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The Mystery of Israel's Salvation: Romans 11:25–26 in Patristic and Medieval Exegesis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 December 2005

Jeremy Cohen
Affiliation:
Tel Aviv University

Extract

Lest you be wise in your own conceits, I want you to understand this mystery, brethren: a hardening has come upon part of Israel, until the full number of the Gentiles come in, and so all Israel will be saved; as it is written, “The Deliverer will come from Zion, he will banish ungodliness from Jacob.”

Paul, Romans 11:25–26I have generally adhered to the RSV except where the wording of biblical quotations in the works of patristic or medieval authors mandates otherwise. Citations of chapter and verse in the Hebrew Bible, however, generally follow the numbering in the Masoretic Text.

This text is the basis of the common opinion that, at the end of the world, the Jews will return to the faith. However, it is so obscure that, unless one is willing to accept the judgment of the fathers who expound the apostle in this way, no one can, so it would seem, obtain a clear conviction from this text.

Luther, Lectures on RomansMartin Luther, Scholien—Epistola ad Romanos (vol. 56 of Werke; Weimar: H. Bohlaus Nachf, 1883–1983) 436–37; Martin Luther, Lectures on Romans (trans. Wilhem Pauck; Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1961) 315.

Type
ARTICLES
Copyright
© 2005 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

The research for and preparation of this article were supported by the Israel Science Foundation (grant no. 722/99), by the Research Fund of Tel Aviv University, by the Goldstein-Goren Diaspora Research Center of Tel Aviv University, by fellowships at the Institute for Advanced Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, and by the generous hospitality of the University of Notre Dame. I am indebted to my colleagues at these various venues for their helpful and constructive reactions to variegated requests for advice and information. Pursuit of the research, demanding the assembly and processing of a vast array of source material, would not have been possible without the dedicated help and cooperation of my research assistants over the past several years: Marianne Naegli, Dorit Reiner, Tali Berner, Montse Leira, Adi Greenman, Ella Raskin, Haim Cohen, and Avital Davidovich.