Pesher, ha-Zonah, and Teshuvah in Solomon's Apocalypse

314 Pages·2017·1.87 MB·English

University of New Mexico
UNM Digital Repository
History ETDs Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Summer 7-15-2017
Pesher, ha-Zonah, and Teshuvah in Solomon’s
Apocalypse: Text and Context of The Chronicle of
Solomon bar Samson
Natalie E. Latteri
Follow this and additional works at:https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/hist_etds
Part of theHistory Commons
Recommended Citation
Latteri, Natalie E.. "Pesher, ha-Zonah, and Teshuvah in Solomon’s Apocalypse: Text and Context of The Chronicle of Solomon bar
Samson." (2017).https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/hist_etds/178
This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Electronic Theses and Dissertations at UNM Digital Repository. It has been
accepted for inclusion in History ETDs by an authorized administrator of UNM Digital Repository. For more information, please contact
[email protected].
Natalie E. Latteri 


Candidate
History
!
Department
This dissertation is approved, and it is acceptable in quality and form for publication:
Approved by the Dissertation Committee:

Michael A. Ryan
!
Timothy C. Graham
!
Sarah Davis-Secord
!
Devorah Schoenfeld
!
Ruth Mazo Karras
!

!

!

!

!

i
Pesher, ha-Zonah, and Teshuvah in Solomon’s Apocalypse:
Text and Context of The Chronicle of Solomon bar Samson

By
Natalie E. Latteri
A.A., History, San Joaquin Delta College, 2006
B.A., History, University of California at Davis, 2008
M.A., History, Purdue University, 2011

DISSERTATION
Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
History
Degree Title Awarded
The University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, New Mexico
July, 2017
ii
Dedication   

For my mother, Suzanna,
my partner, Nathan,
and our children, Jonas and Amalie
iii
Acknowledgements
The writing of this dissertation has been an expensive, long, complicated, and often
lonely process. I have, more often than I would like to admit, found myself uncertain of
everything and the purpose of anything. I am fortunate to have been surrounded by a
community of scholars, friends, and family who remind me.
Funding for my doctoral research, travel to conferences, and the last fifteen
months of writing has been provided, in part, by the American Association for Jewish
Research (AAJR), the Midwest Jewish Studies Association, the Medieval Association of
the Pacific, and numerous grants from associations, organizations, or departments at the
University of New Mexico. I am grateful to the Russell J. and Dorothy S. Bilinski
Fellowship Foundation, UNM Regents, the UNM Graduate and Professional Student
Association, the UNM History Graduate Student Association, the UNM Department of
History, the UNM Feminist Research Institute, and the UNM Institute for Medieval
Studies.
This dissertation could not have been written without the invaluable insights
provided by my dissertation committee. I owe a special debt of gratitude to Devorah
Schoenfeld from the Department of Theology at Loyola University, Chicago, and
Timothy C. Graham from the Department of History at the University of New Mexico.
These two committee members regularly took time out of their extremely busy schedules
to read over and comment on individual chapters as I wrote them, and to regularly meet
with and advise me. Ruth Mazo Karras of the Department of History at the University of 

iv
Minnesota and Sarah Davis-Secord of the Department of History at the University of
New Mexico have also provided extensive and provocative comments on the nearly
finished dissertation project that have much improved the final product here. And my
doctoral advisor, Michael A. Ryan, has always provided me with the freedom to explore
topics and subject matter that interest me, and the encouragement to trust my instincts
and develop arguments as I saw fit.
Unofficial academic advisors beyond my committee members are numerous.
Foremost among these is Judah Bob Rosenwald, who has been the source of so much
transcription and translation assistance throughout the writing of this dissertation, the
fount of truly disparate information ranging from string theory to soup recipes, ever a
sympathetic ear, and an endless joy. I am also so very grateful to David Stern, the Harry
Starr Professor of Classical and Modern Jewish and Hebrew Literature at Harvard
University, and the chief grant reader for the AAJR, who not only had faith in my project,
but who was also kind enough to provide encouragement, letters of reference, and
introductions to Hebraists worldwide. Among these, César Merchan-Hamann, Director of
the Leopold Muller Memorial Library and Curator of Hebraica and Judaica at the
Bodleian Library, Oxford University, was kind enough to provide me access to otherwise
restricted material and patient enough to supervise my handling of it. I would also like to
thank another fellow of the AAJR, Martha Himmelfarb of the Department of Religion at
Princeton, who has been exceedingly generous with her thoughts on the Sefer Zerubbabel
and has graciously shared her latest research on the subject both before and after
publication. I would also like to thank Shamma Boyarin of the Department of English at 

v
the University of Victoria and David Goodblatt of the Department of History at the
University of California at San Diego for sending me copies of their work, which I have
incorporated in my dissertation.
Noel Pugach of the Department of History at the University of New Mexico has
been a continued source of support, provoking questions, and much appreciated banter.
Patricia Risso of the Department of History at the University of New Mexico has been a
soothing voice of compassion and the epitome of wisdom and strength. And I am grateful
to Marian Hessink of the Department of English at the University of New Mexico for
providing clarity at a crucial time and wit always. Additional friends who have helped
along the way by lending an ear, sharing their thoughts, and ever cheering me on include
Liz Ebel, Thomas Franke, Jillian Krasuski, and Sarah Obenauf.
Finally, I would like to thank my family. While each member of my very large
extended family has supported me, I would be lost without my mother, Suzanna, my
partner, Nathan Brown, and our children, Jonas and Amalie Latteri-Brown. Thank you for
believing in me and for giving me something to believe in.
vi
Pesher, ha-Zonah, and Teshuvah in Solomon’s Apocalypse:
Text and Context of The Chronicle of Solomon bar Samson
by
Natalie E. Latteri
A.A., History, San Joaquin Delta College, 2006
B.A., History, University of California at Davis, 2008
M.A., History, Purdue University, 2011
Ph.D., History, University of New Mexico, 2017
ABSTRACT
This dissertation analyzes the text and context of a mid-twelfth-century Hebrew narrative
composed by a Northern European Jew writing pseudonymously as Solomon bar
Samson. The so-called Chronicle of Solomon bar Samson treats the perceived reasons for
and Jewish responses to the Rhineland pogroms of 1096 C.E., which were carried out by
burghers, peasants, and crusaders traveling to the Holy Land. The reasons expressed
range from divine retribution for Jewish transgression to Christian vengeance for Christ’s
crucifixion while responses range from voluntary conversion aimed at preserving life to
suicidal and homicidal martyrdom enacted in the hopes of securing atonement and
redemption. Though it depicts historical events, employs elements of contemporary
historical methodology, and scholars have designated it as a chronicle which lauds the
victimized Jewish community as exemplars of piety, this dissertation contends that
Solomon’s narrative neither represents a history nor an homage. A comparison of Jewish
literary genres reveals, instead, that Solomon’s narrative bears similarities to and most
likely was intended to function as an apocalypse. This emerges in Solomon’s employment 

vii
of pesher biblical exegesis, in which apocalypticists commonly conflated periods of
persecution in Israel’s history; the well-known Jewish trope of Israel as a promiscuous
woman, and the related trope of Israel’s seduction by a promiscuous woman, a zonah; and
the doctrine of reform, teshuvah. Through these, Solomon critiqued what he perceived to
be religious leniency, both among the generation of 1096 C.E. as well as his own
contemporary society, in the manner of a Jewish apocalypse. Namely, he suggested that
all past moments of potential messianic redemption, including 1096 C.E., had not come
to fruition because of over-familiarity with or assimilation to the dominant Christian
culture. And, like all apocalypticists, he called for reform as a means of securing
messianic redemption and ushering in the new and final era.

viii
Table of Contents
Introduction………………………………………………………………………..1
Chapter 1 Prelude to an Apocalypse……………………………………………..23
Chapter 2 ‘The End Is (and Was, and Will Be) Nigh’……………………………83
Chapter 3 Liaisons of an Adulterous Woman……………………………..……145
Chapter 4 Teshuvah………………………………………………………….…..211
Afterword……………………………………………………………………….269
Bibliography…………………………………………………………………….276

ix