Review of Gertrude Himmelfarb's The Jewish Odyssey of George Eliot - Judaism and the Human Future: A Victorian Vision

Smith, Suzanne. "Review of Gertrude Himmelfarb's The Jewish Odyssey of George Eliot - Judaism and the Human Future: A Victorian Vision." The Harvard Theological Review103, no. 2. 2010.

Abstract:

In reflecting upon the fact that religious language survives long after the practices and the devotion that gave rise to it have departed, Alasdair Maclntyre once observed that what “we” are left with is “a religious language which survives even though we do not know what to say in it.”1 Some writers and thinkers who acknowledge that religious language is, for them, effectively either foreign or dead, continue to employ it because of its beauty, or because they wish to speak to people for whom such language is still living for political, moral, or literary reasons. But why a writer for whom religious language holds no personal meaning would go to near absurd lengths to construct a narrative saturated with biblical typology (and even numerology) is difficult to imagine. The question of how such a writer would seem to know almost exactly what to say in the religious language of a tradition that she never practiced is even more difficult to understand. How could someone who couldn’t say that she was among those for whom religious language was a source of binding claims to truth (as opposed to a culturally important animated corpse) speak as if things were otherwise?