A case in point. We were puzzled about the identity of an unnamed colleague at Brown that he describes as "an unproductive and anti-Christian Josephus scholar of German origin and education, who despised the Jews and Judaism only less than he hated Christians and Christianity" in his 2004 work Neusner on Judaism (p. 108) but originally in his 1996 work Formative Judaism: Current issues and arguments. Apparently, when I originally reported that this statement was in his Price of Excellence I was following a sentence that appeared in all these works but then followed a 'wrong path' it would seem to his Neusner on Judaism as the material was edited out of the 2004 edition of the Price of Excellence that I was using on Google Books.
The 2004 edition of the Price of Excellence instead has a very different account of Neusner's relationship with Moehring. It acknowledges acrimony to be sure but - like the stories of Constantine's death bed conversion to Christianity - it is alleged that as Moehring lay on his death bed there was a sudden 'patching up' of their relationship. Here is the reference as it appears in the Google preview:
The New Egalitarianism On Campus
And this brings me back to life on the barricades. For, as the years unfolded at Brown, the impact of the Magaziner Report would make itself felt. Dismantling Brown's once high standards took not only student activism but faculty complicity. I quickly found myself a target of both. It was not that I opposed the noble dream of a truly democratic community of learning. It was that, in my actions, I violated the norm. My department's chairman in the early 1970s — I had declined the post when it was offered — was a German postwar immigrant, a veteran of the Wehrmacht ofWorld War II, named Horst R. Moehring. Good at Greek, Latin, and Josephus studies, he had little use for religion, and when he taught New Testament, he delighted in telling faithful Christian students, "The things that you're liable to read in the Bible — they ain't necessarily so." He treated Christianity with unconcealed contempt, but, like Germans of his generation, dissimulated when it came to Judaism. Within the first year of his chairmanship, he called me by phone, and asked me to come to see him so he could save my career at Brown.
As a tenured full professor, I found his concern odd, but when summoned, I answered his call. His message was, "Your problem is, you do everything too well, you write well, you teach superlatively, you publish a lot, you organize conferences and bring lecturers and generally dominate every room you walk into. In fact, you're a pain for everybody in the department. I want to advise you to be more careful, don't do so much, so you won't get kicked out of Brown. They all want to get rid of you, including your "friends"" (among whom he counted himself he said).
So I had never left Milwaukee after all, and the bad dreams starting come back. I began to wonder whether among the academic freedoms that now had come under attack was the freedom to excel. With no choice and not easily intimidated, I continued as before and he resigned his chairmanship two years into a five-year term — because he couldn't "control" me. Years later, shortly before his death, he told his principal student, "Jack was right about those people." And he telephoned me shortly afterward and said, "You were right, I was wrong. Dietrich was never a scholar, Frerichs was never never to be trusted, the others were worthless. You were right to persist. You did the right thing. You didn't let the bastards wear you down." I: "I don't know what choices I had anyhow. But thanks for saying so." [the Price of Excellence p. 180]
Of course this is just Neusner's version of a dying man's seeming 'last words.' But how can this be reconciled with the scathing indictment of the same man - though deliberately unnamed in 1996's Formative Judaism? The answer it would seem is to find a copy of the original printing of Continuum's the Price of Excellence (and not the later printing by University Press of America in 2004) in order to see whether the death bed claims appear there too as well as the eye-opening testimony that Neusner was actually offered the position of chairman of Religious Studies at Brown but turned it down.
Indeed it was very fortunate for Neusner that he happened to finally receive a chairman's position at Bard during the Bush presidency when his son happened to be working in the White House owing to 'miraculous' donation of two million dollars fell from the sky. It's just amazing that the very position he claims he never wanted just happened to open up owing to the sudden largessse of an anonymous donor (all of which happened to happen when his son had already been promoted as a high level Republican operative in the Jewish community). It's the modern equivalent of a bat kol!
And for those who are wondering, father and son explain in another book of theirs that envy is the price of excellence:
Envy fuels hatred, contempt, fear, and loathing; it is the single most common emotion. Whether among siblings or in clubs or in businesses, offices, and professions, no single emotion brings more malice or ill-will than sheer loathing it is the most common emotion. Whether among siblings or in clubs or in businesses, offices, and professions, no single emotion brings more malice or ill-will than sheer loathing of someone who has more, or does more, than the norm. Envy is the price of excellence, and the one who is envied, whether proud or humble, cannot do much about it. [The book of Jewish wisdom: the Talmud of the well-considered life - p 82]
The point being then that all those who opposed Neusner were jealous of him. Well, let's not jump to conclusions. He was a prolific author. By the time he received the chair at Bard there were many who were certainly envious of him. Yet is it really possible that Neusner 'knew' that people would be jealous of him in the future? Or is it more likely the other way around - i.e. that it was Neusner who envied and coveted the very thing secured for him in 2006? More investigation is required ...
