Few scholars loom as large in the history of scholarship on ancient Judaism than does Erwin Ramsdell Goodenough (1893-1965). A professor at Yale University for forty years, Goodenough fundamentally changed our understanding of Jews in the Hellenistic world, even when his suggestions turned out to be incorrect. Best known for his monumental, Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman Period, Goodenough also wrote on Christian origins, developing his own theory in a series of essays. In Goodenough on the Beginnings of Christianity, A. T. Kraabel has collected and organized the most important of these essays, which even after half a century remain relevant and fruitful.
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https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvzpv57fTable of Contents
Erwin Ramsdell Goodenough was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1893. After attending Hamilton College he went for two years to Drew Theological Seminary and then to Garrett Biblical Institute, from which he received the bachelor’s degree in theology in 1917. He then studied for three years at Harvard, where he was much influenced by the teaching of George Foot Moore, and for three years at Oxford, from which he received the D. Phil, in 1923. In that year he returned to the United States as instructor in history at Yale, where he remained, becoming Assistant Professor of History in...
In 1925 The Theology of Justin Martyr had been out for two years and the publication of By Light, Light was still a decade in the future. This essay on the Oratio ad Graecos of Ps.-Justin, Goodenough’s first scholarly article, provides a bridge from the first book to the second. It is about a work of “Justin,” but most of it is devoted to Greek-speaking Judaism, here represented chiefly by Philo.
As soon as this essay was published, Adolf von Harnack quickly wrote a review of it, and of Goodenough’s criticism of Harnack’s own work on the Oratio. As a...
Nygren’s Agape and Eros, here reviewed by Goodenough, was a work of great influence in Europe and North America at the time of its publication. Among those in the denominations of “the reformers,” as Goodenough calls them, it is still an important study. Two emphases in this review are vintage Goodenough: the defense of the piety of “the pagans” of the Greco-Roman world, and the stress on religion as something personal, not conceptual, at its base.
Personal too is the idea that Jesus himself is the “fundamental motif” of Christianity, rather than any principle, even the principle of agape. The...
Goodenough never wrote more ably on the New Testament than the first article below, still frequently cited by students of the gospel of John. (The following serves as the introduction to Chapters 3, 4 and 5) In one sense Casey’s debate with him (no. 4) is a classic case of the encounter between form criticism and the earlier documentary approach to the Gospels. One would concentrate on the gospels as wholes, sprung “fully formed from their authors’ minds with no developments of consequence between the vents themselves and their being recounted in one of these documents” -as Goodenough caricatures it...
Some years ago Professor Goodenough complained of the sluggishness of New Testament scholarship and declared that little advance need be expected in this field until critics turned their attention to the relations of early Christianity and Hellenistic Judaism (JBL 62 [1943] xi). In his recent provocative article (“John a Primitive Gospel,” JBL 64 [1945] 145-182) he has evidently hoped to stimulate gospel criticism to a more lively pace and to illustrate his point of the importance of Hellenistic Judaism in the study of the Gospels.
Others will no doubt be moved to reply to Professor Goodenough’s main thesis. The point...
The Editor, with Casey’s hearty approval, has offered to let me reply to this critique of my article, but what I have to say will take little space. The three "errors of fact" need no comment, and all that really is left is the basic issue of methodology. The question is whether we are to stick exclusively to the old “documentary” procedure, or go the slight distance I do in form criticism.
Just what he means by the “documentary theory” Casey does not say, but his remarks imply that he thinks Mk, and presumably Q, sprang fully formed from their...
In his last report as editor of JBL, Goodenough commented on what he saw as the sorry state of New Testament scholarship. His words there drew many responses; indeed, Robert Casey began his essay reprinted here (no. 4 above) with a reference to what Goodenough had written.
That report was printed in JBL 62 (1943) x-xi. For a more complete perspective, the other reports should also be reviewed. The first four are printed as reports of the Corresponding Secretary in JBL 55 (1936) xx, 56 (1937) xx, 57 (1938) xxi-xxiii, 58 (1939) xviii-xix. The others were presented as reports of...
This essay is a schematic, unannotated statement of the religious situation of Late Antiquity; as such, it is valid for more than just the period 284-305, the reign of Diocletian. It is also Goodenough’s attempt to demonstrate the relative importance or unimportance of Christianity in that period.
The paper was delivered at a symposium, “The Age of Diocletian,” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City on December 14-16, 1951. The other speakers were Casper J. Kraemer, Jr., of New York University, Eberhard F. Bruck of Harvard University, William L. Westermann and Gilbert Highet of Columbia University, and...
This essay is not about early Christianity first of all, but rather about the relations between Greek-speaking Jews and Gentiles outside the Holy Land. It is included for three reasons. For most scholars, understanding those Jewish-Gentile relations is important first of all because of what that will reveal about the expansion of early Christianity among those Jews and Gentiles. In addition, recent archaeological discoveries at two sites in western Asia Minor (modern Turkey) have raised the “relationships” question again in important new ways. Finally, a new understanding of Saint Paul is emerging, one which Goodenough would have warmly welcomed.
The...
In this little essay, printed after his retirement from Yale, Goodenough continues to grapple with the relationships between Judaism and Christianity. In this case he is working not with texts but with symbols, familiar territory for him, where there is less demand for logic and doctrinal precision, and where the artisan may be creative and even paradoxical. The artifact published here is a striking example. It bears a cross on both faces, but the central image on one face is a bucranium, on the other a menorah.
The Germanos inscription from Avdat (see note 17) was later published by A....
Many years ago Kirsopp Lake said to a class that if Acts is not a basically sound historical document we know nothing of the origin of Christianity. The loss of Acts would indeed be a crippling blow, but it is just as devastating to use Acts as literally sound history. We know, or have some evidence, of much in early Christianity that Acts would never have led us to suspect. A historian who writes without a thesis is a chronicler, not a historian at all. “This is written that” lies behind all ancient history, whether Greek or Jewish. I believe...
The background for this essay is given in its first footnote and in more detail in the Preface to this volume. (See also Eccles 1985: 123-28, 173.)
I don’t recall ever discussing with Goodenough why the bulk of this essay should be devoted to Romans. Beginning with Acts is logical enough, see the essay just previous. But it is not equally self-evident that all of the rest of the study ought to be devoted to just one Pauline letter. After all, Goodenough could have addressed himself to some or all of Paul had he wished, either by proceeding thematically or...
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