Jesus and Judaism
Jesus and Judaism
I believe that reasons for my emphasis on Jewish sources in this volume should be evident. Whatever else scholars may say about Jesus with confidence, we certainly can say that Jesus was Jewish. One problem in much modern New Testament scholarship is that scholars tend to be particularly competent either in the early Jewish context or in the larger Greco-Roman context of the New Testament. I trust that those who see my work on Acts (Hendrickson) or Paul’s Corinthian correspondence (Cambridge) will recognize that I work in non-Jewish Greco-Roman sources as well as in Jewish ones. I trust that the early chapters of this book will demonstrate the same; while Jesus was a Galilean Jew, the finished form of our Gospels reflects approaches to genre that prevailed in the writers’ own Diaspora (non-Palestinian) setting. Yet the more Diaspora-friendly Gospels, written in Greek, are to at least that extent removed from the specific milieu in which Jesus primarily ministered. One therefore expects more Palestinian Jewish elements to reflect prior tradition.
I prefer a more specifically Jewish context for studying Jesus historically not because I have not studied the other sources, but for two methodological reasons: First, Jesus was a Galilean Jew, for whom Palestinian Jewish sources provide the closest cultural context. Second, as I inductively worked through ancient literature over the years, I often found much closer Palestinian Jewish parallels to Jesus’ speech and actions (sometimes down to turns of phrase) than in other sources. (By contrast, my non-Jewish sources proved more helpful for understanding early Christian writers addressing audiences with a larger Gentile membership.) Because Hellenism influenced Judaism far more than the reverse, sources with mixed influences (apart from some magical texts) are typically Jewish, not non-Jewish.
Of course, even Judean Judaism had a larger Greco-Roman context that should be taken into account, but scholars who have worked through only the non-Jewish sources are at a disadvantage in understanding Jesus in his context. (To give a specific example: most “Cynic” parallels for Jesus fit the image of a Jewish prophet better.) For the Gospels, written in Greek and addressing a more cosmopolitan audience, I do draw on the wider range of sources.
Although I employ the entire range of Jewish sources in seeking to understand Jesus’ teaching, current debates compel me to offer a brief word of justification for one circle of these sources. Some scholars today are particularly skeptical of employing material from ancient rabbis, a skepticism that I must here briefly acknowledge and hence to which I must respond. It is certainly true that all rabbinic sources in their written form come from after the time of Jesus. (No rabbinic documents precede the early third century, although many traditions are earlier, especially from c. 70-c. 200.) Nevertheless, Jesus was a sage, and consequently some striking parallels appear with sayings of rabbis that are recorded only in later sources (as well as parallels with earlier sage material such as Sirach). Given the limitations of what sources have remained extant, close parallels in material that cannot depend on the Gospels may suggest common sources in earlier Jewish customs, story lines, figures of speech, reasoning patterns and so forth. I have argued at length elsewhere that these sources can be used to help us understand such early ideas or customs. (Later rabbis certainly were not normally deliberately echoing Jesus, and many commonalities prove too close for coincidence.) I have also suggested that New Testament scholars who avoid this material completely for chronological reasons have for the most part misunderstood the warnings about their abuse (which pertain to more particular kinds of information).18 No major argument in the book rests on the dating of this material, however, and these remain simply one source of information among many. (Sometimes I cite them purely as illustrations of how early Jewish traditions documented elsewhere came to be fleshed out more concretely in these voluminous collections.)
Most importantly, it should be noted, even for those who disagree with my approach, that using such material to suggest that some customs or ideas were traditional in some Jewish circles differs substantially from a much greater anachronism I critique at some points in this book — namely, taking later Christian documents (whether gnostic or otherwise) and using them to reconstruct sources alleged to be superior to our extant first-century ones. I seek to give preference to the earlier sources (such as Josephus, Qumran or the Gospels), and secondarily to those later sources (here including rabbinic literature) that are independent (or almost completely independent) from Christian sources.