Documentos de Académico
Documentos de Profesional
Documentos de Cultura
Cultural Memory
in
the
Present
Mieke Bal and Hent de Vries, Editors
Jacob Taubes
Edited by Charlotte Elisheva Fonrobert
and Amir Engel, with an Introduction
by Aleida Assmann, Jan Assmann,
and Wolf-Daniel Hartwich
Contents
Acknowledgments
ix
xi
xviii
10
28
45
61
76
98
124
viii Contents
9 The Iron Cage and the Exodus from It, or the
Dispute over Marcion, Then and Now (1984)
137
147
165
177
195
214
222
235
248
268
282
302
315
334
Notes
343
Index
000
Acknowledgments
This volume has been many years in the making. It began a few
years ago with the previous editor of the humanities at Stanford University Press, Helen Tartar, with whom we acquired the rights to the English
edition from Wilhelm Fink Verlag, the German publisher of Vom Kult
zur Kultur. I came to participate in the project when Dana Hollander
was preparing the translation of Taubess lectures on Paul for the Cultural
Memory in the Present series at Stanford University Press, based on Jan
and Aleida Assmanns posthumous edition of those lectures.1 Dana had
solicited my advice for the rabbinic material that Taubes draws on in his
Paul lectures. But, as it so often happens, life took a few detours before
we returned to the project. I therefore wish to thank first and foremost
Emily-Jane Cohen, the current editor of the humanities at Stanford University Press for her relentless encouragement to finish this English edition of Taubess essays. Her expertise in French also helped us to parse out
some of the French texts that Taubes quotes freely and extensively.
We also thank Hent de Vries for enabling the English trilogy of
Taubess books to appear with Stanford University Press in his and Mieke
Bals series on Cultural Memory in the Present.2
In the process of reinvolving myself with the project, I was fortunate to be able to enlist the participation of Amir Engel. Without Amirs
dedication, this work would not have come to be. He has been a great
chevruta for mastering this challenge. I have also had many discussions
with my friend and colleague Eugene Sheppard at Brandeis University
whose deep interest in Taubess work convinced me of the importance of
this English edition. During the course of the preparation of this volume I
have also been fortunate to know Jerry Z. Muller, who is currently work-
x Acknowledgments
ing on an intellectual biography of Taubes. I owe Jerry thanks for his
encouragement.
We are particularly grateful to the two translators who helped us
prepare this manuscript, Mara H. Benjamin and William Rauscher.
While many of the essays in this volume did appear in English originally
or in print after their German publication, there were ten that remained
to be translated.
Finally, I would like to thank my colleague and friend Vered Shemtov, whose unending support in every respect made this work possible.
This volume is truly the fruit of collaborative effort.
ch.f.
I have been fascinated by Jacob Taubess work for many years. However, it is one thing to read his works and quite another to edit and prepare them for publication in English. I was humbled by the experience. I
am delighted to thank the people who allowed me to be in this position. I
thank Amir Eshel for his support and trust, Assaf Sharon for his attentiveness and critical mind, and Bill Prinzmetal for helping me to escape when
that was necessary. I thank Ayelet Landau, without whom this project and
many other (also more mundane) projects would be worthless. Finally I
would like to thank Charlotte Fonrobert, who shared with me her knowledge, passion, and friendship. Without her dedication and trust this project would have been unimaginable.
a.e.
Taubes reads the sources, therefore, not as finite texts with finite ideas.
They are for him palimpsests, which can barely conceal already existing
conversations, debates, and discussions. The texts that Taubes discusses
themselves also try to make a point on the background of an already given argument and in an already given historical moment. Taubes considers
these texts primarily as an axis. For himin true Talmudic fashioneach
primary source is, first and foremost, a moment in time and a position
in a debate. This might help explain the footnotes, or the lack thereof. It
also explains why Taubess claims move between and encompass far-flung
historical circumstances, ideas, thinkers, and approaches. In this environment, where every text is an axis around which events, ideas, ideal, other
texts, and foreign circumstances turn, it is difficult to do close reading and
to insist on philological finitudes.
If this indeed describes Taubess method, it must also bear some