Archive for the ‘Christian Origins’ Category

I have been reading with the greatest learning and pleasure April DeConick’s book, Recovering the Original Gospel of Thomas. The price is a bit higher than one is used to paying for a paperback book ($40) but this is a serious academic book, yet it is written in a style and on a level that the interested non-specialist can surely follow.

I mention this because it seems to me the controversy between so-called “conservative” scholars such as Craig Evans or Ben Witherington, and more “critical” scholars such as Crossan or DeConick, on the historical value of works such as The Gospel of Thomas has really been miscast. There is no point in batting back and forth the old conundrum of which text is more “legendary” or “mythological,” Mark or Thomas, or even Q or Thomas, since all of these texts reflect the heavily theologized viewpoints of their authors/communities and no ancient texts on either the events or teachings in the life of Jesus are in any way or form “history as it actually happened” (a naive concept at best). In other words, Thomas is neither “early” nor “late,” it is both!

What I think DeConick’s work has done is provide us with a way of looking at the complex traditions that come to us in this collection of 114 saying of Jesus preserved for us in this 2nd-3rd century Copic collection we know as the Gospel of Thomas. This material as we now have it is indeed “secondary” and “embellished” and “developed” and “theological.” Even the scholars who have greatly valued this text and given it priviledge, recognize our need to read it critically. It neither dropped from heaven nor was it taken down stenographically from the mouth of Jesus.

What DeConick does is attempt to trace the developing history of this text, with its various expansions and and interpretive glosses. Not only does this allow us to see how a given saying attributed to Jesus in an earlier period was developed and recast, and what sort of community perceptions the various stages reflect, but through her groundbreaking work we are offered a glimpse back to the “original” and earliest layers of this work. DeConick identifies what she calls “kernel” sayings, and lo and behold, those materials seem to give us a rare glimpse into the Jerusalem community of James the Just, the brother of Jesus.

When I have my students read the Gospel of Thomas (take a look, it’s on the Web in various translations) in my basic course in Christian Origins they are either attracted or repelled, depending on their own presuppositions. Some find it so different and strange in contrast to what they have become used to in hearing and reading materials from Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John, while others find it “exotic” and appealing in that they think it offers them some mystical/secret alternative version of things that the Church has repressed and kept back from us.

Anyone who is interested in Christian Origins needs to become thoroughly familiar with the sayings traditions in the stage they are available to us through the Nag Hammadi Copic Gospel of Thomas. However, it takes some hard work, just as with the Synoptic tradition and John, to sort through the various layers and read with sensitivity and critical skills “beyond” the surface meaning of the text in its present form.

For this reason I posted DeConick’s essay about the accuracy and reliability of the New Testament gospels on this Blog last week. I think many might think her statements are too extreme, and that surely the material in the N.T. is of infinitely more value historically than a slightly “whacko” book like Thomas (a description of one of my students on an exam last semester). But this would be to miss her very valuable point. A critical reading and historical examination of the kinds of non-canonical texts she mentions, and others as well, in fact offer us the chance to construct a much fuller portrait of the movement that John, Jesus, and James inaugurated. If Acts and Eusebius are not “the story,” as I have recently written, then we have a lot of hard work before us. The good news is that much survives and I can not think of any field of historical investigation that is more exciting than Christian Origins at the beginning of this 3rd. millennium. If I may misquote/misapply the prophet Hosea: After two days he cause us to live, and on the third day he will raise us up. What an amazing time in which to live.

I few days ago I mentioned the new Forbidden Gospels Blog by Dr. April DeConick, I am posting here, with her permission, Dr.DeConick’s recent reflection on the matter of whether or not our canonical Gospels (Mark, Matthew, Luke & John) are inherently more historically “reliable” than those that never made it into the New Testament. I want to comment further here on this issue but I thought putting this view before my readers might be useful.
Saturday, February 3, 2007

The Accuracy and Reliability of the New Testament Gospels?
Why do so many scholars hold so strongly that the New Testament Gospels, particularly the Mark, Matthew and Luke, are more accurate and reliable for reconstructing history than the non-canonical when it was proven by Professor Wrede in 1902 (The Messianic Secret) that the author of Mark was a theologian not an historian? The New Testament Gospels (and the apocryphal Gospels) are not histories, nor are they even historiographies. They are theological treatises whose main interests are Christological.

The New Testament texts don’t have anymore intrinsic reliability for reconstructing the “historical” Jesus and Christian origins, than early non-canonical texts. The virgin birth stories in Matthew and Luke are no less legendary and fanciful than the account found in the Infancy Gospel of James. The miracle stories of Jesus in the four New Testament Gospels are no less fantastic than those performed by the child Jesus in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. The passion narratives in the New Testament are no less contrived in order to “prove” that Jesus’ suffering and death had fulfilled the Scripture than the crucifixion narrative in the Gospel of Peter. The account of the pre-existence of Jesus in the first chapter of John is no less mythical than the accounts of his pre-existence in the Gospel of Truth. The reports of the miraculous deeds of Peter, Paul and Philip in the New Testament Acts are no more reliable than their deeds recorded in the apocryphal Acts which bear their names. The wild apocalyptic story in Revelation is no more an account of the end of our world than equally wild descriptions found in the visions of the Pastor Hermas or the Apocalypse of Peter. The sayings of Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels are no more the verbatim words of Jesus than those recorded in the Gospel of Thomas, the Dialogue of the Savior, or the Secret Book of James. They are just more familiar to us because they have been part of the Christian tradition for so long. Has familiarity been mistaken for historicity?

Dr. April DeConick

Isla Carroll and Percy E. Turner Professor of Biblical Studies at Rice University

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.

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.

I wanted to call attention to a new Blog recently inaugurated by Dr. April DeConick, who holds a named chair in Biblical Studies at Rice University. I have shared a few seminars and programs with Dr. DeConick over the past few years and we share a passion for Christian Origins and with many common ideas and approaches. Dr. DeConick calls her new effort The Forbidden Gospel Blog.

Dr. DeConick’s early posts are a a fascinating and instant draw. She has some very important new insights into the Gospel of Judas that appear to overturn what the public was told last April in the publicity barrage that accompanied its release. Her remarks titled “Beyond the New Testament,” are a summary of the paper she delivered at the Scripture and Skepticism Conference last week at UC Davis that drew a standing and sustained ovation.

I particularly look foward Dr. DeConick’s discussion of the Gospel of Thomas. This is her specialty and her thesis, that Thomas, at its core, can be traced back to the Jerusalem community of James the Just, is a vital contribution to our attempts to recover the historical “brother of Jesus” and explore this non-Pauline strand of the early Jesus movement.

I offer Dr. DeConick my warmest best wishes and sincere thanks for taking the time to share with us all her knowledge and insights. Be sure and visit her Blog regularly. You will not be disappointed.

I wanted to pass along some of the thoughts on Albert Schweitzer and an Apocalyptic Jesus that I presented at the Scripture and Skepticism Conference here at UC Davis this weekend.

I dedicated my book, The Jesus Dynasty to the memory of Albert Schweitzer:

Ad memoriam Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965).
Missionary, philosopher, historian extraordinaire.
In whose shadow we all stand.

Albert Schweitzer’s influential work titled Von Reimarus zu Wrede was published in 1906—just one hundred years earlier. The better-known and brilliantly titled English edition, The Quest of the Historical Jesus, came out in 1910 (translated by W. Montgomery with a preface by F. C. Burkitt).

Schweitzer opens his rather dense 400 page survey of historical Jesus research down to his own time with the sentence: “Before Reimarus, no one had attempted to form a historical conception of the life of Jesus.” He refers of course to Lessing’s anonymous publication of Hermann Samuel Reimarus’s writings in 1778, in particular the fragment “Vom dem Zweke Jesu und seiner Jünger” (“The Aims of Jesus and His Disciples”) of which he says “This essay is not only one of the greatest events in the history of criticism, it is also a masterpiece of general literature.” (p. 15). Schweitzer knows his heroes over the next 128 years and he celebrates them exuberantly.

Schweitzer focuses on what he calls “three great alternatives” that historical research on Jesus had to meet. The first he calls the “purely historical or purely supernatural.” This he considers decisively settled by David Friedrich Strauss’s first “Life of Jesus” published in 1835. The second had to do with determining the priority of Mark and the Synoptic tradition over John’s gospel, which he sees as satisfactorily worked out by the Tübingen school and Holtzmann. And finally, most important, what he calls the eschatological question. Here his hero is Johannes Weiss with the publication of his work on the preaching of Jesus concerning the kingdom of God in 1892.

In Schweitzer’s final and most important chapter he argues that the union of what he calls “thoroughgoing skepticism” and “thoroughgoing eschatology” represents an impassible and enduring obstacle to traditional Christian theology. Jesus, according to Schweitzer, “lays hold of the wheel of the world to set it moving on that last revolution which is to bring all ordinary history to a close. It refuses to turn, and he throws himself on it. Then it does turn; and crushes him” (p. 370-71). And yet, even with this perspective, this “negative theology” as Schweitzer calls it of a “failed messiah,” he leaves the reader with his final chapter that he calls “Results.” He writes that “Jesus means something to our world because a mighty spiritual force streams forth from him and flows through our time also,” and “…it is not Jesus as historically known, but Jesus as spiritually arisen within men, who is significant for our time and can help it. Not the historical Jesus, but the spirit which goes forth from him and in the spirits of men strives for new influence and rule, is that which overcomes the world.” (pp. 399, 401).

Apocalypticism and apocalyptic ways of thinking and living in their late 2nd Temple Jewish manifestations focus on the imminent “end of the age” and the wholesale overthrow of the powers that be, both visible and invisible. From the standpoint of the apocalyptic group it involves nothing less than a “cosmic takeover” through the power and agency of God, followed by a new world order, namely the rule of God and the triumph and vindication of the people of God. It has a clear linear and temporal focus, but the (normally) unseen heavenly world of Satan, the demons, and the corrupt state of the cosmos are an essential and ever present foreground. John the Baptist, Jesus, James, Peter, and Paul all lived and violently died with this imminent hope of cosmic reversal on their lips. What they most expected to happen never came about, and what they could have never imagined, namely the 2nd century AD heyday of Roman glory and power, and the terrible destruction of Jewish life in the land of Israel, became a reality. This is and remains the fundamental historical reality. So what are we to make of this disappointment and failure?

With Schweitzer I see Jesus as a full and willing participant and key agent in these failed apocalyptic hopes and dreams. Without discounting the important ways in which Jesus’ message that the “kingdom of God has come upon you,” reflected a “realized eschatology” with revolutionary social and political implications “here and now,” (as per Crossan, Borg, Wright), I nonetheless want to face squarely the stark implications of all those bodies that did not rise, and those dead messiahs who never returned. When prophecy fails, particularly prophecy grounded on the interpretation of authoritative texts, there are three classic responses: postponement, marginalization, and allegorizing. On one level each of these is an attempt to affirm that failure is actually success and what seems to be defeat and disappointment is victory.

There are of course ways, perhaps commendable ones, in which the ancient language and imagery of apocalyptic thinking might provide powerful symbolic expression to the human struggle against evil and the hope of a transformed world. But I would want to sharply distinguish between the symbolic and the operational, and between projection and agency. It is one thing to imagine and hope, it is quite another for individuals and groups to radically alter and shape their lives and choices based on what they expect to happen (i.e. Paul’s advice to his followers not to get married since the end is near!). All bone fide apocalyptic movements carry with them profound social and political implications and more often than not, as Cathy Wessinger has reminded us, the “millennium” comes violently.

The late Norman Perrin, my New Testament professor at the University of Chicago, used to tell us that there was one thing certain in the study of the long history of Jewish and Christian apocalypticism—a 100-percent failure rate. H.H. Rowley published a collection of essays that he had delivered in 1942, during the darkest days of WWII, titled The Relevance of Apocalyptic. Rowley never discounted the symbolic power and potential theological meaning of apocalyptic symbols. But he offers at one point an astute observation. At the time, Hitler had taken most of Europe and General Rommel had orders to march to Jerusalem, link up with the Arab allies and crush the Zionists once and for all. One could hardly imagine a better candidate for the Beast than Nazi Germany with its Führer. In both the United States and Britain, the Bible prophecy movement was having a heyday. Rowley wrote:

“Yet where for more than two thousand years a hope has proved illusory, we should beware of embracing it afresh. The writers of these books were mistaken in their hopes of imminent deliverance; their interpreters who believed the consummation was imminent in their day proved mistaken; and they who bring the same principles and the same hopes afresh to the prophecies will prove equally mistaken” (p. 173).

Clearly historians who see Jesus as an apocalyptic visionary are not advocating any literal appropriation of the thought world that Rowley here censors. On the other hand, even Schweitzer, in his final chapter, with all his thoroughgoing skepticism and thoroughgoing eschatology, cannot resist a bit of theologizing, or perhaps sentimentalizing, of his own.

Although this paper deals with an apocalyptic Jesus, let me close with some thoughts on Paul, our earliest and most direct source for the kind of apocalyptic thinking that characterized the Jesus movement up through the end of the 1st century CE. Broadly speaking Paul presents a Hellenistic way of salvation—a particular scheme of apotheosis, or “immortalization,” set within the parameters of late 2nd Temple Jewish apocalypticism. The broad contours of his religious experiences—epiphany, the reception of oracles, visions, the journey to heaven, secret revelations—these are all well known to us, especially from the Greek magical papyri, the Hermetic texts and various forms of esoteric Judaisms of the period. Add to that his specific expectations regarding his mission to the Gentiles, the conversion of Israel, and the imminent parousia of Jesus as cosmic Lord, and you have it—his own particular vision and version of that most general Hellenistic (and human) hope—escape from mortality and the cosmic transformation of the world. And yet it is those very apocalyptic “particulars” that make Paul really Paul. His was not a scheme of salvation for any place or for all time. Although he has endured and been appropriated in many different ways over the centuries, from the standpoint of the history of Judaism, he belongs in those crucial years of hope and promise, before the terrible days of August, 70 AD, when many such dreams came to an end as the Romans crushed the Jewish Revolt, destroyed the Temple and the city of Jerusalem, and locked down the Jewish population in Galilee and Judea with an overwhelming military occupation force.

For Paul the “appointed time” of the End had drawn very near (1 Cor. 7:26, 29, 31). How near, it is difficult to say, but he wrote that in the early 50’s AD. If he, like others in the movement before 70 AD, expected the fulfillment of Daniel 11 and 12, with the “desolating sacrilege” set up in the Temple at Jerusalem, then events such as Gaius’s attempt to have his statue placed there (41 AD), and Nero’s persecution of the Christians in Rome, would have fired the apocalyptic speculations of the movement to a white hot temperature (witness Mark 13). Apparently his plans to go to Spain never worked out, due to his arrest under Nero (Rom. 15:28), so his grand hope of bringing the bulk of Israel to accept Jesus as Messiah through his Gentile mission became more and more hopeless. By AD 70 it was becoming increasingly difficult to maintain any immediate hope for the “redemption of Israel.” Others would pick up the pieces in various ways, but Paul was gone and what emerged in his name, even in the short decades after 70, was the beginning of a new and very different story.

There is an interesting discussion on James Crossley’s Blog, Earliest Christian History that picks up on some of the issues related to the ending of Mark and what evidence it might offer for alternative traditions regarding the empty tomb and resurrection appearances (see my Dec 17th post “The Priority of Mark: Some Important Implications“). I want to take up some of these in future posts, particularly regarding the notion that Paul’s account in 1 Corinthians 15 of the various “resurrection appearances” is “earlier” than Mark, and thus somehow more reliable or historical, as well as what we might imagine to be the case within Mark’s community regarding the notion of the “resurrection” of Jesus–which Mark clearly affirms.

Crossley, in my view, is one of the most fascinating scholars of “Christian origins” around. His latest book, Why Christianity Happened: A Sociohistorical Account of Christian Origins (26-50 CE) [Note please the early dates!) is a "must read" for those of us ever fascinated with new approaches to understanding Jesus, Paul, and the "movement" or "movements" that emerged under their influences. Crossley teaches at the University of Sheffield and studied with Maurice Casey. There is an interesting interview with him by Jim West (featured as Biblioblogs.com “Blogger of the Month”). Crossley’s previous book, Date of Mark’s Gospel offers an alternative early date (40s AD) to the standard dating (65-70 AD), and has stirred a fascinating discussion as to Mark’s relationship to Jesus and Paul.

One question I am often asked when I speak and teach is whether and how Jesus might have been related to the Essenes, and/or the Dead Sea Scroll Community. Now that becomes one question or two depending on whether one equates the group know to us from Classical sources (Pliny, Josephus, Philo) as the “Essenes” with the sect that produced the Scrolls. And what about the site of Qumran? To put things succinctly:

1. Are the scrolls connected to the site of Qumran?
2. Is the group that wrote the scrolls the one known to us in Classical sources by the name “Essene”?

I would say YES, absolutely, to each question, despite those who have argued, even recently, to the contrary.

On the 1st question the archaeology is absolutely clear, see the magisterial work by Jodi Magness, The Archaeology of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls, as well as the introduction to the Scrolls as a whole by James Vanderkam and Peter Flint, The Meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls. There is also a nice opening essay on this subject by James Charlesworth in his edited volume, Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The second question I think is equally clear. If you read the basic Classical sources, namely Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 13 & 18; Jewish War 2; Philo, Every Good Man is Free 75-91; Hypothetica 11; Pliny Natural History 5, the parallel between the Qumran sect and the “Essenes” as they are therein described are overwhelming. I lean very strongly toward the view that the Greek word ’essaioi or ’ossaioi= the Hebrew ‘ossim, meaning the “Doers,” referring to the ‘ossim haTorah, that is the “Doers of the Torah (1QpHab 8:1). It is most interesting that Paul uses this very phrase in Romans 2, as does James in his letter.

The Qumran group considered as apostate those they called the “Seekers of smooth things” (haChalqot), taken from Dan 11:32. In other words those who gave a “light” interpretation of Torah.

When it comes to Jesus and his movement there are some rather amazing parallels with the Qumran/Essene community. Here are some of the more striking elements that both movements shared:

1) Apocalyptic: “This the time for the preparation of the way into the wilderness” (1QS 9) “From the day of the gathering in of the Teacher of the Community until the end of all the men of war who deserted to the Liar there shall pass about 40 years” (CD(B) 2)

2) Prepare the Way in the Wilderness: “They shall separate from the habitation of unjust men and shall go into the wilderness to prepare there the way of Him” (1QS 8)

3) Messianic in Hope and Orientation: “They shall be ruled by the primitive precepts in which the men of the Community were first instructed until there shall come the Prophet and the Messiahs of Aaron and Israel” (1QS 9)

4) Community of the New Covenant: “None of the men who enter the New Covenant in the land of Damascus and betray it shall be inscribed in its Book from the day of the gathering in of the Teacher of the Community until the coming of the Messiah(s) of Aaron and Israel” (CD 8)

5) Water Initiation Rites: “And when his flesh is sprinkled with purifying water and sanctified by cleansing water, it shall be made clean by the humble submission of his soul to all the precepts of God” (1QS 3) “They shall not enter the water to partake of the pure Meal of the saints unless they turn from their wickedness” (1 QS 5) (Josephus)

6) Spiritual Temple is the Community: “He has commanded that a Sanctuary of men be built for Himself, that there they may send up, like the smoke of incense, the works of the Torah” (4Q174) “They shall atone for sins without the flesh of holocausts and the fat of sacrifice and prayer shall be an acceptable fragrance of righteousness” (1QS 9) (Josephus, Philo)

7) Communal Sharing of Property and Wealth: “All those who freely devote themselves to His truth shall bring all their knowledge, powers and possessions into the Community of God” (1QS 1) (Josephus? Philo)

8) Forbidding of Divorce: Fornication is “taking a second wife while the first is alive, whereas the principle of creation is ‘male and female’ he created them.” Two not three or more…(CD 4:20)

What makes these eight all the more noteworthy is that they are characteristic tags of identity, that is matters that define the entire essence and orientation of a group, not peripheral details. And further, as far as we know, neither the Pharisees nor the Sadducess shared a single one of these characteristics.

From this material alone I think we can say that Jesus and his movement fit best against the background or the kind of apocalyptic/Messianic Judaism that we see reflected in the Scrolls. But that is not to say that Jesus or his followers were “card carrying” members of the Essenes. I rather think they were not. There are also sharp and strong differences. The Essenes, at least as we know them in the Scrolls, would have likely considered Jesus a teacher of “smooth things.” His relations with women, Gentiles, even Roman soldiers, and his attitude toward Sabbath observance and ritual purity, as well as other Halachic matters would have seen to them as lax and lacking. I do not think that he violated such things with a “high hand,” but that he interpreted the Torah on the principle that “Laws are for people, not people for laws.” One good example is the Scrolls forbid helping an animal that has fallen into a pit or well on Shabbat, whereas Jesus, agreeing with the Pharisees, asks, “Which of you would not help such a creature on the Shabbat?”

We also have to remember that the Essene community known from the Scrolls tends to be a reflection of the group in the 1st century BCE–nearer to its founding and before it profound disappointment with apocalyptic expectations “Dead Messiahs Who Don’t Return“). Who is to say that all those even loosely associated with the group, a hundred years after the death of the Teacher, would have maintained that original strictness in terms of observing the Torah? I think it likely that scores of “Essenes” and “Essene types” or sympathizers were drawn to John the Baptizer and Jesus and James. That is why I am so fond of Robert Eisenman’s designation: The Messianic movement in Palestine…He does not get caught up on labels and modern disputes about who calls whom what. What links the groups is the language, the core ideas, the vocabulary, and the key concepts they shared. I do indeed think we can best understand Jesus and his movement, before and after his life, in that wider context we see reflected in the Scrolls.

I have begun work on another book, a kind of sequel to The Jesus Dynasty. In chapter 16 of my book, titled, “The Challenge of Paul,” I only give a tiny glimpse of how Paul’s message began to rival that of John the Baptist, Jesus, and James and eventually achieved an influence that essentially equated it with “Christianity” itself. In terms of the history of ideas, I am convinced that Saul of Tarus, that is the Apostle Paul, is the most influential person in human history–yes, even above Jesus, Moses, Plato or Aristotle, Buddha, or Mohammed. I will argue in this new book that Paul is indeed, hands down, the Founder of the Christian Faith.

But if I am right, how did this happen? How was it that Paul was able to achieve this kind of dominance and success, even over the founders of the Jesus movement? Where did he get his ideas? What was his relationship to James and the rest of the core group of original Jesus followers?

I began my work on Paul many years ago, writing my dissertation at the University of Chicago on the “mysticism of Paul.” It was subsequently published (long ago out of print) under the title: Things Unutterable: Paul’s Ascent to Paradise (University Press of America, 1986). There is a core excerpt of that book, but without notes, archived at my University Web site: The Message and Mission of Paul. As with Jesus I consider Albert Schweitzer my mentor and pioneer in the study of Paul. His amazing work, The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle (1930), but still available in English reprints, remains in my view the most groundbreaking book on Paul in the history of modern scholarship.

Over the years I have refined and developed my own understanding of Paul and the field of “Pauline” studies has vastly developed since 1930 when Schweitzer wrote. I think we are finally in a position to full in the blanks in a way that can satisfactorily explain what really went on from 30 AD when Jesus died, to 70 AD when Jerusalem was destroyed and James, Peter, as well as Paul were already dead. It is that crucial 40 years period that will be the focus of my book. There are probably about as many books published on Paul as on Jesus, so the field is vast and the discussion is complex. However, I do think that my 30 years of thinking about these issues has resulted in some worthwhile insights that can help considerably to fill out my lifelong interest–how did Christianity originate and develop during its first 40 years? Expect a riveting story and some fascinating surprises. The standard heroic Sunday school version, now enshrined in the book of Acts, is badly in need of revision. It is all about parties and politics and fights to the bitter end. The stakes were high and the influence upon subsequent history was profound. I know of nothing one could study with a more potentially influential outcome.
I never get accustomed to the incredible influence that Paul has in Christian circles today–especially among more orthodox or traditional evangelical Christians, including Roman Catholics. It seems that whatever Paul says or writes or teaches becomes the last and final word for millions, feared and revered over the voice of Jesus or even Moses. Paul’s claim to have received the “final mystery” of the revelation of God lies at the heart of the issue. If we believe him we are bound to shape our ideas and our lives by his teachings. But if his message was a departure from that of Jesus and his brother James–then the most devout and dedicated Christian surely needs to rethink things from the ground up.

I have not finalized publication plans as of yet and when I know the details I will announce them but my intention is to see this book published next year–in 2007.

Tonight marks the beginning of Shavuot or Pentecost on the traditional Jewish calendar. Among other things, Jews look back on Shavuot as a celebration of the giving of the Torah at Mt. Sinai/Horeb, both the Ten Words spoken by YHVH directly, and the rest of the “book of the Torah” revealed to Moses in the mountain (Exodus 20-24; Deut 5-27).

One thing historians of religions often emphasize is that no religious tradition is a static monolithic entity. Whether we are talking about Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, or Islam, the varieties and diversity within each tradition are rich and complex. Judaism is no exception. In the time of Jesus, which historians often refer to as the “late 2nd Temple period” we find within the varieties of emergent Judaism multiple interpretations of almost every subject imaginable–the nature of God, the coming of the Messiah, free will and determinism, and explanations for the causes of sin, suffering, and evil. At the center of it all was the practical matter of how one is to observe and follow the Torah, or what was believed to have been the revelation of God to the people of Israel through Moses at Mt. Sinai. One of the things we most emphasize in courses on the “Judaisms” of this period is this matter of diversity as we see it reflected in the so-called Pseudepigrapha literature, the Dead Sea Scrolls, Philo, the Mishnah, and other rabbinic writings.

For a general overview of Judaism/s of this period I would recommend a few basic books:
Shaye Cohen, From the Maccabees to the Mishnah
James Vanderkam, An Introduction to Early Judaism
Seth Schwartz, Imperialism and Jewish Society: 200 B.C.E. to 640 C.E.

In my book The Jesus Dynasty I maintain that Jesus was and remained a Jew and never entertained the establishment of a new religion. In contrast, it was Paul who might actually be called the “founder” of Christianity, with its distinctive theological doctrines. Even though Jews disagreed on how one might reflect and live out all the teachings and commandments of the Sinai revelation, especially regarding what came to be called halacha (literally “the way” or “the walk”), that is how to fulfill the various commandments, in general religious Jews, who took seriously the revelation of Torah, agreed on the obvious point that Israelites of all persuasions were obligated to live according to the commandments in order to be faithful to the Covenant.

Historians and scholars seem to be in almost universal agreement that what is called “the Jesus movement,” as represented by the teachings of John the Baptist and Jesus of Nazareth, was a movement within Judaism/s of its time and is most properly understood in this way, rather than as a “new” religion, separate from the mother faith. Likewise, I think there is general agreement, as far as I am aware, that James the brother of Jesus, leader of the Jesus movement after Jesus’ death, remained an observant Jew himself (Acts, letter of James, Josephus, Hegesippus, etc.).

To be “observant” in this broader context does not so much imply a uniform “orthodoxy” such as later developed within Rabbinic Judaism, but that whatever one’s halachic view, one remained “in the camp” in terms of covenental identity with the Jewish people and a concerted attempt to embody the teaching and commandments of the Sinai revelation. Judaism, as it developed, was understood as a religion, a people, and a culture, so matters of “definition” could be quite complex, i.e., you could have one who was born as a Jew, spurning the religion, or living immorally, or even turning to another faith, and yet, technically, remaining “Jewish.” In the same way non-Jews might take up Jewish customs and observances and still, nonetheless, not be considered “Jews” in a formal sense. E. P. Sanders, in his book Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People, might be one of the best summaries of this entire matter. He exhaustively explores the various “Judaisms” of the period, showing ways in which they differed, but also what gave them their essential identity, something he terms “covenantal nomism.”

Non-Jews, in most of these forms of emerging Judaism, were not expected to “convert” to Judaism in order to have a spiritual relationship with God. They could function within the more universal “Noahite” covenant, and the notion and even social existence of the “righteous Gentile” or the “God-fearer” has been extensively documented, particularly during the late Roman empire. Here I recommend the monumental study of my teacher Louis Feldman, Jew and Gentile in the Roman World. One way of putting it was the adage “The righteous of all the nations will have a place in the world to come.” Jesus appears to share this openness to the non-Jew and the messianic vision of the Prophets was that all nations would learn to walk in the light of the Torah’s essential ethical teachings.

If Paul did indeed redefine the people of Israel (what he calls the “true Israel” ) as those who had faith in the heavenly Christ, thus excluding those he called “Israel after the flesh” from his new covenant, and if he also held the view that the Torah given to Moses was valid “until Christ came,” so that even Jews are no longer “under the Torah,” or obligated to follow the commandments or mitzvot as given to Moses but a new “Law of Christ,” then most historians have agreed that we are not merely dealing with a movement “within Judaism,” but the makings of a “new religion” that comes to be called Christianity. This is not to deny Paul’s “Jewishness,” in the cultural sense of that term. He surely believes in the God of Israel, Jesus as the Messiah of Israel, and the Torah and Prophets as Scripture. But in Paul’s thinking, instead of humanity divided as “Israel and the nations” which is the classic understanding of Judaism, we have “Israel, the Gentiles or “non-Jews,” and the new people called “the church of God.” This does not mean that Paul advocated immoral living, he surely did not. In all his letters he takes pains to enforce and reinforce the essential ethics revealed in the Torah as applicable to Gentiles upon his followers.

The rub comes for Jews–if it is now okay for a Jew who is “in Christ” and thus part of this new spiritual Israel, to fail to circumcise his or her children, to ignore observance of the Sabbath and the festivals, to eat anything set before them, and to generally “live as a Gentile” in terms of observing such marks of Torah observance then Paul’s position takes him outside of “Judaism” or observant Torah faith. Such a view implicitly leads to the abolition/replacement of the mother faith. It was upon that basis that the entire super-sessionist/replacement idea that became so current in Christianity developed. Paul takes the position in Romans 9 that any Jew who does not share his faith in Christ is “lost” and cut off from God, no matter what might be his or her spiritual devotion, Torah observance, or even reliance upon the grace of God. In recent times Lloyd Gaston, John Gager, and Krister Stendahl have argued that Paul’s “abolition of the Torah” was only directed to those in the Jesus movement who sought to force Gentiles to convert to Judaism. I am convinced that they are wrong. Alan Segal, in his important study, Paul the Covert: Apostle or Apostate, sucessfully demonstrates that Paul’s message does indeed represent a departure from standard from of Judaism.

Then there is also the matter of “justification by faith.” Judaism in all its forms has taught that all humans are sinners and can only be accepted in God’s eyes through repentance and faith. Psalm 51 would be the most classic expression of this, the Thanksgiving Hymns in the Dead Sea Scrolls reflect the same for the Qumran community, as srict was they were in their legal interpretations, and Rabbinic literature reflects the same. As a Jew Jesus expressed these very ideas when he speaks of the two men praying in the Temple, one of them a “sinner” who smites his breast and turns to God, and is thereby “justified,” and the other self-righteousness, thinking he had no need of justification. E.P. Sanders is very good to make it clear that the notion that Christianity depends on “grace” and Judaism on “works” is a terribly unfortunate misunderstanding of Judaism. What divides Paul from Judaism is his insistence that this grace bringing justification is only extended to those who accept his Christ faith.

With these three elements based on Paul’s perceptions and heavenly visions: a new definition of Israel, the abrogation of the Sinai covenant, and the restriction of God’s grace to those who “accept Christ as savior,” we truly have a “new religion” and by no theological, cultural, or historical definition could it properly be called “Judaism.”