Brague.indd © Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2007, Unit 6, Th e Village, 101 Amies Street, London SW11 2JW [Expositions 1.1 (2007) 015–028] Expositions (print) ISSN 1747-5368 doi:10.1558/expo.v1i1.15 Expositions (online) ISSN 1747-5376 Jew, Greek and Christian: Some Refl ections on the Pauline Revolution RÉMI BRAGUE Th e Sorbonne, Paris Paul of Tarsus addresses a central human problem: Why do we not do what we know we should? Th is presumes that we know what we should do. Paul’s claim that even those without the revealed law know what is right by means of “nature” and “conscience” may seem to impose Greek notions onto Hebrew religion, but in fact articulates suggestions already present in the law and prophets, namely that the revealed law codifi es and concretizes the law already written on the human heart by the Creator. Since this core of universal principles lacks specifi c normative content, Pauline Christianity necessarily seeks to absorb what is good from the content of existing civi- lizations. In so doing, it separates the literature, thought and practices of the civilizations it absorbs from their religion, thus giving birth to the very notion of “culture,” and specifi cally to Greekness as a cultural entity that could be preserved and passed on without losing its otherness. If we propose to refl ect upon Jews, Greeks and Christians at the begin- ning of our era, this should not be understood as taking for granted that these three groups were already there during the period that we will explore. For one could claim that this period is precisely the one in which the three groups came into being or, more precisely, were defi ned either from the inside of from the outside, from themselves or from one another. Th at the Christian group did not arise before this period, but pre- cisely during it (Acts 11.26) will come as no surprise: in order to get Christians, you must have a Christ. Yet the other two groups received some new features, too, that gave them a decisive twist. Brague.indd 15Brague.indd 15 19/06/2007 11:12:0019/06/2007 11:12:00 16 Jew, Greek and Christian © Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2007 Th ree groups A central fi gure in that story of mutual defi nition is Paul of Tarsus. I should like to make some very introductory statements about what he introduced into the Ancient world in the fi rst century of our era. Th is revolution of sorts has something to do with the three human groups mentioned above. Paul articulated the three elements relative to one another in a new confi guration that proved stable. To begin with, the very way in which the topic is named has a Pauline ring. For we say: “Jews and Greeks.” We do not say “Jews and Pagans” more generally. Th is would be anachronistic, since the word “pagan” was coined when Christianity had already seized power, as a term of abuse lampooning those rednecks down in the sticks who still clung to their ancient gods. But it would make sense to say “Jews and Romans,” since our story takes place when the whole Mediterranean area was under the Roman Empire. Th e formula “Jews and Greeks” is almost a quotation from Paul (Rom. 1.16 et al.). Th e very fact that we choose to put things this way already betrays the depth of Paul’s infl uence over our parlance. But more importantly, Paul’s revolution launched a process that was due to produce one of the three groups, the Christians, out of an origi- nal identity with the people of Israel. Furthermore, this separation may have contributed, along with other factors, to the shaping of what was then crystallizing as “Judaism.” Th is point is diffi cult to assess, so that it can be claimed that, without Paul, Judaism probably would have evolved along very much the same lines as the ones along which it really did. Th e Rabbis applied to the new religious group their usual tactics of “killing by silence.” As a consequence, it is pretty diffi cult to pinpoint a precise allusion to Paul’s teaching in the whole Talmud. One of them, however, may be Rabbi Yehoshua b. Levi’s famous sen- tence about the only free man being the one who sticks to the Torah.1 Finally, the Pauline revolution had an eff ect on the “Greek” element. It enabled it to enter the Christian synthesis in a certain way. Greek is the name of a language and of a culture, not of a religion. Greek is, as it were, what is left of Ancient culture when it is shorn of its religious dimension. Greek is the fi rst example of what we now call “culture.” Brague.indd 16Brague.indd 16 19/06/2007 11:12:2519/06/2007 11:12:25 Brague 17 © Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2007 Now, my claim is that this rump Hellenism was the indirect result of the Pauline revolution. Th e problem Paul’s problem is not what to do, but: how is it that we do not do what we should do? Paul casts it in the form of a personal confession: “For to will is present in me; but how to perform that which is good I fi nd not. For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do” (Rom. 7.18–19). Probably, we should not take this too literally or too psychologically as a sigh of “Mr. Paul of Tarsus.” Th e literary “ego” stands for the situation of each and every son of Adam. Little wonder that Paul echoes well-known formulas in the “pagan” literature, Greek and Roman in expression, of roughly the same period, like Ovid, Sene- ca or Epictetus.2 We do not have to ask what to do, for we somehow know that al- ready. What we have to look for is the reason why we do not abide by a law that we are perfectly familiar with. Paul’s positive answer moves in two directions, towards the past and towards the future. Towards the past, there is God’s mercy that forgives our trespasses. Towards the future, there is God’s grace that enables us to do what we could not do if we were left to our own resources. Th is would lead us deep into Paul’s theology, where I cannot follow him here. Instead, I will focus on Paul’s fi rst thesis, i.e.: we know what we should do. Norms In order adequately to appreciate the breadth of Paul’s revolution, we have to cast a glance at the whole realm of human action. Whatever we do or make is regulated by a set of rules. No human society is devoid of such rules. Th ey extend from phonology and gram- mar to limitations of marriage, prohibiting the wedlock between some parents, and include cooking recipes, table manners, etc. In each case, some behavior is supposed to be the right one, whereas the other ones Brague.indd 17Brague.indd 17 19/06/2007 11:12:2519/06/2007 11:12:25 18 Jew, Greek and Christian © Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2007 are excluded and punished in various ways, from a sneer to death pen- alty. I am not allowed to marry just any female; some are excluded. I cannot utter meaningless sounds while pretending to make sense. I cannot do whatever I want to my body, but I have to paint it, tatoo it, cut it, wash it, clothe it in a defi nite way, etc. Th e presence or absence of some defi nite rules may defi ne the identity of a human group, hence, the identity of the person who belongs to this group. Judaism, by the way, is the paramount example of a human group defi ned by its abiding by a defi nite Law and only thereby. Th e presence of rules in general defi nes humanity, because it defi nes culture at large. Th e basic question is Kant’s second query in the Cri- tique of Pure Reason: “what should I do?” As Kant himself observed, this question branches off from the more fundamental one: “what is man?”3 Paul’s revolution implied a full-fl edged new anthropology. For the Jews of the fi rst century, the question “what should I do?” was not a central issue. If they were pious, they had a ready answer with Moses’ law and in the “right path” [halakha] that was already evolving from it. Paul, himself an observing Jew, is no exception. Jesus’ original message already supposed that the rules were known: “change your heart” [metanoeite] supposes some knowledge of the direction in which we have to turn in order to fi nd God; “the reign of God is at hand” [èg- giken hè basileia tou Ouranou] supposes that we know what the laws of His kingdom will be; “God forgives your sins” supposes that we know which sins are forgiven, etc. Th e problem already took a trickier turn when the Christian mis- sion turned towards larger circles—fi rst, probably, towards half-Pagans standing on the threshold of Judaism but hesitating in front of some unpleasant commands like circumcision, the so-called “God-fearing” [seboumenoi, metuentes] who did not accept the Law in its entirety, but chose à la carte. Ultimately, the most diffi cult question arose: What about real pa- gans, who simply do not have Moses’ law to tell them what to do? Brague.indd 18Brague.indd 18 19/06/2007 11:12:2519/06/2007 11:12:25 Brague 19 © Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2007 Th e answer According to Paul, non-Jews possess another principle by which to distinguish the right from the wrong: For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature [phusis] the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves [heautois … nomos]: Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience [suneidesis] also bearing wit- ness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another (Rom. 2.14–15). From the point of view of the historian of ideas, Paul introduced into the religious view of moral life concepts that are philosophical in origin: nature and conscience. He may have borrowed them from the kind of popular philosophical literature, mainly Stoic in origin, that fl ooded the Roman word. It looks like Paul is “Greek to the Greeks,” as he claimed to be Jew to the Jews (1 Cor. 9.20). He thinks in Greek terms while addressing Greeks. Th e problem that Paul answered by bringing onto the stage ideas from the outside, “Greek” ideas, was solved by the Talmudic Sages in a purely immanent way, on the basis of inner-biblical history: there are, prior to Moses’ Law, seven commands that were given to Noah and that hold good for whoever left the Ark, i.e. the whole mankind.4 Are Paul’s two basic ideas utterly foreign to the Bible (the “Old Testa- ment”)? As for words, this is clear. Th e Old Testament has no word for “nature”; the Hebrew word for that is not to be found earlier than in the Mishna. Furthermore, this word [teva’] hasn’t anything to do with the idea of growth that Greek ears felt in the word fu/sij (nature), de- spite scientifi c etymology (see Aristotle 1957, 4.4 (1014b16–18)). Paul knew enough Greek to feel this (Rom. 11. 21–24). But the Hebraic word meant rather the cast, the mold, the type that gives a thing its character. Th e idea of a moral conscience is expressed in modern He- brew by a medieval word [matspûn], which in turn is a loan translation from an Arabic word [damîr]. Th e oldest example quoted in Klatzkin’s philosophical Th esaurus is to be found in Judah Ibn Tibbon’s Hebrew translation of Bahya Ibn Paquda’s Duties of the Heart, in the prologue. With that we are as late as the twelth century already (Klein 1987, Brague.indd 19Brague.indd 19 19/06/2007 11:12:2519/06/2007 11:12:25 20 Jew, Greek and Christian © Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2007 376b; Klatzkin 1968 (vol. 2), 260). Whether the idea itself is extant in earlier times is controversial. Y. Leibowitz fl atly considered conscience as a pagan idea that has no place whatsoever in Judaism (quoted in Falk 1981, 66). I will endeavor to show that Paul develops some possibilities con- tained in the Old Testament.5 Pagan conceptions played the part of the midwife and helped out what was implicit. Conscience In the Old Testament, some passages suggest that rules of conduct need not be formulated, because they are there already and have always been there. A well-known passage reads: “He hath shewed thee, o man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?” (Mic. 6.8). Th e verse is never explicitly quoted in the New Testament, but it may be alluded to, rather obscurely, in the First Gospel: a harsh critique of the scribes and Pharisees is put into Jesus’ mouth, who taunts them with stressing minute details of the law and neglecting the weightier ele- ments [ta barutera], i.e. judgment [krisis], compassion [eleos] and faith [pistis] (Matt. 23.23). In Micah, the context is an attempt at playing down the importance of the sacrifi cial cult. Th e verb that is translated here by “to show” is often used for the instructions given by priests on the right way to of- fer sacrifi ces. Micah may have played on the word of art and given it a twist that runs counter its original context. Th e subject of the sentence is not that clear, however: who does the teaching? I have quoted the Authorized Version. It translates the Masoretic text that has in fact the active form [higgîd], “he has told you”; but the Septuagint supposes the passive form [huggad], under- stood as an impersonal: “it was told to you.” If we stick to the Masoret- ic text, we still have to ask who the subject is, and the context does not help us a great deal. A further question is the content of the teaching: it might be that each of the three keywords alludes to the basic message of earlier prophets, i.e. Amos (justice), Hosea (love), Isaiah (humility). But this does hardly more than push back the question: what those Brague.indd 20Brague.indd 20 19/06/2007 11:12:2619/06/2007 11:12:26 Brague 21 © Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2007 three forerunners have preached is alluded to only vaguely. We do not know how to act justly, how to love, how to walk humbly. To put it in quite anachronistic terms: we do not receive any law-book, any hand- book of ethics, any treatise on spirituality. Now, this very imprecision may be essential and emphatically positive in nature. A similar question occurs in Deuteronomy: And now, Israel, what doth the Lord thy God require of thee, but to fear the Lord thy God, to walk in all his ways, and to love him, and to serve the Lord thy God with all thy heart and all thy soul. To keep the commandments of the Lord and his statutes, which I command thee this day for thy good? (10.12–13). Again, the verses are never quoted in the New Testament, at least in a recognizable way. Th e fi rst verse sounds very much like the passage from Micah. Th e second, which many commentators consider as sim- ply a later addition, defi nitely bears the stamp of Deuteronomic style. It introduces the idea of divine commands. Hence, the text that began with rather sketchy indications, shifts to a more precise focus and ends with a circular reference to the content of the book in which it is to be read. By so doing, the movement of the text mirrors on a smaller scale the whole evolution of later Judaism: the rather vague appeal of the Proph- ets crystallized into a whole “teaching” [torah]. And the torah was to become a code of behaviour that is supposed, at least in principle, to answer any possible question about the right path [halakha]. Nature Th e idea of nature is delineated in another complex of ideas. We have just seen that the basic rules of decency are known to mankind. Let us ask at present what kind of attitude God can have towards this set of rules. Let us have a look at the famous Song of the vineyard in Isaiah. Th e peasant does not spare any eff ort and does for his vineyard everything that can be done. Th en it is said: “and he looked that it should bring forth grapes” (5.2). As we know, he was bitterly disappointed. But I will leave this aside and focus on his attitude. Th e formula is repeated Brague.indd 21Brague.indd 21 19/06/2007 11:12:2619/06/2007 11:12:26 22 Jew, Greek and Christian © Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2007 in the dialogue of reproach [rîb] in which the wine-grower addresses the men in Judah: “wherefore, when I looked that it should bring forth grapes, brought it forth wild grapes?” (5.4). Finally, we are given the key of the parable: this peasant is nobody less than the God of Israel in His dealings with his chosen people: “He looked for judgment, but behold oppression; for righteousness, but behold a cry” (5.7). Th e verb here translated by “look that, look for” [le-qawwoth] frequently means, in other contexts, “to hope.” In the former passages, other verbs were used. Micah said that God “requires” [li-sh’ol] something from man, i.e. justice, pity, humility. Th e Deuteronomy passage in the King James version has “to require” too, though for a diff erent Hebrew word [li- drosh]. Th e diff erence between “expecting” and “asking” can be accounted for by the diff erent identity of the addressee: God can talk to the peo- ple and tell him what he expects. But you simply cannot speak with a vineyard. Nevertheless, there is a common feature. What Isaiah stresses is that the wine-grower was not expecting something extraordinary. As a rule, a vine produces grapes and not, say, bananas. Growing grapes is what the vineyard spontaneously does, and the grapes should taste good provided the soil was well tilled, etc. It is the nature of plants to yield seed and fruit “after its kind [mîn]” (Gen. 1.11). Th is example enables us to draw a line between two kinds of actions. Let us call them “asking” and “expecting.” We can ask a person to do something; we can expect from him that he will do something. In this second case, we hardly need to ask. At most, we can remind a person to do things: do not forget to do this or, more politely: I am sure that you will do that, etc. When we really must ask is when some behaviour is not natural, not spontaneous. Even when God asks something from mankind, He only recalls what He expects from it. To expect is what we do when we are facing the nature of some- thing. Even when God addresses His people and gives commands, he is not looking forward to miracles, but to plain decency. Th is involves that good behaviour is somehow “natural” to mankind. As a matter of course, this does not mean that we spontaneously perform just actions, Brague.indd 22Brague.indd 22 19/06/2007 11:12:2619/06/2007 11:12:26 Brague 23 © Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2007 without our having to go through a process of education, of self-im- provement, etc. Th is means that such behaviour is nothing more than the way in which mankind can reach its own fulfi lment, by developing the features that make it specifi cally human up to their fullness. A contrary behaviour would thwart the progress of mankind; it would even endanger its survival in the long run. Hence, Deuteronomy can make at the same time, almost in the same breath, two statements: (a) the choice between good and evil is not a trifl e, what is at stake is ultimately life or death (30.15), and (b) the criterion of choice is “not hidden from thee, neither it is far off ,” far-fetched, but “very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart” (30.11, 14). Curiously, this for- mula echoes Seneca’s later words about conscience as the inner God: “God is near to you, with you, in you [prope est a te deus, tecum est, intus est]” (Letters to Lucilius (in Seneca 1965), 41.1–2). A shift in the origin of norms What the Pauline revolution achieved did not amount to simply cast- ing away the yoke of the Law. What Paul did discard was the idea ac- cording to which God has to dictate rules of conduct. Paul kept the idea of a set of rules, and even the idea of a divine origin of those rules, but he put the idea of a divine origin of norms at one further remove. Norms are not dictated by God through the mediation of a Prophet at some point of history; they are inscribed in the “heart” of man (Rom. 2.15). If I may bring to bear an anachronistic opposition, they do not belong to the realm of history, but to the realm of something like “na- ture,” such as it was understood as God’s creation. Th is has to be brought back to our memories, because the Pauline revolution was misunderstood by many, from the beginning, as if it boiled down to simply casting away the yoke of the commands. Now, the frequently levelled accusation of anomianism is hardly fair. Paul himself, probably, had coined the catchword that “everything is permit- ted” [panta exestin]. He had to qualify it by adding a rider: “All things are lawful for me, but all things are not expedient; all things are lawful to me, but all things edify not” (1 Cor. 10.23; see 6.12). “Eve- rything is permitted” does not mean that the boundary between good Brague.indd 23Brague.indd 23 19/06/2007 11:12:2619/06/2007 11:12:26 24 Jew, Greek and Christian © Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2007 and evil, between life and death is erased. Th is means that this limit is not adequately expressed by the opposition of the permitted and the forbidden. When we address children who have no idea of electricity, we can take a short cut and say that it is forbidden to put one’s fi ngers into the electric outlet. What we really mean is that this is dangerous. Some things are allowed because they are intrinsically good, whereas some other ones are forbidden because they are intrinsically bad. Th e basic idea is that God does not replace our judgment of the right way to do things. No doubt, He sheds light upon it, He reminds us of some basic principles, but He never dictates what is to be done. What remained after Paul’s razor was the basic survival kit of man- kind. Th e content of this kit is already part of the seven commands given to Noah and the ten given to Moses (Exod. 20.1–17). We could even say that it is nothing more than the eternal Tao without which mankind could not lead a human life or even, perhaps, could not live tout court. Culture Th ose basic rules of decency are admittedly not enough for us to an- swer the manifold questions that arise from human life in its personal and social dimensions. Th is is obvious as for legal systems and political organisation. Th is is all the more blatant if we think of the ways in which human life can fl ourish in the diff erent realms of higher culture, which involves artistic creativity, religious imagination, care and con- trol of the body, refi nement of mores, etc. About all this, Paul has nothing very much to say, barring some elementary principles about the necessity of a government to which obedience is due (Rom. 13.1). As for the other elements of culture, Paul probably had some smattering of Greek popular literature and philosophy. He can quote from Aratos (Acts 17.28), Epimenides (Tit. 1.12) and Menander (1 Cor. 15.33)—all stock-phrases, anyway. But his writings betray scarcely any interest in those issues. Nevertheless, the religious revolution he introduced had among its most lasting con- sequences a new stance towards culture, not to say the birth of the very idea of culture. Brague.indd 24Brague.indd 24 19/06/2007 11:12:2619/06/2007 11:12:26 Brague 25 © Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2007 Why? Pauline Christianity lacks a defi nite content, it is empty, it produced a momentous ebb that left bare the whole realm of norms. Precisely for this reason, it had to fi ll itself with a content that it had to borrow from the outside. Christianity has to suck into itself what was already available on the market of civilizations. Th is is what it later did, fi rst with Roman culture, i.e. the Roman system of law and of admin- istration, together with what the Roman world already had borrowed from Greek scientifi c, literary, philosophic, etc. lore. Th is brings me back to my fi rst remark on things “Greek.” Th ere is something like Greek culture only since the Pauline revolution. What undoubtedly existed previously was the Greek paidei/a (education, formation). It was a way of life. To be sure, paidei/a included what we call “culture,” i.e. literature and art, and even culture of the body: it was inseparably gymnastic and music, two pursuits that are, in Pla- to’s words, “sisters.” But the package included at the same time what we call “religion,” wherefore Plato is careful to sketch a “theology” too.6 Th is cult addressed the gods of the po/lij (city) or, later, of the ko/smoj (world) as the Stoics experienced it and as it was mirrored in the Roman Empire. Th is cult was not palatable for Jews and, for that matter, not for Christians either. We cannot capture the essence of the Pauline revolution by simply saying that it built a synthesis between the Greek and the Jewish by enabling the Greek element to enter the Christian synthesis. At the same time, it allowed the Greek element in culture to develop as such, i.e. while keeping its otherness with regard to the synthesis in which it entered without its melting away in it. Th is enables me, let me say en passant, to build a bridge between the theses developed in my last book on divine law (Brague 2007b) and a previous book that I wrote more than ten years ago on nothing less than the essence of Western culture (Brague 2002). To cast the matter in the mold of the concepts that I coined there: “secondarity” towards Judaism enabled “secondarity” towards Hellenism; Greek culture could be “included” and not “digested.”7 In conclusion, let me sum up my thesis: Paul’s revolution may have helped Rabbinic Judaism to shape itself indirectly. It certainly gave Brague.indd 25Brague.indd 25 19/06/2007 11:12:2619/06/2007 11:12:26 26 Jew, Greek and Christian © Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2007 birth directly to Christianity as a group diff erent from Judaism. At the same time, it produced indirectly Greek culture as an independent entity. Paul was the father of at least two of the three groups that we are concerned with. Endnotes 1. Pirqey Aboth 6.2. For other examples, see Urbach 1979, 258, 295, 302, 427ff . On the context, see Pines 1984, 247–65, esp. 256–259; my translation in Pines 1997, 67–73. 2. See Ovid 2004, 7.20f; Seneca 1965, 21.1; Epictetus 1898, 2.26.4; for Jewish literature, see Book of Secrets (1Q 27), 8–12 (García Martinez and Tigchelaar 1967, 66–68). 3. Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft A 804f. / B 832f. and Introduction to Vor- lesung über Logik. In Kant 1921–23, vol. 8. 4. Tosefta Avoda Zara, 8 (9), 4 and b Sanhedrin, 56a; see Zuckermandel 1970, 473. Maimonides 2000, commentary on Sanhedrin 9.1. 5. For further discussion, see Brague 2006. 6. See Plato, Republic 404b4–5; 379a5–6. On the Greek idea of culture, see Jaeger 1934. 7. More on “inclusion” and “digestion” in Brague 2000; French version in Brague 2007a,167–185. References Aristotle 1957 Metaphysica. Ed. W. Jaeger. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Brague, R. 2002 Eccentric Culture: A Th eory of Western Civilization. Tr. S. Lester. South Bend: Saint Augustine’s Press. 2000 Inklusion und Verdauung: Zwei Modelle kultureller Aneignung. In Her- meneutische Wege: Hans-Georg Gadamer zum Hundertsten, ed. G. Figal, J. Grondin, D. J. Schmidt. Tübingen: Mohr. 2006 Dieu ne nous demande rien. Critique 62.704–705: 179–191. 2007a Au moyen du Moyen Age: Philosophies médiévales en chrétienté, judaïsme et islam. Chatou: Editions de la Transparence. 2007b Th e Law of God: Th e Philosophic History of an Idea. Tr. L. Cochrane. Chi- cago: Th e University of Chicago Press. Brague.indd 26Brague.indd 26 19/06/2007 11:12:2619/06/2007 11:12:26 Brague 27 © Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2007 Epictetus 1898 Dissertationes. Ed. H. Schenkl. Leipzig: Teubner. Falk, Z.V. 1981 Law and Religion: Th e Jewish Experience. Jerusalem: Mesharim. García Martinez, F. and Tigchelaar, E.J.C. 1967 Th e Dead Sea Scrolls Study Edition. Leiden: Brill. Jaeger, W. 1934 Paideia: Die Formung des griechischen Menschen, Vol. 1. Berlin: W. de Gruyter. Kant, Immanuel 1921–23 Werke. Ed. E. Cassirer. Berlin: Cassirer. Klatzkin, J. 1968 Th esaurus philosophicus linguae hebraicae antiquae et recentioris, Vol. 2. New York: Feldheim. Klein, E. 1987 A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language for Read- ers of English. New York: Macmillan. Maimonides 2000 Mishneh Torah. Ed. S. Frankel. Jerusalem: Shabse Frankel. Ovid 2004 Metamorphoses. Ed. R.J. Tarrant. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pines, S. 1984 On the Avatars of the Term ‘Freedom’ [Hebrew]. In Between Th eory and Practice: Essays in Honor of N. Rotenstreich, ed. Y. Yovel and P. Mendes- Flohr, 247–265. Jerusalem: Magnes. Pines, S., ed. 1997 La Liberté de philosopher: De Maïmonide à Spinoza. Paris: Desclée De Brouwer. Plato 1976 Opera, Vol. 4. Ed. J. Burnet. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Seneca 1965 Epistulae Morales. Ed. L.D. Reynolds. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Brague.indd 27Brague.indd 27 19/06/2007 11:12:2619/06/2007 11:12:26 28 Jew, Greek and Christian © Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2007 Urbach, E.E. 1979 Th e Sages: Th eir Concepts and Beliefs. Tr. I. Abrahams. Jerusalem: Magnes. Zuckermandel, M. S., ed. 1970 Tosefta, second edition. Jerusalem: Wahrmann. Brague.indd 28Brague.indd 28 19/06/2007 11:12:2719/06/2007 11:12:27