156 - The Death of Herod: An Essay in the Sociology of Religion

The Death of Herod:
An Essay in the Sociology of Religion
By Richard Fenn
Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1992. 200 pp. $44.95.

The author, Professor of Christianity and Society at Princeton Theological Seminary, warns his readers that this is not "an 'introduction' to the sociological study of the New Testament, [but] to the method of such an inquiry." The reader is well warned not to expect the sustained presentation of a method either. The closest the author comes to methodological clarity is in the use he makes of roles and, at a deeper level, networks of roles as investigative tools. The way in which networks of roles function is convincingly illustrated by Jupp, Roberts, and Cook-Gumperz in a study of the behavior of English-speaking South Asian workers in a British factory. Their gestures of deference, conditioned by a network of roles obvious to them and intended to avoid conflict with their supervisors, had the effect of heightening the suspicions of a supervisor who was conditioned to expect behavior in accordance with a different (British) network of roles. By applying this conception to the succession struggles surrounding Herod's death, Fenn is able to establish a similar breakdown of understanding between various networks of roles. For example, Herod, his court, and the Jews are separate networks, as are the older and the younger generations. The suspicions that governed the relationships between these groups led to a progressive breakdown of language. Under those

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circumstances, Fenn maintains, what was called for, but failed to materialize, was an authoritative word that could re-establish language as a means of communication. The one instance of such an authoritative word occurred when Herod brought his sons Alexander and Aristobulus to trial before Augustus in Rome and the emperor's reassuring verdict brought about a reconciliation, if only temporarily, between father and sons (Josephus, Jewish Antiquities xvi.4.1-4).

The breakdown of language can be traced in the successive trials of Herod's sons, beginning with the already mentioned at Tial of Alexander and Aristobulus before the emperor, followed by a second trial before a council of Roman officials in Berytus (Antiquities xvi.11.1-3), and finally, the trial of Antipater, Herod's son from his first marriage (Antiquities xvii.5.3-7). These trials reveal a movement from a genuine trial, to a mock trial in which the two sons become sacrifices in a kind of ritual of reconciliation, and the third, again a real trial, in which Antipater becomes a scapegoat. According to Fenn, the trials were failed attempts to re-establish language as a means of communication. There failures reveal a progressive, catastrophic break-down in the use of language.

The last chapter is entitled "The Making of a Theory." The reader will seek in vain a clear statement of a theory in that chapter. In reality, two theories dominate Fenn's study from the beginning: First, he assumes that fundamentally at issue was the question of "the ability of [a] society to renew itself from one generation to the next and to overcome the real and symbolic sources of disruption and death for the society as a whole." Accordingly, ". . . the death of Herod was a pivotal moment in the history of first-century Palestine [which] accelerated the forces that ultimately destroyed Israel in a disastrous rebellion, revolution, and civil war." The trials of Herod's sons were failed attempts to overcome the built-up tensions. More decisive may have been an irresolvable conflict exacerbated by "the juxtaposition of two major festivals: the one sponsored by the state to manage the succession from Herod to Archelaus, the other a feast of the people at the time of the Passover. Their juxtaposition helped to account for the concentration and intensity of the conflict.... There were two separate social systems at work here, and when they were juxtaposed with one another, the grief and the grievances generated through the rites of succession simply intensified the memories of past oppression and liberation that were enshrined in the rites of the people." A finer statement of what had been at issue would be difficult to find. What Fenn has not shown is how the conflict between the two societies is transformed into a conflict between the generations in Jewish society, or even between Herod and his potential successors.

This problem is aggravated by Fenn's second theoretical principle, which he draws from what he calls psychoanalysis. He claims "that sociology can truly inform historiography only be combining psychoanalytic insights with social anthropology in a disciplined approach

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toward limited generalizations." What he has in mind is a "psychoanalytic theory, which finds it necessary to consider motives and intentions." The problem is how one can "consider motives and intentions" of persons involved in incidents that took place two thousand years ago, based on extremely limited information from a recognizably biased informant. Fenn, naively assuming that Josephus quoted Herod's longer speeches verbatim, justifies his reliance on him by maintaining that "in the absence of conflicting observations, it is possible to adopt a cautious [sic!] attitude that accepts his transcripts of the proceedings as reliable," except for certain obvious contradictions in the details.

Fundamentally at issue, according to Fenn, was a "collective neurosis," an obsession with patricide. Thus we learn that the young men who challenged Rome by taking down the Roman eagle in Jerusalem probably "did not know entirely why they were performing these provocative acts of symbolic protest and rebellion," nor, for that matter, did the students who erected the statue of liberty on T'ien An Men Square in Beijing. Fenn suggests that hostility the young men felt towards "older patriarchs was displaced in both cases on to these symbols," that is, the Roman eagle and the statue of liberty." Thus, at the deepest level, the actions of the young Jews were not directed against Rome, but in a round-about way against their own older generation. The "murderous thoughts or even intentions" which the young men may have harbored against their elders make it "possible, even likely, that on some unconscious level they felt that they should pay for the imagined crimes [as] a punishment fitting for the fantasied crime of parricide.... In other words, suicidal motives, along with parricidal ones, may have been widely shared among a network of youths in both situations." Fenn then applies what he proposes with regard to the youths in both cases to the societies as a whole: ". . . the events in the public squares simply dramatized the murderous undercurrents of inter-generational conflict in the larger society and in the state itself."

One can hardly speak here of psychoanalytic theory as a tool of investigation to supplement a sociological method. Fenn makes his limited materials fit a prejudiced theory. He does not claim that his interpretations are the only ones possible, but they are all he comes up with. If they do not succeed, he does not have much left to show. Who knows, maybe all revolutionary events are indeed cases of "collective neurosis," Freudian obsessions with patricide? Even if that were the case, this book has not succeeded in what it promised, that is, to provide an introduction to sociological method.

Hendrikus Boers
Candler School of Theology
Emory University
Atlanta, GA