The story of the Jewish transmission of Greek Bible versions has never been fully told. An acute shortage of source materials, not only by comparison with the very rich Christian manuscript tradition but in absolute terms, can only be part of the explanation for this relative silence, since some of the sources in question have been known for a long time (at least since the later nineteenth century). The convergence of certain governing attitudes in the historiography of both Christianity and Judaism must also be held partly responsible.

Older scholarship

It has long been held a commonplace that the Greek-speaking, primarily Alexandrian, Jewish cultural milieu out of which the Greek translations of the Hebrew scriptures first arose effectively came to an end early in the second Christian century. General works on the Greek Bible, while freely admitting that – with the exception of one or two (such as the Wisdom of Solomon) that were originally composed in Greek – the books constituting the Christian Old Testament in Greek (collectively designated in Christian usage as ‘the Septuagint’) were translated by Jews for Jewish use, have tended until recently to assert that from the early second century they were abandoned by the Jews and subsequently became the exclusive possession of the Christian church. This abandonment is often associated specifically with their adoption by the church, and more particularly with their use by Christians in polemic against Judaism.

Jews today are more deeply divided than at any time in the past on the theory and practice of their religion. The divisions are visible in the existence of a multiplicity of synagogues in some towns, all proclaiming that they hold the key to true Judaism, and in occasional acrimonious disputes that have sometimes given rise to violence, particularly but not exclusively in Israel.

To understand these divisions it is necessary for us to look more closely at Jewish history over the last couple of centuries, and also at some of the main theological principles involved.

The French Revolution, with its demand for equal rights for all, symbolically marks the re-entry of the Jews into an active role in history. In fact the struggle for equal civil rights was to take a very long time, and in some countries it is still not over. Conversely, the ideas of the Enlightenment, which gave rise to this demand, had been around, and had been permeating Jewish society, for a long time before the Revolution. However, it is convenient to see the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth as an important watershed in Jewish history. In a sense this was the end of the Jewish Middle Ages, at least in western Europe.

TRADITIONAL JUDAISM

The Jewish communities of the Middle Ages were essentially self-governing entities, with very little social, cultural or religious contact with their environment, although the various communities were attached to each other in a far-flung network.

WHO ARE THE JEWS?

The Jews are a scattered people. They live in many different countries, and with one exception they are a numerically insignificant minority in all of them. They belong to many different ethnic and linguistic groupings, and many different cultural backgrounds. Even within a single country these differences divide the Jewish communities from one another. So what is it that binds them all together, and allows us to speak in general terms about ‘the Jews’?

One superficially attractive but actually misleading answer is that they are united by a common religion. There is a Jewish religion, and for very many Jews it is the focus of their lives and a strong cement binding them to other Jews. But it would be unrealistic to maintain that it is the Jewish religion that unites the Jewish people. In fact the Jewish religion divides the Jewish people today, perhaps almost as much as it divides Jews from non-Jews. And even the most pious Jews would probably admit that it is not their religion that defines them as Jews. They practise the Jewish religion because they are Jews, not the other way around.

What is it then that makes a Jew a Jew? In today's world, although there are many ‘Jews by choice’, the overwhelming majority of Jews are born into Jewish families.

THE FAMILY AS A UNIT

Jewish society is built upon two main units, the family and the community. What is the relationship between the two? It is very hard to say. They are two very different spheres of activity, and the rules and maxims that make up the Torah underline their difference by providing separate and sometimes conflicting guidance. No doubt some Jews find greater fulfilment in one or the other, and the balance may change in the course of an individual's life. But in the end both are equally necessary; to lose or minimise either is to sacrifice something essential and distort the character of Judaism. Louis Jacobs captures the dilemma acutely when he writes:

It would be rash at this point in time to predict how Judaism will evolve over the coming years and decades. Prediction is always hazardous, and Judaism has changed astonishingly and sometimes dramatically in the past, and particularly after moments of national catastrophe. After the Babylonian destruction it went from being a local Judaean cult to an embryonic world religion with a universal vocation. After the Roman destruction, following an initial period of upheavals, rabbinic Judaism emerged from the ruins of the priestly temple worship, replacing animal sacrifice with study and prayer. The period of the Christian destruction, beginning with the First Crusade and culminating in the reconquest of Spain in 1492, gave birth to mystical Judaism, from the German pietists through the classical kabbalah of Spain to the Lurianic kabbalah of Safed. European antisemitism, manifested at the end of the nineteenth century in the Dreyfus trial and the Russian pogroms, led to Zionism. It remains to be seen whether the most recent destruction, wrought by the Nazi Germans, will give rise to some comparably creative and original development.

At the same time, as we look back over the history of Judaism, we can see how fruitful has been the encounter with other civilisations. The Judaism of the Bible would be impossible without the contribution of the surrounding Near Eastern civilisations. The encounter with the Greeks produced extraordinarily rich results (including both Christianity and the western philosophical tradition).