Paradise in Antiquity: Jewish and Christian Views

Paradise in Antiquity: Jewish and Christian Views

Edited by Markus Bockmuehl and Guy G. Stroumsa

Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University, 2010. 260 + xi pp. $95.00

This volume of essays is the final product of a British–Israeli conference that took place in March 2008 at the Center for the Study of Christianity of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The conference was organized around the theme of paradise in Jewish and Christian writings ranging from the Second Temple period through late antiquity.

Conference volumes typically lack any kind of internal coherence, and the quality of individual essays can vary widely. It is thus a rare and happy occasion when one encounters a book that bucks this trend and presents well-written pieces that add up to a coherent whole. The editors, Oxford professors Markus Bockmuehl and Guy Stroumsa, are to be commended for a disciplined approach to their task. The essays are lucid and engaging, and taken together they offer a helpful overview of the persistent allure of notions of paradise in antique Jewish and Christian imaginations.

The book opens with a wonderful introductory essay by Stroumsa that provides an orientation to the topic of paradise and gives a thumbnail sketch of the essays to follow, which are divided into two sections. The first section comprises six essays on paradise in late Second Temple Judaism and in the New Testament. There are treatments of paradise in Philo (Maren Niehoff), Pseudo-Philo (Richard Bauckham), the New Testament (Joachim Schaper, Grant Macaskill), and the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas (Simon Gathercole); Martin Goodman skillfully surveys paradise in the first century ce generally.

The second set of seven essays turns attention to slightly later antique texts in the Jewish and Christian traditions. Three essays take up the theme of paradise in two Christian Church Fathers: Tertullian (Sabrina Inowlocki) and Augustine (Gillian Clark and Emile Perreau-Saussine). Galit Hasan-Rokem explores the topic in rabbinic literature. Two essays engage in comparison of Christian and Jewish thinkers who write about paradise in late antiquity (Yonatan Moss and Menahem Kister). Markus Bockmuehl rounds out this section of the volume with a wide-ranging and fascinating discussion of a variety of ancient Jewish and Christian authors who assert that paradise must be located somewhere on earth (that is, within the physical realm of God’s creation). A final epilogue by Alessandro Scafi traces key developments in conceptions of paradise through the medieval and modern eras. A well-selected bibliography closes the volume.

As one expects of Cambridge University Press, the book is beautifully hardbound and the printing is lovely. This quality does not come cheap, however, and the price of the volume is almost $100. As such, it will likely be purchased primarily by libraries and by specialists in the field, and indeed scholars and students of any area of Judeo-Christian antiquity will certainly want to be sure to consult this work. The clarity and care with which these essays are written and the intriguing nature of the topic of paradise make the book recommended reading for any educated reader.