Goodenough, Erwin Ramsdell°
GOODENOUGH, ERWIN RAMSDELL°
GOODENOUGH, ERWIN RAMSDELL ° (1893–1965), U.S. scholar who specialized in the study of Judaism in the Hellenistic period. Goodenough was born in Brooklyn, New York, and was raised in a family with Methodist fundamentalist beliefs. Following studies at the Garrett Biblical Institute, he studied at Harvard for three years under the influential historian of religion, George F. Moore, receiving his Ph.D. in Oxford in 1923, and then began teaching history at Yale University. Throughout his life Goodenough was active in many scholarly organizations, and edited the Journal of Biblical Literature from 1934 to 1942. While preparing his doctoral thesis, published as The Theology of Justin Martyr (1923), Good-enough came to the conclusion that many Hellenistic elements of early Christianity were derived not from the pagan world directly but from the already hellenized Judaism through which Christianity was first disseminated. Most of his later work was devoted to the study of this hellenized Judaism, especially The Jurisprudence of the Jewish Courts in Egypt (1929), By Light, Light: The Mystic Gospel of Hellenistic Judaism (1935), The Politics of Philo Judaeus (1938), An Introduction to Philo Judaeus (1940), and Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman Period (13 vols., 1953–68). Goodenough's reconstruction of Hellenistic Judaism from literary sources was often speculative. His account of the teachings of Philo, in particular, must be corrected in the light of H.A. *Wolfson's analysis of Philo's philosophy and demonstration of its many similarities to rabbinic teaching. But Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman Period, by its collection of Greco-Roman archaeological remains and its confrontation of these with pagan parallels, revealed an entire world of Judaism that previously had been known only in fragments and generally neglected. Consequently, this work began a new epoch in the study of ancient Judaism – this in spite of the fact that Goodenough's interpretation of the material has been questioned (Avi-Yonah, Smith, and others). One of Goodenough's supporters, J. *Neusner, wrote (in 1988) that "Goodenough asks when a symbol is symbolic. He wants to know how visual symbols speak beyond words and despite words. We find ourselves surrounded by messages that reach us without words, that speak to and even for us beyond verbal explanation. Goodenough studied ancient Jewish symbols because he wanted to explain how that happens and what we learn about the human imagination from the power of symbols. It is difficult to point to a more engaging and critical problem in the study of humanity than the one Goodenough took for himself. That is why, twenty years after the conclusion of his research, a new generation will find fresh and important the research and reflection of this extraordinary man."
add. bibliography:
M. Avi-Yonah, "Goodenough's Evaluation of the Dura Paintings: A Critique," in: J. Guttman (ed.), The Dura-Europas Synagogue (1973); M. Smith, "Goodenough's Jewish Symbols in Retrospect," in: J. Guttman (ed.), The Synagogue: Studies in Origins, Archaeology and Architecture (1975); J. Neusner, "Editor's Foreward," in E.R. Goodenough, Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman Period (1988). For a complete bibliography of Goodenough's writings, see J. Neusner (ed.), Religions in Antiquity. Essays in Memory of Erwin Ramsdell Goodenough (1968).
[Morton Smith /
Shimon Gibson (2nd ed.)]