The Invention of Judaism? Yale Professor Drops a Bombshell | Dr. John J Collins

Added: 2026-05-07

[00:00:00]My guest today is Dr. John J. Collins, Professor of Old Testament Criticism and Interpretation Emeritus at Yale University. He holds a PhD from Harvard, has served as president of both the Society of Biblical Literature and the Catholic Biblical Association, and is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He served as a general editor of the Anchor Yale Bible Series for nearly two decades. His work on apocalypticism, the Dead Sea Scrolls, Second Temple Judaism, and the Hebrew Bible has shaped how an entire generation of scholars understands the Old Testament. His books include The Apocalyptic Imagination, The Invention of Judaism, What Are Biblical Values, and his widely used introduction to the Hebrew Bible. I've got I have several copies on my shelf back here. He has received the Burkitt Am I pronouncing that properly? The Burkitt Medal?

[00:00:53]>> Yes.

[00:00:54]The Burkitt Medal for Biblical Scholarship from the British Academy and uh holds honorary degrees from University College Dublin and the University of Zurich. Dr. Collins, welcome back to MythVision.

[00:01:06]Glad to be here.

[00:01:08]Thank you for your time and taking the time out of your day to join us and educate us. I have only five questions.

[00:01:14]Now, maybe I have you emphasize cuz sometimes you can be pretty You answer pretty quickly and maybe we have a little extra time to get into some of the weeds, but your book, The Invention of Judaism, argues that Judaism as we understand it was essentially invented through the development of the Torah and its role in shaping Jewish identity from Deuteronomy through Paul. That title alone, The Invention of Judaism, is provocative, I must say. Can you walk us through what you mean by that? At what point does something we would recognize as Judaism actually come into existence and what existed before it? Well, if I may as an aside, first of all, I'll say this is actually a good advertisement for something else I'm doing for Bart Ehrman, which is a course on Second Temple Judaism that I'll be doing over the summer. Now, in what sense is it invention?

[00:02:13]>> [clears throat] >> Well, you know, prior to the Babylonian Exile, the people of Judah were a people in their land with their king and their temple like more or less every other little people in the ancient Near East.

[00:02:28]And so, to be a Judean or a They wouldn't have called it that, but to be a Judahite, perhaps or a a son of Judah, at that point would have meant to just have the local customs of that place. To to have the the culture and traditions of that place.

[00:02:50]Then along come the Babylonians and blow them to the four corners of the earth.

[00:02:55]So, after that, you no longer have a king, you no longer have a political entity.

[00:03:02]Not for a few hundred years.

[00:03:04]It would be not until the time of the Maccabees that they get back.

[00:03:09]And so, you know, a lot of the leaders and a lot of the priests were carried off to Babylon. And apparently in Babylon, they put their heads together >> [laughter] >> and devised, you know, how we should do things better, how we should do things right.

[00:03:29]And it's out of that nucleus, I think, it surely, I think, in Babylon that the Torah as we know it is put together.

[00:03:36]Now, I am assuming that most of the components of the Torah already existed in some way, but they were still working on it for a long time after the the Babylonian Exile, too.

[00:03:49]And then, as I understand it, Ezra comes along and goes to the king and says, "Look, we actually have our own law.

[00:04:01]Why don't you let us live according to that?" And the king says, "Fine." And tells him to take it back and tell people to live according to this law.

[00:04:11]The Persians didn't much care what law they lived by, but they wanted them to live by something that they could keep track of. And this is, I think, in a way the foundation of what Judaism would become.

[00:04:26]Because it at least gives official recognition to the Torah of Moses.

[00:04:31]This doesn't mean that everybody starts practicing it right away.

[00:04:36]And in fact, I think they There have been several studies in recent years, I'm thinking especially of one by Jonathan Adler, which is more an archaeological study of the evidence, but that, you know, the practices we associate with Judaism, circumcisions, Sabbath, purity laws, and so forth, that it's really only from the time of the Maccabees on that you get evidence for that. And you get evidence then of a lot of concern for purity, mikveh oaths, and this kind of thing. And that's really then what would eventually become the Judaism of the rabbis to a great degree.

[00:05:21]So, that's what I'm calling the invention. But, you know, I think if um uh what if Abraham had walked in >> [laughter] >> to a a has money and household, he probably have been amazed at what was going on.

[00:05:36]You know, that's But but you know, this happens in every culture.

[00:05:40]Cuz customs change over the centuries.

[00:05:45]I was curious to know, you know, you brought up Jonathan Adler.

[00:05:49]Uh do you think that his work not only has influenced you, that he's on the right track here, but also he's made Do you think he's made waves in the academic peer-review arena? First of all, I like to think that I influenced him.

[00:06:04]Of course you did.

[00:06:05]>> the review of it.

[00:06:06]>> [laughter] >> Yeah, I'm just saying, you know, how he You know, I'm not an archaeologist and we were working with different We were coming at it from different angles, but I thought our work is very nicely complementary. And surely made waves.

[00:06:21]And a lot of people didn't like it.

[00:06:23]And you you would know that a lot of people wouldn't like it.

[00:06:28]Yeah.

[00:06:29]>> Now, one of the the stranger publications of my scholarly record is one that hasn't actually come out yet, but it's in proof. In Hebrew.

[00:06:40]It's the only thing of mine that will appear in Hebrew and I didn't write it in Hebrew. Somebody translated it for me.

[00:06:48]But, the question was, you know, how has Israeli historiography changed?

[00:06:56]And what I do in that article is I take the the way they used to do it when Yehezkel Kaufmann was the presiding genius in Jerusalem.

[00:07:09]And you know, he was anti-Wellhausen.

[00:07:13]Uh in effect, you know, the law comes from Moses and it was there at the beginning and everything follows from that down. And my point in the article was how things have changed. When you get as far as I know, Jonathan Adler is rather conservative Jew.

[00:07:31]But, here he is saying, "No, actually most of this stuff we've got to have any evidence for it before 120 BC or thereabouts." And I thought that would have been unthinkable in the time of Kaufmann.

[00:07:47]You know, even Moshe Greenberg was a very fine scholar. Uh I remember Moshe saying at a meeting how, you know, to question the historicity of the Mosaic revelation is deep poisoning of the wells.

[00:08:05]Uh well, not anymore.

[00:08:09]Now.

[00:08:10]>> So, you know, I I like Adler's work a lot.

[00:08:15]But now, uh obviously not everybody does.

[00:08:19]Right. Right.

[00:08:20]>> Uh I think some people they feel that he was pushing it a little bit too hard.

[00:08:26]But that's more a matter of style.

[00:08:30]Yeah, you're doing this lecture as you mentioned. I I figured I'd give an introductory question before we bring up What are you talking about on Bart Ehrman's lecture through New Insights to the Hebrew Bible? They're not new to you, they're not usually new to the scholars, >> [laughter] >> but this is for the world. You know, the the assumption is they're going to be new to somebody. Yes.

[00:08:52]Actually, you know, most of what I have been saying for the 50 years that I taught, uh still seems to be new to a lot of people who read the Bible. There are there are a lot of people out there who are in touch with biblical scholarship at all. So, you know, this actually what I'm doing in this follows on more from my book on Biblical Values. Uh some of it's also from a an older book, The Bible After Babel.

[00:09:22]Uh but now, you know, one of the the big discoveries about the Book of Genesis in the last 500 120 years is uh the the improved sensitivity to the role of women.

[00:09:40]Mhm. And in fact, the revision of the understanding of Eve in the opening chapters of Genesis.

[00:09:50]I would say that that to my mind is one of the most impactful advances in the scholarship and Genesis.

[00:09:59]Now, I mean there are other things too, obviously.

[00:10:03]You know, creationism re-evaluation of that would come in there somewhere, too.

[00:10:11]And other things as well. But I think the the re-evaluation of the role of women is huge.

[00:10:17]And the the point that really two issues that I'm going to get asked at this lecture. I just mentioned briefly. I'm not going to go into it here in in any detail.

[00:10:29]But the the first one is, you know, are people created in a fixed order with a fixed nature to which they ought to conform?

[00:10:42]That is, I think, the assumption in Genesis chapter 1, certainly.

[00:10:47]And so, how do you read something like Genesis chapter 1?

[00:10:53]Uh can you read Genesis chapter 1 and say there were only two genders, male and female?

[00:11:00]Any talk of transgender uh beings, but then where did the transgender people come out of?

[00:11:07]Who made them?

[00:11:09]>> [clears throat] >> How did they suddenly turn up at some point in history?

[00:11:14]But, you know, also if you look at the rest of the account of creation, you have uh evening and morning, day and night, but you have very little transition time.

[00:11:24]You have You don't really have dawn and dusk in this biblical account. And that's because of the nature of the account.

[00:11:32]It's schematic. It's giving you the main lines. Right. And I think it's uh really a misinterpretation then to try to force that to speak to nuances about things that wasn't intending to discuss at all. Right. Like what do you do with species that live on land and live in water? You know what I mean? Like Yeah, I get what you're saying. It's it's uh there's a lot open there. I can't wait Everyone watching this, go sign up to New Insights to the Hebrew Bible, go watch John Collins' interview. I I'm By the way, we're personal friends, so please don't take it disrespectful that I'm calling him by his first name. Um if you do so, you're helping us out here, too. We're affiliates of what Bart Ehrman is doing, and we support good scholarship. Many academics will be there at this conference, so go check it out. Um did you mention this Yeah, you mentioned the role of Eve and the creation one, right? Those are the two you're covering. The second issue is the question, you know, are women subordinate in the story of Adam and Eve?

[00:12:37]And, you know, again, that there is a little ambiguity in this because if the story says that woman is taken from man, is that an innocent motive or is it a power play?

[00:12:54]Uh and I mean one suspects that there is some implication of power involved in it.

[00:13:01]But at the same time, you know, it isn't uh saying that women therefore should be subordinate.

[00:13:07]And the only place where you do get talk about subordination is in the consequences of the disobedience.

[00:13:15]And what you get then, you know, that men men shall eat his bread by the sweat of his brow, and snakes shall crawl on their belly and eat dirt, which I'm told they don't actually do. But now, you see, what what's going on there? Does this mean that men should always engage in physical labor?

[00:13:36]Right. Nobody seriously going to say that.

[00:13:41]So, should one say that and women therefore should always be subordinate to their husbands?

[00:13:49]So, I think what the the story is doing is describing the world as they saw it, as people assumed that it was, and trying to provide a rationale for it.

[00:14:01]Technically, if someone tried to write it today, it would look completely different is your point. Yeah. I love it. I love that you're you're helping people separate their attachment to an ancient idea, um still valuing the material, loving the tradition, but yet not needing that fundamentalist view. Uh we need to get away from that view, I think, and I I think it's going to help people appreciate these ancient texts even more when we do that, and there's so much more to explore when you do that. So, um I didn't want to be rude and move to the next question, but may I move forward?

[00:14:35]Sure. Yeah. Okay. You've spent decades, literally decades, studying apocalypticism. And your book, The Apocalyptic Imagination, is considered foundational in the field. Most people hear the word apocalyptic and think the end of the world. But the apocalyptic tradition in Second Temple Judaism was far more complex than that. What were the apocalyptic writers actually trying to do? What problems were they trying to solve? And how much of early Christianity is incomprehensible without understanding the apocalyptic worldview it emerged from? Well, to answer the last part first, I would say all of it.

[00:15:13]>> [laughter] >> It would be But now, you know, apocalypticism really means revelation.

[00:15:20]So, the key idea isn't just the end of this world. It's the revelation of another world beyond it.

[00:15:28]And sometimes you can get the revelation of the other world beyond this without having the end of this world.

[00:15:35]But, you know, the end of this world is catchy, and it's probably the aspect of apocalypticism that intrigues most people.

[00:15:43]But the essential point I would say is that what comes after the end is always more important than the end itself.

[00:15:51]Mhm. And it's where you're headed that that's the question. And that's where you get huge differences then in different apocalyptic scenarios.

[00:16:02]You know, I've actually argued this also pretty much all my my career, that the the key problem that they're dealing with in all apocalyptic literature is mortality.

[00:16:16]You know, it's the this is already in in Isaiah chapter 24.

[00:16:23]You know, the veil that hangs over all the peoples, and that then how God will destroy death forever.

[00:16:30]That's the Now, that then can be manifested in a lot of much more particular kind of problems. And sometimes these are political. That's what you have in the book of Daniel, in the book of Revelation.

[00:16:45]Uh sometimes I think they're more cultural.

[00:16:49]And I think the book of the Watchers in First Enoch is intriguing in that regard.

[00:16:55]You know, when the Watchers come down and they teach people all sorts of things that they didn't know before, and the world is changed, and there is much fornication.

[00:17:05]That that that's uh you know, this to my mind is very much what has happened in the modern world as, you know, Western culture spreads to more traditional societies. And you get a kind [clears throat] of culture shock.

[00:17:20]And the apocalyptic reaction to that is ride the clouds and you go up to heaven.

[00:17:27]Get away from it all.

[00:17:29]Opt out into a different kind of reality.

[00:17:33]I I I would like to ask you about the article that you sent me about Mark 13 cuz I found it quite fascinating the way you approached that. I know you're not a New Testament scholar, but you know, your better half is.

[00:17:45]>> [laughter] >> And uh and you >> of New Testament scholarship over the years.

[00:17:50]I think you've read a few things. Um have you published that? Is that published yet or not quite yet?

[00:17:57]>> This was given at a conference in Moscow Ah. in September 2019. And that then came COVID right after. And and it's it's the you know, the the papers are being published by Mohr Siebeck.

[00:18:15]Now, they are now I've seen the proofs. I haven't seen a printed copy.

[00:18:22]Got you.

[00:18:23]I was curious to get your if you didn't mind giving us give us what your conclusion is on what's going on with the I call it the the little apocalypse in Mark, um but there's the big apocalypse in question there. So, Yeah.

[00:18:39]what's going on?

[00:18:40]The issue what's the um Yeah, >> [laughter] >> it's some evangelical minister was on to me recently who describes himself, I think, as a preterist.

[00:18:52]Yes.

[00:18:53]Now, and and I think you see, that's the that my target in that article was Tom Wright, who is, you know, a great communicator, uh but his line, and I think Tom was coming at it probably through, shall we say, the tradition of British common sense, which is you know, it can't it can't be anything that we wouldn't think ourselves.

[00:19:20]Uh and the argument is that Jesus wasn't expecting the end of the world. He was predicting the fall of Jerusalem.

[00:19:29]Now, I think there are sorts of problems with the way he tries to to work that out in detail. But I also think, you know, this is ignoring the whole context of apocalyptic literature.

[00:19:42]That that's There is a lot of that stuff around at the time.

[00:19:48]And it wasn't [clears throat] just the fall of Jerusalem that they were looking for.

[00:19:52]They were looking for the end of the present order.

[00:19:56]And you know, if it looks in the Gospel of Mark as if Jesus predicted that, and it didn't happen as far as we have noticed as yet, well, you got to deal with that.

[00:20:10]Yeah.

[00:20:11]Yeah, in the final statement on that one issue is when Jesus talks about or whoever writes in the mouth of Jesus potentially, well, not even the Son of Man knows the day or hour. Some scholars have wondered that this might have been an author who's like, you know, it hasn't quite happened yet. Um and they're leaving wiggle room for that issue to say, well, you know, he doesn't for sure know, but the Father in heaven knows.

[00:20:37]Um do you think that that's a proper That's a good way of looking at that particular section where Jesus says that to Yeah, I I think it it may well be, but at least, you know, it's an admission of of the limitations of our knowledge on those things.

[00:20:54]Yeah.

[00:20:54]>> And even even if it is put in there to provide some wiggle room when things don't happen, it's still a good way of doing it. I mean, it's a good way of acknowledging that that none of these things give you reliable predictions that you can count on happening on schedule. Got you. So, you could look at it either way, right?

[00:21:14]You could say this was written after the fact to kind of put in the mouth of Jesus to give a little wiggle room on when he expected things potentially. Um but then the other side is just saying, you know, he may not have omniscience in, you know, simple. You see, Jesus didn't claim nearly as much as people claimed for him later on.

[00:21:36]>> [laughter] >> Right? Jesus was a much more modest person than most of his apologists. Love that That's a clip that, ladies and gentlemen. Clip that. Um you wrote a book called What Are Biblical Values? And I think this is a question millions of people assume they know the answer to, but probably don't.

[00:21:57]When politicians, pastors, and public figures appeal to biblical values to justify positions on marriage, sexuality, violence, economics, or governance, how accurately are they representing what the Bible actually says, and how do scholars handle the fact that the Bible contains values that are internally contradictory and often deeply uncomfortable by modern standards? Well, uh to to say take the first part of it, uh do they do does a Jeff Sessions who starts quoting the Bible?

[00:22:32]Well, as somebody pointed out at the time, he should have read on a little bit.

[00:22:37]You know, you can find a verse in the Bible to support almost anything if you take it out of context.

[00:22:44]So, uh no, I think the the appeals to biblical values in politics are generally not very helpful.

[00:22:54]Uh to my mind, there's only really one clear, really clear biblical value that comes across. Can't offhand think of anything much that goes against it.

[00:23:08]There's any contradiction in it. That's justice.

[00:23:12]Especially in the Old Testament.

[00:23:15]You know, I think that's probably the the most compelling thing about the Hebrew Bible is the demand for justice.

[00:23:23]No other document that does that to the same degree.

[00:23:28]And so, I think if one were to do something with biblical values, that's where you should look.

[00:23:35]Now, as to the fact that they will also throw up contradictory values from time to time, well, you see, this raises the question what kind of a book is this anyway? What kind of a collection of books is it?

[00:23:49]And, you know, it's not a top-down book.

[00:23:53]It's a bottom-up.

[00:23:55]You know, it's written by people in wide variety of situations and making a shot at things.

[00:24:06]Now, now one one of the most fundamental biblical genres are the Proverbs.

[00:24:15]You know, I think it's not only a fundamental biblical genre, it's fundamental cultural genre, sayings and proverbs.

[00:24:24]And in the Book of Proverbs, they will sometimes give you contradictory proverbs back to back.

[00:24:30]And if you ask them about it, they'd say, oh well, you know, wisdom lies in knowing which one to apply.

[00:24:37]>> [laughter] >> You know, there is a time to as Koheleth Ecclesiastes puts it, you know, there is a time to love and a time to hate, a time to kill and a time to cure.

[00:24:50]It's not that anything is good or bad in itself.

[00:24:53]It it's timing.

[00:24:56]Mhm.

[00:24:57]Mhm. Powerful. Dr. Collins, I I I really value your scholarship. I have dozens of your works. I mean, you've published In fact, when I was there the the week you retired, you let me clear off some of your bookshelf. You got dozens of my works. Is that correct?

[00:25:13]>> [laughter] >> I have dozens of your older versions. In fact, some of them as I read through, I found like envelopes that you've had from like the '70s and '80s. Now, they're just empty envelopes of your mail. And I'm like, one day when Dr. Collins is no longer here, um I have special books directly off your shelf.

[00:25:34]>> [laughter] >> Um look, I want to tease people to go and sign up for this New Insights to the Hebrew Bible and encourage them to go do so. It helps me, it helps the scholars on the panel, it helps just the public world, I think, needs to know a lot of this insight. Any other things you might want to, you know, promote or tease for that uh as we conclude this episode. Well, as I said, I will be doing a course on Second Temple Judaism for Bart. Wow.

[00:26:02]>> And that will begin, I believe, towards the end of April.

[00:26:07]And twice a week through the summer.

[00:26:11]That's powerful. Si- since we were talking about apocalypticism, I do have one, I hope, one last book on apocalypticism, which is now in proofs with Eerdmans.

[00:26:27]And apocalypticism as a worldview in which I will also give my response to some heretical ideas that have been gaining circulation in recent years.

[00:26:39]Ooh. I'm going to have to interview you on that. We're going to have to talk about [laughter] it.

[00:26:45]Well, ladies and gentlemen, Dr. Collins, thank you for your time. I really appreciate it. Pleasure to see you. You as well.