Archive for February, 2007

There are two widely accepted assumptions about early Christianity that I think we have to radically question. I am dealing with both of these as I am working on my new book on Paul so I thought I might do a bit of thinking out loud here.

The first assumption is that the essential story line we read about in the New Testament book of Acts is an accurate version of the early years of the Jesus movement following the crucifixion. John Dominic Crossan, the most well-known writer on the historical Jesus, properly calls the period from 30 AD when Jesus was executed, to around 50 AD when we get our first letter of Paul, the Dark Ages of early Christianity. In other words we have almost no surviving texts or evidence from this period. The account given in the book of Acts, particuarly chapters 1-14, is almost wholly shaped by the author’s (traditionally called “Luke”) devotion to Peter and Paul, and his commitment toward showing how everything prepared the way for Paul’s entrance on the scene and his resulting ministry. Luke links up Jesus’ final words at the end of his Gospel, namely, “that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem” (Luke 24:47) with his final scene in Acts that pictures Paul in Rome, doing just that, preaching the gospel to the gentiles. Acts might well be called “From Jerusalem to Rome: The Story of Paul’s Triumph.” Luke is anxious of course to show great harmony between Peter and Paul, and even a kind of tacit agreement of James, the brother of Jesus, whom Luke has to relunctantly admit was the leader of the Jesus movement at that time. In fact the “kerygma” or “preaching” of the apostles according to Luke, as reflected in Peter’s speeches in Acts 2:22-38 and 3:11-26, is pure “Paulinism” in terms of its basic parameters–that Christ was sent from God as Messiah, that he died for the sins of mankind, that he was raised from the dead, and that he has ascended to heaven, soon to return as apocalyptic Judge.

Many readers can find comfort in the continuity that runs from Paul’s own rendition of the “gospel” in 1 Corinthians 15 (written in the 50s AD), and these early “sermons” of the pillar apostles, Peter and John (with James left out or muted). However, I have become convinced, along with a number of my colleagues, that the book of Acts is probably the most misleading document in the New Testament canon. The story of what those earliest days of the Jesus movement were actually like, when James the brother of Jesus was in charge, and Peter and John were considered his “right” and “left” hand men, has been largely lost and painted over.

Fortunately, this is not wholly the case. It is indeed possible to shed some light on this “dark age” of early Christianity. In fact Paul’s own letters are one of our best sources. There we can still find reflected key elements of the alternative story that Luke consciously overwrites. Indeed, I am convinced that Paul’s most vociferous enemies are in fact those he sarcastically refers to as the “so-called Pillars” of the Church, namely James, Peter, and John. And we have other sources as well, here and there, sometimes in bits and pieces and fragments. The composite picture that develops is quite astounding. What we have is a far cry from any form of faith that might properly be called “Christianity.” Rather what emerges is a Jewish sect, known in those days by the name Nazarene, that is thoroughly a part of what we call “late 2nd Temple Judaism,” every bit as much as the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Zealots, or the Essenes. In fact, broadly considered, this “Jesus movement” might more properly be called “the messianic movement in pre-70 AD Palestine.” It was led and shepherded by James the brother of Jesus. It’s closest parallels in terms of its apocalyptic vision of things are probably now best preserved for us in the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The second grand assumption about early Christianity that I think we should radically questioned is the portrait of its clean break with Judaism and its subsequent harmonious (despite a few evil heretics) and unbroken advance into the second and third centuries. This is the tale presented to the world by that undaunted “father” of Church History, Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea (c. 300 AD). Even though many folk have not read and will never actually read his Ecclesiastical History, this composite work has fundamentally shaped the basic picture of the “advance of Christianity” that most of us have in our heads. It goes something like this: God sent his son to die for our sins; he was raised from the dead, ascended to heaven, and he commissioned his Twelve apostles, and a bit later, Paul, as the apostle to the Gentiles, to preach the new Christian message to all the world; Christianity decisively broke with an obsolete Judaism and spread like a flame through the Roman world; despite Jewish hatred and Roman persecution the Church triumphed as the spiritual Kingdom of Christ on earth.

We now know, thanks to the discovery of and recovery of many alternative ancient sources, including the Nag Hamaddi texts found in Egypt in 1945, the newly edited and translated Pseudo-Clementine literature, the Didache, and various Syriac and Arabic sources, that what has often been called “Jewish Christianity,” was in fact the mainstream faith of the family oriented followers of Jesus and James before 70 AD. In fact, Paul’s influence in his own time was probably quite weak in both numbers and geographical spread until the last decades of the 1st century and early decades of the 2nd. That is when Paul’s letters were edited, collected, and circulated, Mark, which basically reflects the Christology of Paul began to have its influence, and Luke, Paul’s great propogandist, published his composite work Luke-Acts. At that point the Jewish messianic movement in Palestine had been crushed, Jesus’ brother Simon, who succeeded James, had been killed, and the so-called “Jewish” followers of Jesus, scattered to the east, were known as “Ebionites” by their orthodox Christian foes.

It is really quite difficult for us to imagine a “Christianity” other than that which became orthodoxy, that is, a version of faith in which Jesus is a human being with a human father, there is no eating of the “body and blood” of Christ at the center of its liturgy, no teaching about the bodily resurrection of Jesus as the divine and preexistent Christ, Lord, Son of God, and Savior, and no assertion that the fundamentals of Jewish faith were obsolete or superceded by a “new Testament.” And yet, in fact, that is precisely what we are called upon to imagine if we really want to trace the movement that arose after the death of Jesus through his chosen successors for at least the first 40 years. These are the issues and ideas I am now working out in my book on Paul which I hope will be published late this year.

One year ago this weekend I completed one of the most difficult tasks I have ever undertaken. I am not talking about writing my book, The Jesus Dynasty, but rather reading it aloud for the Jesus Dynasty CD version.

CD Audio versions of books have become more and more popular, but only a small number of books are actually produced in this manner. By far the majority that do make it to CD contain an opening reading by the author but few authors agree to read aloud their entire book. When Simon & Schuster first approached me with the idea of reading my book they explained to me the extreme demand such a task put on the reader, the fatigue involved, the endless editing, and the dedicated commitment involved. I learned that CD versions are always abridged, but when the oral manuscript arrived, cut down by many thousands of words, I have to admit I was amazed at the skillful job of the abridgement. I made the decision to spend three to four days in NY in the recording studios at Simon & Schuster and to give it my best.

About three hours into the process that first day I began to feel I had made the worst mistake of my life. If you take any book, much less one you have written, and try to read one single page flawlessly you will immediately experience the problem that hit me like the proverbial ton of bricks. If you try another page, and another, then several dozen, for an hour or more, not only does ones voice tire (as we parents know who have read endless hours to our children!), but rather quickly one looses much of the normal ability to focus and concentrate. It also becomes almost impossible maintain proper inflection and expression.

The key to it all is a good production person. This is someone who has done this with hundreds of authors and is willing to play the role of an encouraging “slave driver” to keep one going. I was blessed with one of the best in the business. I will never forget collapsing after the first day, with maybe six or so hours of raw reading behind me, and thinking there was no way on earth I could make it back to the studio again the next morning as planned, to do it all over.

But somehow I did it. It took three days in all and the end product is six hours of recording on five CDs. And now one year later all that pain and fatigue and frustration are long forgotten and the CD version of The Jesus Dynasty is one of the things in my life of which I am most proud. The miracle of course is the producer and sound editor, who can turn all your stumbling, mispronunciations, stops and starts, and fatigue into this smooth and flawless production. When you put on the CDs you get the impression that Dr. James D. Tabor just dropped by a studio one day, sat down, and read his book aloud!

Anyway, I write this Blog mostly for my readers so I wanted to remember that time one year ago and also to recommend and commend to you the CD version of the book. It is a very different experience from reading the book itself. It is available on CDs, but also on iTunes as a download. Now a year later when I listen I have the strangest feeling about the voice and the content. I am able to listen as a listener and forget the words and voice are mine, being carried into the incredible unfolding story that I relate. I have listened to it twice now and each time I find myself so strangely moved. Not by my account per se, but by the way in which the incredible life of Jesus of Nazareth captures our hopes and dreams through the ages.

So you bought the book, now listen to the story! And yes, the film is still to come…

Josephus reports four main sects or schools of Judaism: Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, and Zealots. The earliest followers of Jesus were known as Nazarenes, and perhaps later, Ebionites, and form an important part of the picture of Palestinian Jewish groups in late 2nd Temple times.

The Ebionite/Nazarene movement was made up of mostly Jewish/Israelite followers of John the Baptizer and later Jesus, who were concentrated in Palestine and surrounding regions and led by “James the Just” (the oldest brother of Jesus), and flourished between the years 30-80 C.E. They were zealous for the Torah and continued to walk in all the mitzvot (commandments) as enlightened by their Rabbi and Teacher, but accepted non-Jews into their fellowship on the basis of some version of the Noachide Laws (Acts 15 and 21). The term Ebionite (from Hebrew ‘Evyonim) means “Poor Ones” and was taken from the teachings of Jesus: “Blessed are you Poor Ones, for yours is the Kingdom of God” based on Isaiah 66:2 and other related texts that address a remnant group of faithful ones. I am convinced that Nazarene comes from the Hebrew word Netzer (drawn from Isaiah 11:1) and means “a Branch”—so the Nazarenes were the “Branchites” or followers of the one they believed to be the Branch. It is often confused with a completely different word, the Nazirite or Nazir, that refers to individuals, male or female, not a group, who took on a special vow based on Numbers 6. The two terms are spelled differently in Hebrew or Aramaic.

The term Nazarene was likely the one first used for these followers of John/Jesus/James (The Three J’s, as I refer to them in my classes), as evidenced by Acts 24:5 where Paul is called “the ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes.” Here we see the word used in a similar way to that of Josephus in writing of the four sects/schools of Judaism: Pharisees; Sadducess; Essenes; and Zealots. So the term Nazarene is probably the best and broadest term for the movement, while Ebionite (Poor Ones) was used as well, along with a whole list of other terms: Saints, Children of Light, the Way, New Covenanters, et al. We also know from the book of Acts that the group itself preferred the designation “The Way” (see Acts 24:14, 22, etc.). The term “Christian,” first used in Greek speaking areas for the movement, actually is an attempt to translate the term Nazarene and basically means a “Messianist.”

The Essenes (possibly from ‘Ossim, meaning “Doers of Torah”), who wrote or collected the Dead Sea Scrolls, pioneered certain aspects of this “Way” over 150 years before the birth of Jesus ( see my “Basic Facts on the DSS“). They were a wilderness (out in the Arava, near the Dead Sea–based on Isaiah 40:3), baptizing (mikveh of repentance as entrance requirement into their fellowship), new covenant, messianic/apocalyptic group. They believed they were the final generation and would live to see the end and the coming of the Messiahs of Aaron and of Israel (priest and king). They saw themselves as the remnant core of God’s faithful people—preparing the Way for the return of YHVH’s Glory (Kavod) as set forth in Isaiah 40-66. They too referred to themselves as the Way, the Poor, the Saints, the New Covenanters, Children of Light, and so forth. Perhaps their most common designation was the Yachad–the brotherhood or community, and they referred to themselves as brother and sister. They were bitterly opposed to the corrupt Priests in Jerusalem, to the Herods, and even to the Pharisees whom they saw as compromising with that establishment to get power and influence from the Hellenistic/Roman powers. They had their own developed Halacha (interpretation of Torah), some aspects of which Jesus picks up (ideal of no divorce, not using oaths, etc.). They followed one they called the True Teacher (Teacher of Righteousness) whom most scholars believe lived in the 1st century BCE and was opposed and possibly killed by the Hasmonean King/Priests at the instigation of the Pharisees. John the Baptizer seems to arise out of this context and rekindle the apocalyptic fervor of the movement in the early decades of the first century AD.

To some extent the terminology is flexible; there are a variety of self-designations used by the John/Jesus/James movement, most of which had previously been used by the Essenes. In that sense you might call the Jesus movement a further developed messianic “Essenism,” modified through the powerful, prophetic influence of Jesus as Teacher.

Later, when Christianity developed in the 3rd and 4th centuries and gradually lost its Jewish roots and heritage, largely severing its Palestinian connections, the Gentile, Roman Catholic Church historians began to refer to Ebionites and Nazarenes as two separate groups—and indeed, by the late 2nd century there might have been a split between these mostly Jewish followers of Jesus. The distinction these writers make (and remember, they universally despise these people and call them “Judaizers”), is that the Ebionites reject Paul and the doctrine of the Virgin Birth or “divinity” of Jesus, use only the Hebrew Gospel of Matthew, and are thus more extreme in their Judaism. They describe the Nazarenes more positively as those who accept Paul (with caution) and believe in some aspect of the divinity of Jesus (virgin born, etc.). What we have to keep in mind in reading these accounts from the Church fathers is that they are strongly prejudiced against this group(s) and claim to have replaced Judaism entirely with the new religion of Christianity, overthrowing the Torah for both Gentile and Jew.

I think it best today to use the collective term Ebionite/Nazarene in an attempt to capture the whole of this earliest movement, and it would be useful to revive the term Yachad as a collective designation for the community of the Hasidim/Saints. I use Ebionite/Nazarene as an historical designation to refer to those original, 1st century, largely Palestinian followers of Jesus, gathered around Yaaqov (James) in Jerusalem, who were zealous for the Torah, but saw themselves as part of the New Covenant Way inaugurated by their “True Teacher” Jesus. James is a key and neglected figure in this whole picture. As the blood brother of Jesus, authority and rights of guidance were passed on to him. When he was brutally murdered in 62 C.E. by the High Priest Ananus (see Josephus, Antiquities 20.197ff), Simeon, a second brother [sic "cousin" according to Hegesippus] of Jesus took over the leadership of the Jerusalem based movement. Clearly we have the idea here of a blood-line dynasty, and according to the Gospel of Thomas, discovered in 1946 in upper Egypt, this dynastic succession was ordained by Jesus himself who tells his followers who ask him who will lead them when he leaves: “No matter where you are, you are to go to James the Just, for whose sake heaven and earth came into being” (GT 12). Indeed, when Simeon was crucified by the Emperor Trajan around 106 C.E., a third brother of Jesus, Judas, took over the leadership of the community.

As far as “beliefs” of the Ebionites, the documents of the New Testament, critically evaluated, are among our best sources. There are fragments and quotations surviving from their Hebrew Gospel tradition (see see A. F. J. Klijn, Jewish-Christian Gospel Tradition, E. J. Brill, 1992), as well as the text of “Hebrew Matthew” preserved by Ibn Shaprut, and now published in a critical edition by George Howard (The Hebrew Gospel of Matthew, Mercer University Press, 1995). Based on what we can reliably put together from other sources we can say the Ebionite/Nazarene movement could be distinguished by the following views:

1) Jesus as the Prophet like Moses, or True Teacher (but not to be confused with YHVH God of Israel), who will anoint his Messiahs on his right and left hand when he is revealed in power following his rejection and death. These two figures, the Davidic Nasi (Prince of the Yachad) and Priest, will rule with him in the Kingdom of God.

2) Disdain for eating meat and even the Temple slaughter of animals, preferring the ideals of the pre-Flood diet and what they took to be the original ideal of worship (see Gen 9:1-5; Jer 7:21-22; Isa 11:9; 66:1-4). A general interest in seeking the Path reflected in the pre-Sinai revelation, especially the time from Enoch to Noah. For example, divorce was shunned, even though technically it was later allowed by Moses.

3) Dedication to following the whole Torah, as applicable to Israel and to Gentiles, but through the “easy yoke” halacha of their Teacher Jesus, which emphasized the Spirit of the Biblical Prophets in a restoration of the “True Faith,” the Ancient Paths (Jeremiah 6:16), from which, by and large, they believed the establishment Jewish groups of 2nd Temple times had lost.

4) Rejection of the “doctrines and traditions” of men, which they believed had been added to the pure Torah of Moses, including scribal alterations of the texts of Scripture (Jeremiah 8:8).

How the earliest group(s) viewed Paul is unclear. By some reports he was tolerated or accepted as one who could go to the Gentiles with a version of the Nazarene message (Acts 15, 21). Others apparently believed he was an apostate from the Torah and founder of a new religion—Christianity.

For further reading, see H-J Schoeps, Jewish Christianity (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1969), still useful and quite readable for students.