Around this time in the Torah reading cycle, I tend to comment on the complex interdependence between Judaic and Western culture and what has come to be called the "Special Relationship". An entry on this topic has been a perennial favorite and has gathered some attention in the blogosphere.
At the center of the issue is how to understand the Jacob-Esau typology. Jewish centers tend to see the relationships between Yakov and Esau as emblematic of the relatiionship between Jews and Christians, between Jerusalem and Rome, and between the Judaic and Western civilizations. At its heart is the tension between being brothers and being competitors and rivals. This rivalry lies at the heart of geo-political, spiritual and eschatological struggle between these two borthers. At time, their rivalry overshadows their love with bloody consequences, mostly to the Jews, and at other times, their familial closeness reasserts itself, drawing the younger brother Yakov into the orbit of the powerful older borther, Esau, resulting in assimilation, acculturation adn conversion.
An important footnote to the entire topic is how Esau stands for the entire Western civilization. The approach that I pioneered and that has now been adopted by several recent books is that Western civilization exhibits many outstanding traits of Esau, as he is described and presented in the Torah. The identification is moral-spiritual, not familial.
An older approach, that of Ababanel in Yeshuos Meshicho and in his commentary is that there is, in fact, a familial relationship.
"The great kingdom of Rome was built by Zepho, son of Eliphaz, son of Esau. Tirtat of the land of Elisha attacked him and killed him (Yelamdeinu, Batei Midrashos 160)."
The Malbim in his commentary to Obadia 1,1 suggests that in addition to genealogical descent, the identification of Rome and Esau is also based on the "founding of their faith by children of Edom, as R. Isaac Abarbanel wrote to Isaiah 34, with proofs."
I wish to add a footnote to this point. I have recently been reading an intersting new Hebrew sefer (not an acaademic work), entitled"Meshichei Hasheker umisnagdeihem (False Messiahs and their opponnents). It is a work that comes out of the Lithuanian sector and includes chapters on well-known "messiahs" like Shabsai Tzvi, Nechamiah Chayun, David Reubeni, Jacob Frank, Chaim Malach. Yehuda Hachasid from Vilna and many others, well known and obscure. Curiousely it does not include Abraham Miguel Cardozo but does include Napoleon Bonaparte and Theodor Herzl.
In the chapter on Yeshu, he quotes from several sources that the Christian religion first spread among Edomites, and only later among other Gentiles (p.128). This is brought by R. Avraham ben Harambam, Ramban in Sefer Hageula, Abarabanel in Yeshuas Meshicho 1, Rashbatz in Magen Avos 8:2. He also brings an interesting midrash, which may be the source for this approach: "Why does it (cross) have two heads? Because this Yeshu grasped two heads, of Israel and of Edom...(Osios D'Rabbi Akiva Vertheimer, p.112).
In this approach, Christianity is identified with Edom simply because it was the Edomites who converted first. Although this is not the picture that we see in the Acts of the Apostles, it may well have had a historic basis in the pre-Acts years. The aforementioned sources also indicate that it was after that the Edomites accepted the Chrsitian beliefs, that Paul took a version of Christianity that rejected commandments and allowed worship of images to other lands.
Of course, this approach pretty much removes cosmic significance from the Jacob-Esau axis, which is may be why it is not more widespread and why you and I have not heard of it before.
How do Christian exegetes view the Genesis stories of Jacob and Esau?
They certainly cannot identify with Esau because Malchi 1:2-3 says that G-d hates Esau and loves Jacob. Not being an expert in this area, I believe that they select "local" or devotional explanations of the story but not a typological one. Hebrews 12:15–16, depicts Esau as unspiritual for thoughtlessly throwing away his birthright, betraying traces of Jewish traditional understanding.
see Gerson D Cohen --Esau as a symbol in early medieval thought in Jewish Medieval and Renaissance Studies edited by Alexander Altmann Harvard press 1967
Posted by: Ploni | November 22, 2010 at 11:27 PM