Religion (1992) 22, 15 1-170

JOSEPH CAMPBELL ON JEWSAND JUDAISM

Robert A. Segal

Joseph Campbell's private expressions of antisemitism have been docu-mented by his acquaintances, his students, and even his friends . ButCampbell's own writings attest to his prejudice . Nearly all of his referencesto Jews and Judaism are disdainful and hostile . Campbell's dislike ofJudaism does stem in part from his dislike of Western religions generallyand to that extent cannot be said to reflect antisemitism . But his dislikeofJudaism is especially uncompromising and, more, appeals to commonantisemitic stereotypes . At the same time Campbell applauds the myth-ology of Judaism, as he does every other mythology, and really seeks tosubstitute the mythology for the religion .

There are those who like both Jews and Judaism . There are those who dislikeJews but like Judaism. There are those who like Jews but dislike Judaism . Inthe companion article to this one Robert Ackerman argues that James Frazercame to be such a person. Finally, there are those who dislike both Jews andJudaism. Sadly, Joseph Campbell, the celebrated scholar of myth, falls here .

Ever since Brendan Gill broke the news of Campbell's antisemitism, 1 confir-mations have abounded . Arnold Krupat, a longtime colleague of Campbell'sat Sarah Lawrence College, relates an incident at a faculty gathering :

At some point in the evening, Campbell, responding to a remark I can't recall, saidsomething to the effect that he could always spot a Jew. I, a Jew, said, `Oh?'Whereupon Campbell went into a description of how the New York Athletic Clubhad ingeniously managed for years to keep Jews out . He went on and on, telling hisstory in the most charming and amiable fashion, without any self-consciousnessabout the views he was expressing and, indeed, without any overt animus-for allthat he obviously relished the notion of keeping Jews out of anywhere any time,forever . 2

Even more unsettling is the recollection of Eve Feldman, a former student ofCampbell's. Having told her teacher that she was Jewish and that she wantedto study the Hebrew Bible, she was informed :

that the God of the Hebrews was an evil God, and that the American Indians'feeling for color and beauty was totally absent from the Bible . . . . [I]mmediatelyafter this opening gambit Campbell became agitated . `He was sweating andpacing and running his fingers through his hair . He began to spew out this

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garbage, about how the college was going Jewish and how he had moved toBronxville to get away from the Jews and here they were taking over . Every fewsentences he'd break off and repeat, `I know I shouldn't be saying this, I know Ishouldn't . . . .' He went down his class roster identifying the students who wereJewish. He said that the Jews had ruined 20th century culture and went through alist ofJewish artists . . . . [I] t was horrifying. It was like watching someone have afit or having them vomit uncontrollably all over you . 3

More important here than whether Campbell disliked Jews is whether hedisliked Judaism . Certainly he never says anything positive about Judaism .Still, he is rarely adulatory toward other Western religions either . Insofar as hechastises them, too, antisemitism can hardly be the sole source of his hostilityto Judaism . Yet his disdain for Judaism is more unremitting .4

Campbell was an odd mix of ecumenical love and generic hatred . He beginshis 1949 Hero with a Thousand Faces, still his best-known book, with the hopethat :

a comparative elucidation [of the similarities among the myths of all peoples] maycontribute to the perhaps not-quite-desperate cause of those forces that areworking in the present world for unification, not in the name of some ecclesiasticalor political empire, but in the sense of human mutual understanding. As we aretold in Vedas : `Truth is one, the sages speak of it by many names .' 5

Yet in almost all his subsequent works Campbell pits one group of humanityagainst another: Westerners against Easterners, moderns against primitives,primitive hunters against primitive farmers . Initially, he reveres Easternersand despises Westerners ; later, the reverse . Initially, he lauds primitives andcondemns moderns; later, the reverse . Initially, he commends primitivefarmers and condemns primitive hunters ; later, the reverse . His feelingstoward religions mirror his feelings toward the peoples whose religions theyare .

CAMPBELL ON RELIGIONCampbell's dislike of a religion is always on the grounds that the religion :

1. interprets its sacred writings-its myths-literally rather than sym-bolically,

2. interprets its sacred writings-its myths-historically rather thanpsychologically,

3. deems its adherents superior rather than merely equal to those of otherreligions,

4. is patriarchal rather than matriarchal in outlook,5. is anti-mystical rather than mystical in outlook .Campbell thus denounces Western religions generally as :1 . literalistic :

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The loss of the connotative reading occurs with the Bible . . . . This accent onhistoricity is quite specific to Judaism and its descendants, Christianity and Islam,taking these things so literally .6

2. historical :

I would define the great value of the Oriental instruction for us [Westerners] asthis : the translation of mythological symbols into psychological references . Wehave read our own mythological symbols as historical references . Moses did go upthe mountain and get the tables of the Law from God, came down, broke them,went up, got a second edition, came back again . This is taken to be literallytrue . . . . So here are these symbols, important symbols of revelation, of spiritualbirth, of exaltation, all read as historical facts . The same symbols come to us fromthe Orient, read however as having psychological reference, representing powerswithin the human spirit, within your spirit, which are to be developed and whichcan be evoked by contemplation and meditation on appropriate symbolic forms .

3. ethnocentric :

The historical references, if they have any meaning at all, must be secondary ; as,for instance, in Buddhist thinking, where the historical prince Gautama Shakya-muni is regarded as but one of many historical embodiments of Buddha-consciousness ; or in Hindu thought, where the incarnations of Vishnu areinnumerable. The difficulty faced today by Christian thinkers in this regardfollows from their doctrine of the Nazarene as the unique historical incarnation ofGod; and in Judaism, likewise, there is the no less troublesome doctrine of auniversal God whose eye is on but one Chosen People of all in his created world . $

4. patriarchal :

Toward the close of the Age of Bronze and, more strongly, with the dawn of theAge of Iron (c . 1250 B.C. in the Levant), the old cosmology and mythologies of thegoddess mother were radically transformed, reinterpreted, and in large measureeven suppressed, by those suddenly intrusive patriarchal warrior tribesmen whosetraditions have come down to us chiefly in the Old and New Testaments and in themyths of Greece. 9

5. anti-mystical :

[N]either to the patriarchal Aryans nor to the patriarchal Semites belong thegenial, mystic, poetic themes of the lovely world of a paradise neither lost norregained but ever present in the bosom of the goddess-mother in whose being wehave our death, as well as life, without fear . i o

Campbell equates matriarchy with mysticism and patriarchy with anti-mysticism. Matriarchy means less rule by female gods than the dissolution ofthe very distinctions into god and human and into male and female . Patriarchymeans the division into superior god and subordinate human and into superiormale and subordinate female .

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Even while pitting Western religions against Eastern ones, Campbelldistinguishes the Indo-European branch of Western religion-Greco-Roman,Germanic, and Celtic-from the Semitic one-Jewish, Christian, andMuslim-and praises Indo-Europeans for holding Eastern-like views ."Furthermore, while never ceasing to castigate either Western religions ingeneral or the Semitic branch in particular, he comes to castigate Easternreligions as well . But when he does so, it is, most disconcertingly, for theiradherence to the very mystical outlook that he had previously praised them forholding! 12 Now he touts the modern, secular West as a model for the East ofpatriarchal and anti-mystical individualism. 13

Campbell's view of primitive planters and hunters fluctuates in the samedirection as his view of East and West . In his earlier writings he preferscommunally minded planters to solitary hunters . In his later writings hereverses himself: primitive hunters now become the prescient forerunners ofmodern, particularly American self-reliant individualism .

Just as Campbell comes to damn Eastern as well as Western religions for themysticism that he earlier applauded, so at times he condemns the East as wellas the West for the literalism and parochialism that he otherwise lauds theEast for transcending :

Now the peoples of all the great civilizations everywhere have been prone tointerpret their own symbolic figures literally, and so to regard themselves asfavored in a special way, in direct contact with the Absolute . Even the poly-theistic Greeks and Romans, Hindus and Chinese, all of whom were able toview the gods and customs of others sympathetically, thought of their own assupreme or, at the very least, superior . . . 14

Whatever the religion criticized, Campbell distinguishes it from its myth-ology, which he always praises. Indeed, his central criticism of any religion isthat it misconstrues its own myths . Campbell insists that the mythology of everyreligion preaches the non-literal, non-historical, universalistic, matriarchal,and mystical outlook that religions themselves typically miss .

CAMPBELL ON JUDAISM AS A RELIGIONCampbell berates Judaism on the same grounds that he berates other Westernand, at times, Eastern religions :

1 . for its literal rather than symbolic interpretation of its myths,2. for its historical rather than psychological interpretation of its myths,3. for its nationalistic rather than universalistic outlook,4. for its patriarchal rather than matriarchal outlook,5. for its anti-mystical rather than mystical outlook .The quotations already cited display Campbell's view of Judaism as

literalistic and historical-for him characteristics as allied as patriarchal and

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anti-mystical . Campbell is even more obsessed with Judaism as ethnocentric .He compares the Jewish outlook with that of `the earliest, most limited andlimiting mythologies of which we have knowledge', where `the horizons arelocal and tribal' :

Read again the first, second, third, and fourth chapters of the Book of Genesis .Such a tiny, minute affair! What relation does such a cosmology bear to theuniverse now perceived? Or to the histories of any but one of the people [s] of thisearth? As stated unequivocally in II Kings 5 :15, `There is no god in all the earthbut in Israel' . For at that time the center of the universe was Jerusalem . And thecenter ofJerusalem was the Temple. And the center of the Temple was the Holy ofHolies in the Temple. And the center of the Holy of Holies was the Ark of theCovenant therein. And the foundation of the universe was the Stone that was therebefore the Ark. Mythologically, metaphorically, that was a perfectly good culticimage. But it had nothing to do with the universe, or with the rest of the peoples ofthis planet . 15

Campbell goes further. Even aboriginal peoples possess a broader visionthan Jews :

In aboriginal societies, the tribal myths, while unexceptionally ethnocentric, donot anywhere exhibit such an exclusive fascination with the people themselves [asin Judaism] ; for every feature of the landscape, the whole world of nature andeverything around them, is encompassed in their regard . 16

In contrast to the parochialism of Biblical prophets stands the universalism ofthe Sioux prophet Black Elk :

For, as Black Elk remarked to Neihardt when telling of this vision beheld fromHarney Peak, South Dakota, as center of the world : `But anywhere is the center ofthe world' . There, I would say, was a true prophet, who knew the differencebetween his ethnic [i .e ., local] ideas and the elementary [i .e ., universal] ideas thatthey enclose, between a metaphor and its connotation, between a tribal myth andits metaphysical import . 17

In his denunciation ofJewish parochialism Campbell is perhaps referring toonly ancient, not modern, Judaism . But, first, he ignores the universalismwithin the Bible itself-for example, in Second Isaiah, in Amos, and in theWisdom Literature . Second, he rarely mentions other than ancient Judaism-as if nothing has ever changed . For him, Judaism means the Hebrew Bible,and the Hebrew Bible read a single way . Third, he states that nothing haschanged. He says that in the wake of the fall of the Second Temple and theconsequent Diaspora the Rabbis proclaimed the centre of the cosmos to be apeople rather than a place precisely to retain the ethnocentrism inherent inJudaism :

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The center now was to be known, not as a place, but as a people ; not the Temple orthe Ark, which meanwhile had disappeared, but the Israelite community over theearth. And so again in strictly ethnocentric terms, a tribal concept of the universe,its history, and its destiny (now highly intentional and sophisticated) was devised,having as its central feature the one and only holy thing upon all this earth ; thesepeople, themselves, of God's holy race . 18

Put even more bluntly :

Here [in Judaism] you have an exclusivism and a tribalism, which in Judaismcontinues to this day . Not only that, but Yahweh is the only God, the others aredevils . There's no God in all the earth but in Israel . This is the religion that we'veinherited in our Western tradition . 19

According to Campbell, the ethnocentrism of the Bible has allowed Jews tokill Gentiles with impunity :

For example, the ten commandments say,'Thou shalt not kill' . Then the nextchapter says, `Go into Canaan and kill everybody in it' . That is a bounded field .The myths of participation and love pertain only to the in-group, and the out-group is totally other . This is the sense of the word `gentile'-the person is not ofthe same order . 20

Judaism for Campbell is not only ethnocentric but also sexist . It spurns themother goddess, for Campbell the key figure in the universal pantheon :

Of course, in biblical times, when the Hebrews came in, they really wiped out theGoddess. The term for the Canaanite goddess that's used in the Old Testament is`the Abomination'. Apparently, throughout the period represented in the Book ofKings, for example, there was a back and forth between the two cults . Many of theHebrew kings are condemned in the Old Testament for having worshiped on themountaintops . Those mountains were symbols of the Goddess . And there was avery strong accent against the Goddess in the Hebrew, which you do not find in theIndo-European mythologies . Here you have Zeus marrying the Goddess, and thenthe two play together . So, it's an extreme case that we have in the Bible, and ourown Western subjugation of the female is a function of biblical thinking . 21

Less hostile scholars maintain that prophetic diatribes against pagan worshipmean that `biblical thinking' was disparate: alongside the official repudiationof the mother goddess and other brands of paganism went popular indulgencein them. By contrast, Campbell pits a monolithic Biblical religion againstpagan encroachments on it .

Robert Ackerman argues that James Frazer's native antisemitism graduallybecame philosemitism. Campbell's antisemitism simply got worse, as friendsof his sheepishly confessed to me while I was doing research for my book onhim. Not coincidentally, Campbell's most egregious written remarks againstJudaism, including all of the ones that I have so far quoted, come from his laterworks: The Inner Reaches of Outer Space (1986), The Power of Myth (1988), and

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Transformations of Myth through Time (1990)-the last two published pos-thumously . Since Campbell's whole corpus contains nary a neutral, much lessa kind, word about Judaism, Campbell's dislike was no late acquisition . Thedifference in tone between earlier and later Campbell reflects his incapacity tocontain his virulence even in print .

Distressingly, Campbell's would-be scholarly characterizations of Judaismevince all of the stock antisemitic eipthets : Judaism is chauvinistic, fossilized,and, in the wake of the feminist movement, sexist . It is also legalistic, which issynonymous with literalistic : Campbell compares his computer with `an OldTestament god with a lot of rules and no mercy' . 22

The disjunction that Ackerman demonstrates between Frazer on Judaism,which he continues to scorn, and Frazer on Jews, whom he comes to admire,finds no counterpart in Campbell, for whom the two coincide . For example, itis not only Judaism but also Jews who are clannish . When one of Campbell'smany Jewish students at Sarah Lawrence declared, `You know, Mr . Campbell,if I didn't think of myself as Jewish, I wouldn't know my identity', Campbellreports that he was `stunned' :

I said, `Rachel, what are you saying? I never thought of you as Jewish or anythingelse, but as Rachel . Suppose I were to say to you, "If I didn't think of myself asIrish, I wouldn't know my identity' . That wouldn't make sense, would it?"' Theseare two totally different ways of relating to race . 23

In conventional antisemitic fashion Jews are simultaneously typed a race andblamed for not assimilating . Campbell's surprise at his student's identificationof herself as Jewish seems disingenuous when he himself never tires of sayingthat `in the Hebrew context'

God has ordained a Covenant with a certain Semitic people . Birth as a member ofthat holy race, and observance of its rituals of the Covenant, are the means ofachieving a relationship with God . No other means are known or admitted toexist . 24

To the possibility of converting to Judaism, an option which makes itspractitioners other than a race, Campbell is oblivious .

Even if Campbell's aversion to the purported patriarchal and anti-mysticalcharacter of Judaism is merely a part of his aversion to the patriarchal andanti-mystical nature of Western religions as a whole, he still names Judaism asthe worst offender :

The victory of the patriarchal deities over the earlier matriarchal ones was not asdecisive in the Greco-Roman sphere as in the myths of the Old Testament . . . .For in Greece the patriarchal gods did not exterminate, but married, the goddessesof the land, and these succeeded ultimately in regaining influence, whereas inbiblical mythology all the goddesses were exterminated . . . .'' 5

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More important, Campbell allows for some noble exceptions in the cases ofother Western religions but for barely any in the case of Judaism . Hecontinually cites Christian Gnosticism as an expression, albeit a heretical andpersecuted expression, of mystical Christianity . Doubtless Campbell invokesGnosticism to spite mainstream Christianity, but at least he recognizesalternative forms of Christianity . As idiosyncratic as his interpretation ofGnosticism is, he does regard it as not only mystical, which it is, but alsosomehow world-affirming, which for him is the sole proper form of mysticism .Campbell assumes that because immateriality lies within the material world,immateriality and matter are one, in which case Gnosticism embraces ratherthan, like mainstream Christianity, rejects the world . 26

Furthermore, Campbell links Gnosticism to courtly love, for him the mostglorious manifestation of world-affirming Western mysticism . Where ortho-dox Christianity preaches world-rejecting agape, both courtly love andGnosticism preach world-embracing amor . Still further, Campbell charac-terizes the Gnostic-like outlook of courtly love as the embodiment of a`consciously developed secular Christian myth .' 27 Campbell thus seesChristianity as capable of secular form . He even venerates his two chiefmodern heroes, Thomas Mann and James Joyce, as, respectively, Protestantand Catholic pavers of modernity. By contrast, all of Judaism is religious,otherworldly, and outdated . Hence Campbell contrasts Joyce's secular,world-affirming Christianity to the ineluctably religious, world-rejectingnature of not only old-fashioned Christianity but also all of Judaism :

But between Joyce's and the Roman Catholic clergy's ways of interpretingChristian symbols there is a world of difference . The artist reads them in theuniversally known old Greco-Roman, Celto-Germanic, Hindu-Buddhist-Taoist,Neoplatonic way, as referring to an experience of the mystery beyond theologythat is immanent in all things, including gods, demons, and flies . The priests, onthe other hand, are insisting on the absolute finality of their Old Testamentconcept of a personal creator `out there', who, though omnipresent, omniscient,and omni-everything-else, is ontologically distinct from the living substance of hisworld . . . . 28

To be fair, Campbell does occasionally note Jewish mysticism . 29 He evencompares it with Christian Gnosticism and praises both for their matriarchalethos :

The cabalistic writings of the medieval Jews, as well as the Gnostic Christianwritings of the second century, represent the World Made Flesh as andro-gynous-which was indeed the state of Adam as he was created, before the femaleaspect, Eve, was removed into another form . 30

Campbell contrasts outright the literalism of mainstream Judaism andChristianity to `the gnostic traditions of Judaism and Christianity' . 81 But he

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nevertheless severs Jewish mysticism from the rest of Judaism, which he isthen free to deplore . Jewish mysticism is for him a wholly medieval, anomalousstrain ofJudaism . There is for Campbell no continuing Jewish mysticism, letalone any modern, secular variety ofJudaism .

CAMPBELL ONJUDAISM AS A MYTHOLOGYAs relentlessly dismissive ofJudaism as Campbell ordinarily is, he dismisses itin the name ofJudaism itself. Judaism, like every other Western religion, hasmisunderstood itself, indeed has perverted itself. Judaism can, however, besaved-once Judaism the religion is replaced by Judaism the mythology . SinceJews themselves have perennially been inculcated in Judaism as a religion,they can hardly save Judaism . Only Campbell can . He alone grasps the true,mythic nature ofJudaism . He thus becomes the savior ofJudaism . He saves itfrom itself. He saves Judaism not by forging myths for it but by revealing themyths it harbours .

The mythology ofJudaism is to be found in the same sacred source as thereligion : the Hebrew Bible . Judaism the religion has simply misunderstood theBible, which it has systematically interpreted literally, historically, parti-cularistically, patriarchally, and anti-mystically . Judaism the mythologyinterprets the Bible symbolically, psychologically, comparatively, matri-archally, and mystically .

Interpreting the Bible mythically means showing that it, like the sacredwritings of any other religion, preaches oneness between god and humans andbetween males and females . It also means showing how the Bible, takenpsychologically, preaches oneness between the unconscious and the consciousparts of the human mind .

Take, for example, the Garden of Eden story . Campbell grants that on thesurface a patriarchal, anti-mystical `mood prevails' :

For the Lord God (the written Hebrew name is Yahweh) cursed the serpent whenhe knew that Adam had eaten the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil ;and he said to his angels : "`Behold, the man has become like one of us, knowinggood and evil; and now, lest he put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life,and eat, and live for ever [sic]"-therefore Yahweh sent him forth from the gardenof Eden, to till the ground from which he was taken .' 32

God punishes humanity for daring to seek divinity .Campbell, however, equates Eve with a female god and maintains that her

rebellion against the male God represents an attempt by defeated female godsto regain their rule . Both the serpent and Adam are also party to the rebellion .The serpent, though male, clearly sides with females . It not only instigates therevolt but also possesses the capacity to `slough its skin and so renew itsyouth ' 33 -a property that Campbell equates with outright immortality andsays the serpent, in matriarchal fashion, is eager to share with humanity .

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Campbell does concede that this particular revolt fails . Keeping the triofrom becoming gods themselves, God thereby re-establishes patriarchy :

Thus Yahweh cursed the woman to bring forth in pain and be subject to herspouse-which set the seal of the patriarchy on the new age . And he cursed, also,the man who had come to the tree and eaten of the fruit that she presented .34

But Campbell suggests that the earth' to which Adam and Eve will, as dust,be returning symbolizes the mother goddess, who, in receiving back herchildren, triumphs over God . Matriarchy, again, spells mysticism : in return-ing to Earth, Adam and Eve become one with her . Campbell even suggeststhat at death Adam and Eve will themselves again become one -Eve havingemerged from Adam's rib . Matriarchy, again, means the identity of not onlyhumans with gods but also males with females :

But the ground, the dust, out of which the punished couple had been taken, was, ofcourse, the goddess Earth, deprived of her anthropomorphic features, yet retain-ing in her elemental aspect her function of furnishing the substance into which thenew spouse, Yahweh, had breathed the breath of her children's life, And they wereto return to her, not to the father, in death . . . . Like the Titans of the older faith,Adam and Eve were thus the children of the mother-goddess Earth . They hadbeen one at first, as Adam ; then split in two, as Adam and EveThe man', weread, `called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all living' . As themother of all living, Eve herself, then, must be recognized as the missinganthropomorphic aspect of the mother-goddess . And Adam, therefore, must havebeen her son as well as spouse: for the legend of the rib is clearly a patriarchalinversion (giving precedence to the male) of the earlier myth of the hero born fromthe goddess Earth [i .e ., Eve], who returns to her to be reborn . 35

Even suppose the Bible is interpretable as depicting the ultimate victory ofmatriarchy over patriarchy . Is it also interpretable as endorsing rather thandamning that victory? If not, the Bible would still seem to be preachingpatriarchy. Campbell's response is that the Bible itself, not just devotees of it,fails to perceive its matriarchal nature :

[T]here is consequently an ambivalence inherent in many of the basic symbols ofthe Bible that no amount of rhetorical stress on the patriarchal interpretation cansuppress. They address a pictorial message to the heart that exactly reverses the[patriarchal] verbal message addressed to the brain . . . 36

Sometimes Campbell faults all three biblically based religions for theirobtuseness : ` . . . this nervous discord [i .e ., ambivalence] inhabits bothChristianity and Islam as well as Judaism, since they too share in the legacy ofthe Old Testament' . 37 But more often he singles out Judaism for opprobrium .He contrasts the Jewish condemnation of Adam and Eve to the Christiantribute to them-a tribute inferred from the Christian doctrine of the fortunatefall :

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. . . it is certain that the ninth- and fourth-century B .C . [Jewish] shapers of thistale had no such adventurous thought in mind-though something similar isimplicit in the Roman Catholic idea that `the essence of the Bible story is that theFall, the disintegration, is permitted in order that a greater good may come' . 38

Here it is mainstream Christians, not simply heretical ones, who see the light .Christ's death restores the immortality of life in Eden :

The teaching here is that Christ restored to man immortality. His cross, through-out the Middle Ages, was equated with the tree of immortal life ; and the fruit ofthat tree was the crucified Savior himself, who there offered up his flesh and hisblood to be our `meat indeed' and our `drink indeed' . He himself had boldlywalked, so to say, right on through the guarded gate without fear of the cherubimand that flaming turning sword . . . . [T]he Western Savior left his body nailed tothe tree and passed in spirit to atonement-at-one-ment-with the Father: to befollowed now by ourselves . 39

Immortality is one of the rewards that egalitarian matriarchy confers on mere`mortals' .

Translated into psychological terms, the Garden of Eden story is referring tono particular place or time: `Mythology is not history, although myths like thatof Eden have been frequently misread as such . . . .' 40 Rather than a patch ofland at the meeting of four rivers, Eden betokens the unconscious . The worldoutside Eden symbolizes ego consciousness . The lamentable eviction of Adamand Eve from Eden really describes the laudable emergence of ego conscious-ness-consciousness of the external world-out of incipient unconsciousness .Far from a fall, the move constitutes progress .

At the same time the story espouses an eventual return to Eden, or tounconsciousness . The envisioned apocalypse will fulfill the yearning to return :

Taken as referring not to any geographical scene, but to a landscape of the soul,that Garden of Eden would have to be within us . Yet our conscious minds areunable to enter it and enjoy there the taste of eternal life, since we have alreadytasted of the knowledge of good and evil . That, in fact, must then be the knowledgethat has thrown us out of the garden, pitched us away from our own center, so thatwe now judge things in those terms and experience only good and evil instead ofeternal life-which, since the enclosed garden is within us, must already be ours,even though unknown to our conscious personalities . That would seem to be themeaning of the myth when read, not as prehistory, but as referring to man'sinward spiritual state . 41

The world outside Eden story is less fallen than illusory. There exists onlyunconsciousness, to which Adam and Eve are rightly striving to return . 42

Campbell, often mistyped as a Jungian, advocates not, like Carl Jung, theenlargement of consciousness but instead reversion to blissful unconscious-ness. Matriarchy for Campbell symbolizes not, as for Jung, the reconnection ofthe patriarchal ego to the unconscious but, on the contrary, the surrender of

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the ego to the unconscious . 43 And so, for Campbell, Adam and Eve are doing :they are returning to Earth forever. What Campbell says of Genesis 3 he wouldsay-does say-of the Hebrew Bible as a whole .

CAMPBELL'S EPISTEMOLOGYThe issue at hand is only secondarily whether Campbell's mystical, matri-archal, and psychological interpretation of Judaism is correct. CertainlyCampbell is scarcely the first to interpret Judaism in these ways . The eminentscholar Gershom Scholem asserts that mysticism is the essence of Judaismrather than an exotic, marginal, heretical offshoot . 44 More popularly, RaphaelPatai argues for the importance of the mother goddess in Judaism . 45 Psycho-logical analyses ofJudaism abound . 46 Yet Campbell cites not Scholem, Patai,or anyone else as justification for his rendering ofJudaism . Campbell's failureto take Scholem into account is especially surprising . Whether or not the twoever met, both gave multiple lectures at the annual Eranos Conferences, andCampbell edited a six-volume selection of Eranos talks . Campbell had to knowof Scholem .

If Campbell does not appeal to authorities for his views, he certainly doesnot appeal to ordinary Jews themselves . For him, practicing Jews are blind totheir mythology. As justification for his depiction of true Judaism, Campbellappeals instead to the mythologies of other peoples . He invokes his status as acomparativist. To paraphrase Max Muller, he knows the meaning of this onemythology because he knows the meaning of every other one . So strong forCampbell are the similarities among the mythologies of the world that themeaning of them must be the same :

Comparative cultural studies have now demonstrated beyond question thatsimilar mythic tales are to be found in every quarter of this earth . When Cortes andhis Catholic Spaniards arrived in Aztec Mexico, they immediately recognized inthe local religion so many parallels to their own True Faith that they were hard putto explain the fact . . . . There was a High God above all, who was beyond allhuman thought and imaging . There was even an incarnate Saviour, associatedwith a serpent, born of a virgin, who had died and was resurrected, one of whosesymbols was a cross . . . . Modern scholarship, systematically comparing themyths and rites of mankind, has found just about everywhere legends of virginsgiving birth to heroes who die and are resurrected . 47

Campbell's appeal to comparativism is doubly problematic . First, what ofthe differences among mythologies? Campbell's invariable rejoinder is that thesimilarities are more telling . But others demur, Where Campbell shrugs off alldifferences as trivial and incidental, particularists snub the similarities asvague and superficial .48 But it is scarcely clear that Campbell is right and theywrong. It is not self-evident that a survey of even all the instances of aphenomenon provides a keener understanding of any one instance than the

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meticulous scrutiny of that single instance . Moreover, how does Campbell, orany other comparativist, know the meaning of all mythologies without firstknowing the meaning of any one or two?

Second, how does Campbell know that the meanings deciphered by rivalcomparativists are wrong? All theorists of myth are by nature comparativists,yet by no means do all of them read myth symbolically, psychologically,matriarchally, and mystically . Edward Taylor and James Frazer, for example,vaunt their comparativism as proudly as Campbell does his, yet they readmyth literally-as a pre-scientific explanation of the effect of gods onthe physical world. No approach to myth could be more antithetical toCampbell's . Like Campbell, Tylor, Lord Raglan, and Vladimir Propp main-tain that all hero myths follow a pattern, but unlike Campbell the three takeliterally the patterns they detect : for all three, a hero is someone who literallyundertakes the adventures that his myth says he does . Like Campbell, OttoRank reads psychologically the pattern he finds in hero myths, but hisFreudian pattern is neither matriarchal nor mystical : a hero encounters hisparents, not other sides of his personality, and the encounter is hostile, notharmonious. Among major theorists of myth the only one who, like Campbell,reads myth mystically is Lucien Levy-Bruhl, and even he does not tiemysticism to matriarchy . In short, comparativism per se in no way dictatesCampbell's comparativism .

Left with neither adherents nor a methodology to justify his radical inter-pretation ofJudaism, Campbell ultimately appeals to his own powers of intui-tion. He knows because he is so insightful . But what test confirms his insights?

CAMPBELL'S SOURCESIt is unlikely that Campbell's negative view ofJudaism the religion stems fromany scholarly scrutiny . So visceral are his statements that his view far morelikely reflects his upbringing . Partly, he dislikes Judaism the religion becausehe dislikes Western religions generally, but partly he dislikes Judaism becausehe was doubtless raised to characterize it in particular as literalistic, chauvin-istic, and passe . For all his castigation of Christianity, Campbell happilyadopts its stigmatizing of Judaism as the relic of a narrowminded andrecalcitrant race . He also dislikes the religion so much because he dislikes thepeople whose religion it is, and he was no doubt brought up to regard Jews theway he does .

Campbell's positive view ofJudaism the mythology, which has nothing todo with Jews themselves, stems from his view of mythology as the sameeverywhere. He is therefore beholden to those who argue that mythology isuniform. When he attributes the similarities in myths to independent inven-tion, as he does half the time, he cites Jung, Frazer, Tylor, and most of all theGerman ethnologist Adolf Bastian :

164 R. A . Segal

Reviewing with unprejudiced eye the religious traditions of mankind, one becomesvery soon aware of certain mythic motifs that are common to all, though differentlyunderstood and developed in the differing traditions : ideas, for example, of a lifebeyond death, or of malevolent and protective spirits . Adolf Bastian . . . termedthese recurrent themes and features `elementary ideas' . . . . The same mythicmotifs that Bastian had termed `elementary ideas', Jung called `archetypes of thecollective unconscious49

What are we to think of all these coincidences? Whence come these timeless,placeless themes? . . . [S] hall we seek our answer . . . in some psychological theory,like many of the most distinguished nineteenth-century ethnologists-Bastian, forexample, Tylor, and Frazer-attributing such cross-cultural accords to `theeffect', as Frazer put it, `of similar causes acting alike on the similar constitution ofthe human mind in different countries and under different skies'?' 0

When, alternatively, Campbell ascribes the similarities in myths to dif-fusion, as he does the other half of the time, 51 he invokes above all the Germanexplorer Leo Frobenius :

1898: Le Frobenius announced a new approach to the study of primitive cultures(the Kulturkreislehre, `culture area theory'), wherein he identified a primitivecultural continuum, extending from equatorial West Africa eastward, throughIndia and Indonesia, Melanesia and Polynesia, across the Pacific to equatorialAmerica and the northwest coast . This was a radical challenge to the older`parallel development' [i .e ., independent invention] or `psychological' schools ofinterpretation, such as [Daniel] Brinton, Bastian, Tylor, and Frazer had repre-sented, inasmuch as it brought the broad and bold theory of a primitive trans-oceanic `diffusion' to bear upon the question of the distribution of so-called`universal' themes . 52

Throughout his writings Campbell appeals to Frobenius, Bastian, Jung,Frazer, and Tylor. He is fixated on them . Only infrequently does he refer tolater authorities or to American ones . Thus Franz Boas, the founder ofAmerican anthropology, and his largely diffusionist disciples get mentionedonly occasionally .

At the same time Campbell is closer to some of his mentors in some worksthan in others . For example, he is appropriately closest to Frobenius in hisunfinished Historical Atlas of World Mythology, in which he is at his mostdiffusionist . 53 Campbell's cartographic style, intended to trace the disparatemigrations and reciprocal influences of whole cultures, mimics Frobenius's . 34

Whatever the explanation of the similarities in myths, Campbell recountsthat he first recognized them on his own . While reading all the books that he, aprecocious child of nine could find on American Indians, he

was being educated by the nuns in the Roman Catholic religion and it didn't takeme very long to realize that there were virgin births, deaths and resurrections inboth mythological systems . So very early on I became interested in this com-

J. Campbell on Jews and Judaism 165

parative realization, and by the age of eleven or twelve, I was pretty well into thematerial .55

Yet it was not until Campbell's two-year stint in Europe on a travellingfellowship that he discovered the keys to interpreting the by now universalthemes that he had found : Freud and Jung .

Campbell states that in The Hero with a Thousand Faces, his first book,Freud and Jung `were equal in my thinking . . . . But then, in the yearsfollowing, Jung became more and more eloquent to me .' 56 It is true thatCampbell cites Freud far more often in Hero than in later works and that Herobears none of Campbell's later dismissals of Freud . 57 Yet even in HeroCampbell's analysis is much more Jungian than Freudian . Campbell's hero isseeking reconnection to the archetypal unconscious rather than a continuingtie to the never transcended sexual and aggressive unconscious . Campbell'shero is dealing with problems of the Jungian second half of life rather than withthose of the Freudian first half.

Moreover, the Freudian who most influences Campbell, Geza Roheim,breaks with Freud in ways that Campbell carries further toward Jung . Theprime yearning, according to Roheim, is not for Oedipal intercourse with themother but for reunion with her. Campbell transforms that reunion intomystical reunion with the mother goddess, who stands for the Jungian GreatMother, who in turn stands for the collective unconscious as a whole . 58

Campbell is indebted to Jung not merely for psychologizing myths-obviously Freud does the same-but, even more, for psychologizing thempositively :

Myths, according to Freud's view, are of the psychological order of dream . . . .Both, in his opinion, are symptomatic of repressions of infantile incest wishes . . . .Civilization itself, in fact, is a pathological surrogate for unconscious infantiledisappointments . . . . An altogether different approach is represented by Carl G .Jung, in whose view the imageries of mythology and religion serve positive, life-furthering ends . . . . [Myths] are telling us in picture language of powers of thepsyche to be recognized and integrated in our lives . . . . Through a dialogueconducted with these inward forces through our dreams and through a study ofmyths, we can learn to know and come to terms with the greater horizon of our owndeeper and wiser, inward self. 59

Still, Campbell was never an outright Jungian and was really his ownperson. Where for Jung independent invention rather than diffusion inevitablyaccounts for the similarities among myths, for Campbell diffusion is at least asimportant a cause . Where for Jung myths serve to reconnect one to theunconscious, for Campbell they serve a host of additional, non-psychologicalfunctions-among them, linking one to the cosmos and to society . Where forJung the psychological ideal is a balance between consciousness and un-consciousness, for Campbell the ideal is a fusion of the two that amounts to

166 R. A . Segal

sheer unconsciousness . Where for Jung myth is by no means the sole means topsychological nirvana, for Campbell it is .60

Furthermore, Campbell himself declares that his true guru was not Jung butthe Indologist Heinrich Zimmer, the European emigre whom Campbell metat Columbia University :

If I do have a guru, . . . it would be Zimmer-the one who really gave me thecourage to interpret myths out of what I knew of their common symbols .61Zimmer was much more in [sic] myth than Jung was . Jung tends to put forms onthe myths with those archetypes ; the Jungians kind of cookie-molded the thing .None of that with Zimmer . I never knew anyone who had such a gift forinterpreting a symbolic image . You'd sit down at the table with him and bring upsomething-he'd talk about the symbolism of onion soup . 62

Campbell credits Zimmer with teaching him to appreciate the distinctivenessrather than, like Jung, the uniformity of individual mythic symbols-anassessment that may be as inaccurate about Campbell, who stresses thesimilarities, as it definitely is about Jung, who is no less concerned with thedifferences .

From Zimmer, Campbell garnered the mystical and world-affirming inter-pretation that Campbell proceeded to find in all myths, not only in Indianones. For Campbell, following Zimmer, divinity, or ultimate reality, is to befound within the secular, everyday world rather than beyond it :

Just as in true love', wrote Zimmer, in a brilliant exposition of Indian philosophy,Ewiges Indien, published in 1930, `or just as in a true marriage, the two no longerlive `for one another' but are within each other, so is the eternally living DivinePrinciple ever within the world as its animating power' . 63

The distinction for Campbell between primitive hunters and planters-adistinction that for Campbell is ultimately identical with that betweenWesterners and Easterners 64-derives wholly from Frobenius. FollowingFrobenius, Campbell attributes this economic difference to geography andaccords it metaphysical ramifications . Where for Frazer, for example, peoplehunt or plant in order to eat, for Campbell and Frobenius people do either toexpress their relationship to the world . Hunters are individualists ; planters,denizens of a community. Hunters disrupt the cycle of nature by killing whatthey eat ; planters preserve the cycle by cultivating what they eat . Hunting is adistinctively male activity ; planting, a female one . 65

Campbell associates hunting with patriarchy and planting with matriarchy .His postulation of a pristine matriarchal order stems from the Swiss classicistand jurist J. J . Bachofen . 66 Following Bachofen, Campbell associates patri-archy with the West and matriarchy with the East . Also following Bachofen,he associates patriarchy with change, striving, fighting, self-centredness, and

J. Campbell on Jews and Judaism 167

hierarchy, and associates matriarchy with changelessness, passivity, peace,

selflessness, and equality .Campbell, a psychologist rather than a historian, is interested not, like

Bachofen, in patriarchal and matriarchal institutions such as those of in-heritance and law but in the patriarchal and matriarchal sides of the per-sonality. For Campbell, here following Jung rather than Bachofen, patriarchymeans the primacy of the male side in all humans ; matriarchy, the primacy ofthe female side. For Bachofen, there was an actual shift in history from amatriarchal to the present patriarchal order . For Campbell, the shift wassuperficial. The prime character of all humans is really female, so thatpatriarchy has only seemingly supplanted matriarchy, which in disguisedform has remained entrenched. Bachofen, for all his yearning for lost matri-archy, ultimately deems patriarchy superior to matriarchy. Campbell con-siders matriarchy alone the fulfillment of human nature . 67

From the views of these varied thinkers Campbell concocts his symbolic,matriarchal, mystical, world-affirming, universalistic vision of mythology. Onthe basis of that vision Campbell evaluates Judaism .

NOTES1 B. Gill, `The faces of Joseph Campbell', The New York Review of Books 36 :14 (28

September 1989), pp . 16-9 .2 A. Krupat, letter to The New York Times (2 December 1989), p . 26 .3 A . Taubin, `Hit or myth', Village Voice (12 December 1989), p . 71 . For other tales

of Campbell's antisemitism see the debate in `Joseph Campbell : an exchange', TheNew York Review of Books 36 :17 (9 November 1989), pp . 57-61 .

4 By contrast, Frazer is at least as harsh on Christianity and on Greek religion as onJudaism. Because he treats Judaism no worse than Christianity, antisemitismcannot be the culprit . The cause is doubtless Frazer's disdain for religion per se .His view of Jews-not just his later philosemitism but even his earlier anti-semitism-seems irrelevant .

5 Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Bollingen Series XVII, 1stedn. New York, Pantheon Books 1949, p, viii .

6 Joseph Campbell, interview with Chris Goodrich, Publishers Weekly 228 (23August 1985), p . 75 .

7 Joseph Campbell, interview with Lorraine Kisly, Parabola 1 (Spring 1976), p . 75 .8 Joseph Campbell, Myths to Live By, New York; Bantam Books 1973, p . 262 .9 Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God; Occidental Mythology, New York, Viking

1964, p . 7 .10 Ibid., p . 54 .11 See, e .g. Joseph Campbell, `Campbell on the great goddess', Parabola 5

(November 1980), pp . 81-84 .12 See especially Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God: Oriental Mythology, New York,

Viking 1962, ch. 9 .13 See especially Joseph Campbell, `The symbol without meaning', Eranos Jahrbiich

26 (1957), pp . 415-76 . One interviewer attributes Campbell's belated scorn for theEast to Campbell's revulsion at what he saw when he visited India in 1954 : `He

168 R. A . Segal

was so appalled by the caste system and the lack of respect for the individual thathe returned a confirmed Westerner, celebrating the uniqueness of the person' : seeSam Keen, Voices and Visions, New York, Harper & Row 1974, p . 71 . Alter-natively, two critics of Campbell's ascribe the shift to political shifts in Americanculture . According to them, the pro-Eastern Hero with a Thousand Faces, writtenjust after World War II, envinces post-war American belief in world peace andunity . By contrast, the pro-Western Masks of God, written in the 1950s and 1960s,expresses subsequent American opposition to totalitarianism in the Third Worldas well as in the Soviet Union : see F . Sandler and D. Reeck, `The masks ofJosephCampbell', Religion 11 (January 1981) pp. 1-20 . But Campbell's praise of the Eastappears above all in volumes two (Oriental Mythology) and three (OccidentalMythology) of Masks itself, volumes which appeared as late as 1962 and 1964 . Thesame chronology undercuts the attribution of Campbell's reversal of views to histrek to India in 1954 . Conversely, Campbell's hostility to the East, while un-deniably, if incongruously, found in the last chapter of volume two of Masks, peaksas late as 1968, when not only volume four of Masks (Creative Mythology) but alsothe essay `The secularization of the sacred', in Donald R . Cutler (ed .), TheReligious Situation, vol. I, Boston, Beacon 1968, ch . 17, appeared . If even by thenthe Cold War had not begun to ebb, surely it had done so by 1975, when theinterviews eventually published as An Open Life began to appear . Yet even thereCampbell's abhorrence of the totalitarian East continues unabated : see in John M .Maher and Dennie Briggs (eds), An Open Life, In Conversation with Michael Toms,Burdett, NY, Larson Publications 1988, pp . 72-3 . In short, the shift in Campbell'sviews does not tally with the shift in American foreign policy . Campbell himselfnever accounts for the shift .

14 Campbell, Myths to Live By, p . 8 .15 Joseph Campbell, The Inner Reaches of Outer Space, New York, Alfred van der

Marck Editions 1986, p . 32 .16 Ibid ., p . 33 .17 Ibid ., p . 34 .18 Ibid ., p . 33 .19 Joseph Campbell, Transformations of Myth Through Time, New York, Harper &

Row 1990, p . 74 .20 Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth, with Bill Moyers, Betty Sue Flowers (ed .),

New York, Doubleday 1988, p . 22 .21 Ibid., pp . 171-2 .22 Ibid ., p . 18 .23 Campbell, Transformations of Myth Through Time, p . 91 .24 Joseph Campbell, The Flight of the Wild Gender, New York, Viking 1969, p . 202 .25 Campbell, Masks: Occidental, pp . 28-29 .26 See Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God : Creative Mythology, New York, Viking

1968, pp. 145-71, 175-6, 230 . On Campbell's view of Gnosticism see Robert A .Segal, Joseph Campbell, revised edn, New York, New American Library 1990, pp .126-7, 134-7 .

27 Campbell, Masks : Creative, p . 476 .28 Ibid ., pp. 260-261 . On Campbell's views of Joyce and Mann see Segal, Joseph

Campbell, pp . 138-140 .29 See Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, pp . 152-3, 267-9, 271, 279-80; The

Masks of God : Primitive Mythology, New York, Viking, 1959, p. 85 ; Masks : Creative,p. 430n; The Mythic Image, Bollingen Series C, Princeton, NJ, Princeton Univer-sity Press 1974, p . 192 .

J. Campbell on Jews and Judaism 169

30 Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, pp . 152-3 .31 Campbell, interview with Goodrich, p . 75 .32 Campbell, Masks: Occidental, p . 16 .33 Ibid., p . 9 .34 Ibid., p . 29 .35 Ibid., pp . 29-30 .36 Ibid., p . 17 .37 Ibid .38 Ibid., p . 110.39 Campbell, Myths to Live By, p . 28 .40 Joseph Campbell, `The interpretation of symbolic forms', in Marjorie W .

McCune, Tucker Obison, and Philip M . Withim (eds) The Binding of Prometheus,Lewisburg, PA, Bucknell University Press 1980, p . 370.

41 Campbell, Myths to Live By, p . 25 .42 Analogously, Campbell's hero, having left home for a strange, new world, returns

home to discover that there is no separate old world : see Segal, Joseph Campbell,pp. 57-64.

43 On the difference between Campbell's psychological ideal and Jung's see ibid ., pp .57-64,255-62 .

44 See Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, 1st edn, New York,Schocken 1941 .

45 See Raphael Patai, The Hebrew Goddess, 1st edn, New York, KTAV 1967 . Forcriticisms of Campbell's failure to recognize in Judaism the religion other elementsof his mythological ideal see Tamar Frankiel, `New Age mythology : a Jewishresponse to Joseph Campbell', Tikkun 4 (May/June 1989), pp. 23-6, 118-20 .

46 See, e .g. in Mortimer Ostow (ed .), Judaism and Psychoanalysis, New York, KTAV1982 .

47 Campbell, Myths to Live By, pp . 7-8 .48 See Segal, Joseph Campbell, ch . 9 .49 Campbell, The Inner Reaches of Outer Space, p . 11 .50 Campbell, The Flight of the Wild Gander, pp . 80-1 .51 On Campbell's fluctuations see Segal, Joseph Campbell, pp . 81, 202-19, 253-5 .52 Campbell, Masks: Primitive, p . 15 .53 Joseph Campbell, Historical Atlas of World Mythology, 2 vols, New York, Alfred

van der Marck Editions 1983 and 1988 .54 Campbell's use of Frobenius and others is selective . For example, Frobenius' solar

mythology could not be more anathema to Campbell, for whom mythology refersto anything but the physical world .

55 Campbell, An Open Life, p . 119 .56 Ibid ., p . 121 .57 See, e .g. Campbell, Myths to Live By, pp. 12-13 .58 On Campbell's use Roheim see Segal, Joseph Campbell, pp . 48-53, 222-9 .59 Campbell, Myths to Live By, pp . 12-3 .60 On the differences between Campbell and Jung on myth see Robert A . Segal,

Joseph Campbell, ch. 12 .61 Campbell, An Open Life, p . 123 .62 Joseph Campbell, interview with Michael McKnight, Parabola 5 (February

1980), pp. 59-60 .63 Joseph Campbell, 'Henrich Zimmer (1890-1943)', Partisan Review 20 (July

1953), p. 450 .

170 R. A . Segal

64 See Segal, Joseph Campbell, pp . 77, 81-2, 103-6, 144-5, 162, 197 .65 On the differences for Campbell between hunters and planters see ibid ., pp . 73-77 .66 Oddly, Campbell never cites Bachofen in Masks : Occidental, where he most relies

on him . But see his excellent introduction to Myth, Religion, and Mother Right :Selected Writings of J. J. Bachofen, translated by Ralph Manheim, Princeton, NJ,Princeton University Press 1967, pp . xxv-lvii .

67 On the differences between Campbell and Bachofen see Segal, Joseph Campbell,pp. 100-3 .

ROBERT A. SEGAL is Professor of Religious Studies at Louisiana StateUniversity. He is the author of The Poimandres as Myth (Mouton 1986) JosephCampbell (revised edition New American Library 1990), and Religion and theSocial Sciences (Scholars Press 1989) . He has written the introduction to InQuest of the Hero (Princeton University Press 1990) and is the editor of TheGnostic Jung (Princeton University Press forthcoming 1992) . He is also theeditor of the ongoing Theorists of Myth Series (Garland) .

Religious Studies Program, Louisiana State University, 106 Coates Hall, BatonRouge, Louisiana 70803, U.S.A .