Populus Prior: Het Joodse volk in Karolingische Bijbelcommentaren

Abstract

The Jewish people have been a subject of Christian writing and debate from the very beginning. The Church had to define its position towards the earlier people (populus prior) with whom God had sealed a covenant. In the ninth century, this question also commanded much attention in the Carolingian Empire. How did contemporary biblical scholars write about this problem? From the huge quantity of exegetical writings created in the ninth century I selected three commentaries. All three offer a comprehensive explanation of Samuel 1 & 2 and Kings 1 & 2.The most ancient commentary dates from 823 and was composed by Claudius, bishop of Turin. The second one was completed in 829 by Hrabanus Maurus, then Abbot of Fulda. Angelomus of Luxeuil is the least known of these three authors. The exegesis of Kings written by this monk dates from the early forties of the ninth century. My dissertation is structured in the following way. In the introductory chapter I have set out the objectives of my research. In the subsequent chapters (2 and 3), I discuss what we can discover from various other sources outside the exegetical commentaries about the history of Jews in Carolingian society. The following three chapters form an exegetical triptych with Hrabanus Maurus, Angelomus of Luxeuil and Claudius of Turin as the protagonists. I have deliberately integrated my central questions on their attitudes towards Jews and Judaism into my discussion of their exegetical approach, and of their position in Carolingian society. The almost ubiquitous use of earlier Christian sources is typical of all ninth-century exegesis, but this was not a matter of simply reproducing patristic authority. On the contrary, it did lead to a sometimes surprisingly independent exegesis of older authoritative commentary, a phenomenon that is still quite under-researched. The points of view held by Hrabanus and his fellow exegetes regarding the populus prior are indeed not their own inventions. However, the vestigia patrum do not all take the same direction. I believe that it is precisely these differences that matter if we want to know what the Carolingian exegetes thought of the Jews. On the one hand, they chiefly followed Augustine and Isidore in their opinion on the Jewish people. Nonetheless, this was not the only portrait of the Jewish people that was appropriated by Claudius, Hrabanus and Angolomus. Bede’s vision in his book on the Temple - in which Jews and Christians are not postulated as two diametrically opposed peoples but considered to be two parts of the one people of God – acquired a central place in their commentaries. Furthermore, the use of contemporary Jewish sources in these exegeses demonstrate in any case that the biblical commentaries were connected to the actual world where Jewish religious traditions were practised. The fact that some critics protested against this, shows that these commentaries were most definitely mirrors of their time, rather than merely academic patristic questions.