can be convicted [convinci] by their blatant truth.”⁴⁹ Why ought Christians to cite Scripture to the Jews, knowing that their plaints will fall on deaf ears? The logic of Augustine's prescription may seem puzzling: The Jew does not heed the testimony of the Bible; therefore, read it to him! Yet construed and preserved as Augustine would have him, fixed “in useless antiquity,” the Jew served as a foil for Augustine's apologetic and as fuel for the discourse of his patristic theology. (See the chronology of Augustine's arguments as outlined in Table 1).

TABLE 1

       ELEMENTS OF THE AUGUSTINIAN DOCTRINE OF JEWISH WITNESS: A CHRONOLOGY OF NOTEWORTHY TEXTS