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Max Weber and Ancient Judaism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2009

Cyril S. Rodd
Cyril S. Rodd
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43 Higher Drive Banstead Surrey SM7 1PL
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Extract

Anyone who attempts to assess Max Weber's study of ancient Judaism must adopt two stances, those of the Old Testament specialist and of the sociologist, and I shall use these two view-points to provide the main structure of this article. I hope, nevertheless, to avoid becoming completely schizophrenic by drawing the two interpretations together in a final section. I should also make it clear that the discussion is based mainly upon those essays which were translated by Gerth and Martindale as Ancient Judaism, although these by no means exhaust the studies which Weber made of Hebrew religion.

Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 32 , Issue 5 , October 1979 , pp. 457 - 469
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1979

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References

page 457 note 1 Weber, Max, Sociology of Religion (London, 1965), p. xxvi, n. 8.Google Scholar

page 457 note 2 cf. Ancient Judaism (Glencoe, 1952), pp. ix, 425–9.Google Scholar

page 457 note 3 ibid., p. 429.

page 459 note 1 cf. ibid., p. 74. The Damascus Rule or Zadokite Document was published in 1910, but I do not think Weber refers to it.

page 459 note 2 cf. de Vaux, R., ‘Tirzah’ (in Archaeology and Old Testament Study, ed. Thomas, D. W., Oxford, 1967)Google Scholar. De Vaux actually uses the term ‘urban proletariat’ in his description of Stratum II (p. 378).

page 462 note 1 cf., e.g., Sociology of Religion, pp. 246–54, Ancient Judaism, p. 343, ‘Rational economic activity on the basis of formal legality never could and never has been religiously valued in the manner characteristic of Puritanism’; also pp. 254, 401, 403.

page 462 note 2 Few detailed studies of Ancient Judaism have been made, and on the whole sociologists fight shy of it. One of the most important is Julius Guttmann, ‘Max Webers Soziologie des antiken Judentums’. Monatsschrift für Geschkhte und Wissen-chaft des Judentums, LXIX (1925), pp. 195–223. See also Hahn, H. F., The Old Testament in Modem Research (Philadelphia, 1966), pp. 159ffGoogle Scholar; Bendix, Reinhard, Max Weber, an Intellectual Portrait (London, 1966), chaps. VII and VIII.Google Scholar

page 462 note 3 Bendix (op. cit., pp. 264f, 289) claims that Ancient Judaism is a study in the sociology of innovation. Cf. Talcott Parsons' stress on the importance of the ‘breakthrough’ for Weber (Sociology of Religion, pp. xxxiii-xxxiv).

page 462 note 4 From Max Weber (edit. Gerth, H. H. and Mills, C. Wright, London, 1948), p. 285Google Scholar. Cf. Talcott Parsons' analysis of Weber's theory in Sociology of Religion, pp. xix–lxvii.

page 463 note 1 From Max Weber, p. 293; cf. Bendix, op. cit., pp. 278f; Talcott Parsons, op. cit., pp. xxxiif.

page 464 note 1 Ancient Judaism, pp. 3–5.

page 464 note 2 ibid., pp. 336ff, 356, 363f, 417.

page 464 note 3 Sociology of Religion, pp. 248ff.

page 465 note 1 Berger, Peter, The Social Reality of Religion (London, 1969), pp. 113ffGoogle Scholar. Hahn also suggests that Weber's discussion of rationalisation ‘has some bearing on the problem of how and when Israel outgrew the “pre-logical” type of thinking characteristic of primitive peoples’ (op. cit., p. 165)—an assertion which is questionable in the form in which it is expressed.

page 465 note 2 Ancient Judaism, p. 186.

page 465 note 3 Sociology of Religion, pp. 171, 175, 304, 213, 257.

page 465 note 4 Ancient Judaism, p. 427.

page 466 note 1 ibid., pp. 96, 256.

page 468 note 1 e.g. Kennett, R. H., Ancient Hebrew Social Life and Custom as indicated in Law, Narrative and Metaphor (Schweich Lecture, 1931)Google Scholar.