Fabian E. Udoh Redefining First-Century Jewish and Christian Identities Essays in Honor of Ed Parish Sanders 2008

Those in part 3 deal with issues that Sanders raised respecting the historical Jesus and the Gospels. And the essays in part 4 debate, among other issues, Sanders’s contention that participation in Christ, rather than justification by faith, is the central theme of Paul’s soteriology. The volume concludes with a bibliography of Sanders’s works.

Smith, E. P. Sanders, Jouette M. Bassler, Shaye J. D. Cohen, Albert I. Baumgarten, Cynthia M. Baker, Israel J. Yuval, Martin Goodman, Eric M. Meyers, Jürgen Zangenberg, Seán Freyne, Peter Richardson, Adele Reinhartz, Paula Fredriksen, Stephen Hultgren, John P. Meier, Craig C. Hill, Heikki Räisänen, Richard B. Hays, Stanley K. Stowers, John M. G. Barclay.

Gregory E. Sterling, Series Editor

Redefining First-Century Jewish and Christian Identities Essays in Honor of

Ed Parish Sanders

Edited by Fabian E. Udoh, with Susannah Heschel, Mark Chancey, and Gregory Tatum

“No scholar of our generation has done more to advance the study of the New Testament than E. P. Sanders, whose work has revolutionized our understanding of early Judaism, the historical Jesus, and the apostle Paul. These are three enormously significant areas of research; most good scholars need an entire career to master, let alone influence, any one of them. The present collection of essays by leading researchers of early Judaism and early Christianity—including an insightful intellectual autobiography by the great man himself—is a fitting tribute to the career and thought of a giant in the field.” —Bart D. Ehrman, James A. Gray Professor, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill ■ ■ ■

FABIAN E. UDOH is associate professor

in the Program of Liberal Studies at the University of Notre Dame. He is author of To Caesar What Is Caesar’s: Tribute, Taxes, and Imperial Administration in Early Roman Palestine (63 B.C.E.–70 C.E.). SUSANNAH HESCHEL is the Eli Black Chair in Jewish Studies in the Department of Religion, Dartmouth College; MARK CHANCEY is associate professor in the Department of Religious Studies, Southern Methodist University; GREGORY TATUM is professor at the École biblique et archéologique française, Jerusalem.

“This volume is a fitting tribute to the single most influential scholar in the fields of New Testament and early Judaism of the last half century. . . . A real strength of this volume is that most of the essays not only directly engage the work of Ed Parish Sanders but confirm, refine, and even extend various aspects of his innovative and widely debated positions on central issues in the study of Jesus, Paul, and Second Temple Judaism.” —Daniel C. Harlow,

Jacket design: Bruce Gore

Christianity and Judaism in Antiquity

Redefining First-Century Jewish and Christian Identities

Redefining

First-CenturyJewish and Christian Identities Essays in Honor of

Ed Parish Sanders

Calvin College ■ ■ ■

“A celebratory testimonial to the far-ranging interests of the most influential intertestamental historian of our age, this stellar, seminal, stimulating compendium—one exciting essay on the heels of another—is a veritable ‘scholarly page-turner.’ Gloriously rich in content, provocatively diverse in perspective, and brilliant in categorization and sequence, this volume will be indispensable to all of E. P. Sanders’s followers and reactors as well as to present and future newcomers to his distinctive contributions.” —Michael J. Cook, Sol & Arlene Bronstein Professor of Judeo-Christian Studies, Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion

Jacket art: The Hebrew text (left) is part of Leviticus 19:1-10 from (a facsimile of) the Leningrad Manuscript of the Hebrew Bible. The Greek text (right) is part of 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10, taken from (a facsimile of) the Codex Alexandrinus of the New Testament. Courtesy of the University of Notre Dame Hesburgh Library.

Redefining First-Century Jewish and Christian Identities

CONTRIBUTORS: Fabian E. Udoh, D. Moody

Christianity and Judaism in Antiquity

Udoh, Heschel, Chancey,Tatum

CONTINUED FROM FRONT FLAP

University of Notre Dame Press Notre Dame, IN 46556 undpress.nd.edu

Edited by

Fabian E. Udoh, with Susannah Heschel, Mark Chancey, and Gregory Tatum

Essays in Honor of

Ed Parish Sanders

Edited by Fabian E. Udoh, with Susannah Heschel, Mark Chancey, and Gregory Tatum

F

or nearly four decades, E. P. Sanders has been the foremost scholar in shaping and refocusing scholarly debates in three different but related disciplines in New Testament studies: Second Temple Judaism, Jesus and the Gospels, and Pauline studies. The essays in this volume originated as papers presented at the conference “New Views of First-Century Jewish and Christian Self-Definition: An International Conference in Honor of E. P. Sanders.” The focus of the conference was to readdress some aspects of Judaism and the New Testament, as well as their relationship, in light of recent developments in these fields, especially in light of the conversations Ed Sanders has been instrumental in initiating and sustaining for the past twenty-five years. These essays, written by an impressive array of colleagues and former students, present original scholarship that extends—or departs from—the research of Sanders himself. Both apologists and dissenters find their place in this volume, as the authors actively debate Sanders’s innovative positions on central issues in all three disciplines. The introductory group of essays includes a substantive intellectual autobiography by E. P. Sanders himself. The next three parts examine in turn the three areas in which Sanders made his important contributions. The essays in part 2 engage Sanders’s notion of “common Judaism.” CONTINUED ON BACK FLAP

Redefining First-Century Jewish and Christian Identities

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CHRISTIANITY AND JUDAISM IN ANTIQUITY SERIES Gregory E. Sterling, Series Editor

Volume 16

The University of Notre Dame Press gratefully acknowledges the generous support of Jack and Joan Conroy of Naples, Florida, in the publication of titles in this series.

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Ed Parish Sanders

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Redefining FIRST-CENTURY JEWISH and CHRISTIAN IDENTITIES

Essays in Honor of

ED PAR IS H S AN D ER S

Edited by

FABIAN E. UDOH with Susannah Heschel, Mark Chancey, and Gregory Tatum University of Notre Dame Press Notre Dame, Indiana

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Copyright © 2008 by University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, Indiana 46556 www.undpress.nd.edu All Rights Reserved Manufactured in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Redefining first-century Jewish and Christian identities : essays in honor of Ed Parish Sanders / edited by Fabian E. Udoh ; with Susannah Heschel, Mark Chancey, and Gregory Tatum. p. cm. — (Christianity and Judaism in antiquity) Essays originated as papers presented at a conference held Apr. 10–13, 2003 at the University of Notre Dame Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-268-04453-4 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-268-04453-8 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Sanders, E. P.—Congresses. I. Sanders, E. P. II. Udoh, Fabian E., 1954– III. Heschel, Susannah. IV. Chancey, Mark A. V. Tatum, Gregory, 1957– BS501.S26R43 2008 270.1—dc22 2008027220

∞ The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.

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Christianity and Judaism in Antiquity Series (CJAS)

The Christianity and Judaism in Antiquity Program at the University of Notre Dame came into existence during the afterglow of the Second Vatican Council. The doctoral program combines the distinct academic disciplines of the Hebrew Bible, Judaism, the New Testament, and the Early Church in an effort to explore the religion of the ancient Hebrews, the diverse forms of Second Temple Judaism, and its offspring into religions of Rabbinic Judaism and the multiple incarnations of early Christianity. While the scope of the program thus extends from the late Bronze and Early Iron Ages to the late antique world, the fulcrum lies in the Second Temple and Early Christian periods. Each religion is explored in its own right, although the program cultivates a History-of-Religions approach that examines their reciprocally illuminating interrelationships and their place in the larger context of the ancient world. During the 1970s a monograph series was launched to reflect and promote the orientation of the program. Initially known as Studies in Judaism and Christianity in Antiquity, the series was published under the auspices of the Center of the Study of Judaism and Christianity in Antiquity. Six volumes appeared from 1975 to 1986. In 1988 the series name became Christianity and Judaism in Antiquity as the editorship passed to Charles Kannengiesser, who oversaw the release of nine volumes. Professor Kannengiesser’s departure from Notre Dame necessitated the appointment of a new editor. At the same time, the historic connection between the series and the CJA doctoral program was strengthened by the appointment of all CJA faculty to the editorial board. Throughout these institutional permutations, the purpose of the series has continued to be the promotion of research into the origins of Judaism and Christianity with the hope that a better grasp of the common ancestry and relationship of the two world’s religions will illuminate not only the ancient world but the modern world as well. Gregory E. Sterling, Series Editor

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To Ed Sanders Oujk e[stin maqhth;~ uJpe;r to;n didavskalon (Luke 6:40)

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Contents

Abbreviations

xiii

Introduction Fabian E. Udoh

xix

Contributors

PART ONE

Prologue

1

Professor Sanders at Duke D. Moody Smith

2

Comparing Judaism and Christianity: An Academic Autobiography E. P. Sanders

11

3

The Problem of Self-Definition: What Self and Whose Definition? Jouette M. Bassler

42

PART TWO 4

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xxiii

3

Judaism

Common Judaism in Greek and Latin Authors Shaye J. D. Cohen

69

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x

Contents

5

Setting the Outer Limits: Temple Policy in the Centuries Prior to Destruction Albert I. Baumgarten

6

Whose “Outer Limits”? Historiography for an Age of Destruction Cynthia M. Baker

104

7

All Israel Have a Portion in the World to Come Israel J. Yuval

114

8

The Place of the Sadducees in First-Century Judaism Martin Goodman

139

9

Sanders’s “Common Judaism” and the Common Judaism of Material Culture Eric M. Meyers

153

10

Common Judaism and the Multidimensional Character of Material Culture Jürgen Zangenberg

175

PART THREE

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88

Jesus and the Gospels

11

Jesus in Jewish Galilee Seán Freyne

197

12

Jewish Galilee: Its Hellenization, Romanization, and Commercialization Peter Richardson

213

13

Crucifying Caiaphas: Hellenism and the High Priesthood in Life of Jesus Narratives Adele Reinhartz

227

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Contents

14

Gospel Chronologies, the Scene in the Temple, and the Crucifixion of Jesus Paula Fredriksen

246

15

The Incident at the Temple as the Occasion for Jesus’ Death: Meeting Some Objections Stephen Hultgren

283

16

The Historical Jesus and the Historical Sabbath John P. Meier

297

PART FOUR

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xi

Paul

17

On the Source of Paul’s Problem with Judaism Craig C. Hill

311

18

A Controversial Jew and His Conflicting Convictions: Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People Twenty Years After Heikki Räisänen

319

19

What Is “Real Participation in Christ”? A Dialogue with E. P. Sanders on Pauline Soteriology Richard B. Hays

336

20

What Is “Pauline Participation in Christ”? Stanley K. Stowers

352

21

Grace and the Transformation of Agency in Christ John M. G. Barclay

372

Bibliography of Works by E. P. Sanders

391

Index of Ancient Texts

397

Index of Names and Subjects

405

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Abbreviations

AAR

American Academy of Religion

AASOR

Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research

AB

Anchor Bible

ABD

Anchor Bible Dictionary. Edited by D. N. Freedman. 6 vols. New York, 1992

‘Abod. Zar.

‘Abodah Zarah

ABRL

Anchor Bible Reference Library

ADAJ

Annual of the Department of Antiquities of Jordan

AGJU

Arbeiten zur Geschichte des antiken Judentums und des Urchristentums

A.J.

Antiquitates judaicae

AJSR

Association for Jewish Studies Review

AnBib

Analecta biblica

ANRW

Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt: Geschichte und Kultur Roms im Spiegel der neueren Forschung. Edited by H. Temporini and W. Haase. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1972–

ANYAS

Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences

ASR

American Sociological Review

ATANT

Abhandlungen zur Theologie des Alten und Neuen Testaments xiii

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xiv

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Abbreviations

b.

Babylonian Talmud

BA

Biblical Archaeologist

BAR

Biblical Archaeology Review

BASOR

Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research

Bek.

Bekorot

Ber.

Berakot

BETL

Bibliotheca ephemeridum theologicarum lovaniensium

Bib

Biblica

Bik.

Bikkurim

B.J.

Bellum judaicum

BJS

Brown Judaic Studies

BNTC

Black’s New Testament Commentaries

BZNW

Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft

C. Ap.

Contra Apionem

CBQ

Catholic Biblical Quarterly

ConBNT

Coniectanea biblica: New Testament Series

CRINT

Compendia rerum iudaicarum ad Novum Testamentum

DSD

Dead Sea Discoveries

DSS

Dead Sea Scrolls

EncJud

Encyclopaedia Judaica. 16 vols. Jerusalem, 1972

‘Erub.

‘Erubin

FC

Fathers of the Church. Washington, D.C., 1947–

FRLANT

Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen Testaments

HR

History of Religions

HTR

Harvard Theological Review

HUCA

Hebrew Union College Annual

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Abbreviations

Udoh.indb xv

xv

ICC

International Critical Commentary

IDB

The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible. Edited by G. A. Buttrick. 4 vols. Nashville, 1962

IEJ

Israel Exploration Journal

INJ

Israel Numismatic Journal

Int

Interpretation

JAOS

Journal of the American Oriental Society

JBL

Journal of Biblical Literature

JE

The Jewish Encyclopedia

JECS

Journal of Early Christian Studies

JJS

Journal of Jewish Studies

JQR

Jewish Quarterly Review

JRA

Journal of Roman Archaeology

JRASupS

Journal of Roman Archaeology Supplementary Series

JRS

Journal of Roman Studies

JSJ

Journal for the Study of Judaism in the Persian, Hellenistic, and Roman Periods

JSNT

Journal for the Study of the New Testament

JSNTSup

Journal for the Study of the New Testament: Supplement Series

JSOTSup

Journal for the Study of the Old Testament: Supplement Series

JSS

Journal of Semitic Studies

JTS

Journal of Theological Studies

LCL

Loeb Classical Library

LXX

Septuagint

m.

Mishnah

Ma‘aś. Š.

Ma‘aśer Šeni

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xvi

Abbreviations

Med Anthrop Q. Medical Anthropology Quarterly

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Menah ̣.

Menah ̣ot

NEA

Near Eastern Archaeology

NICNT

New International Commentary on the New Testament

NIGTC

New International Greek Testament Commentary

NovT

Novum Testamentum

NovTSup

Novum Testamentum Supplements

NPNF1

Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1

nrsv

New Revised Standard Version Bible

NTS

New Testament Studies

ODCC

The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. Edited by F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone. 2nd ed. Oxford, 1983

PEQ

Palestine Exploration Quarterly

QC

Qumran Chronicle

Qidd.

Qiddušin

RB

Revue biblique

RBL

Review of Biblical Literature

RevQ

Revue de Qumran

RHPR

Revue d’histoire et de philosophie religieuses

Roš Haš.

Roš Haššanah

RQ

Römische Quartalschrift für christliche Altertumskunde und Kirchengeschichte

RR&T

Reviews in Religion and Theology

RRJ

Review of Rabbinic Judaism

RSR

Recherches de science religieuse

rsv

Revised Standard Version

Šabb.

Šabbat

Sanh.

Sanhedrin

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Abbreviations

Udoh.indb xvii

xvii

SBF

Studium Biblicum Franciscanum

SBL

Society of Biblical Literature

SBLDS

Society of Biblical Literature Dissertation Series

SBLSP

Society of Biblical Literature Seminar Papers

SBT

Studies in Biblical Theology

SHR

Studies in the History of Religions

SJLA

Studies in Judaism in Late Antiquity

SNT

Studien zum Neuen Testament

SNTSMS

Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series

SPhilo

Studia philonica

ST

Studia theologica

SupJSJ

Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism in the Persian, Hellenistic, and Roman Periods

SVF

Stoicorum veterum fragmenta

t.

Tosefta tractate

Ta‘an.

Ta‘anit

TDNT

Theological Dictionary of the New Testament. Edited by G. Kittel and G. Friedrich. Translated by G. W. Bromiley. 10 vols. Grand Rapids, 1964–1976

ThTo

Theology Today

ThWAT

Theologisches Wörterbuch zum Alten Testament. Edited by G. J. Botterweck and H. Ringgren. Stuttgart, 1970–

TRE

Theologische Realenzyklopädie. Edited by G. Krause and G. Müller. Berlin, 1977–

TS

Texts and Studies

TS

Theological Studies

TWNT

Theologische Wörterbuch zum Neuen Testament. Edited by G. Kittel and G. Friedrich. Stuttgart, 1932–1979

USQR

Union Seminary Quarterly Review

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xviii

Udoh.indb xviii

Abbreviations

WBC

World Biblical Commentary

WMANT

Wissenschaftliche Monographien zum Alten und Neuen Testament

WUNT

Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament

y.

Jerusalem Talmud

Yad.

Yadayim

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Introduction

The essays in this volume originated as papers presented at the conference “New Views of First-Century Jewish and Christian Self-Definition: An International Conference in Honor of E. P. Sanders,” held April 10–13, 2003, at the University of Notre Dame. The focus of the conference was to readdress some aspects of Judaism and the New Testament, as well as their relationship, in light of recent developments in these fields, especially in light of the conversations Ed Sanders has been instrumental in initiating and sustaining for the past twenty-five years. The conference was organized, therefore, around the three principal themes of Sanders’s work: Judaism, Jesus and the Gospels, and Paul. Methodologically and substantively, he has defined definitively the parameters and the language of scholarly debate in these areas. While the purpose of the conference was not to assess his contributions to these fields, participants paid particular attention to the methodological criticisms and innovations introduced by his work. The result was that the papers presented at the conference, while building on Sanders’s insights, sought new avenues of research and interpretation. They reflected the changed understanding of Second Temple Judaism, earliest Christianity, and their self-definitions that Sanders’s work has brought about. Unfortunately, not all the papers presented at the conference could be included in this volume. I include a full list of the contributors and other participants at the end of this introduction. Moreover, the atmosphere of friendly and open debate that pervaded the three days of intense scholarly exchange can only be seen in this collection of essays as in a mirror, dimly. Neither Ed Sanders nor his work needs any introduction. Nonetheless, this volume opens with a reflection by D. Moody Smith on Sanders’s career, xix

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xx

Introduction

particularly during his fifteen years at Duke University, as a scholar, teacher, and colleague. Sanders then describes in his own voice his long journey as a scholar. This essay is a moving testament, delivered as his “response” at the end of the conference. We, the organizers of the conference, are grateful that he allowed himself to be prevailed upon to contribute it to the volume. Both the conference and the present volume kept in sight the earlier conference and the resulting three-volume publication edited by Sanders: Jewish and Christian Self-Definition.1 Jouette M. Bassler’s essay on “The Problem of Self-Definition,” which examines the question of self-definition in the Pauline communities, builds the bridge between the two projects. Following these three introductory essays, the volume is divided into three parts, corresponding to the three main areas in which Sanders’s work has revolutionized biblical scholarship. Further, in order to facilitate and continue the debate initiated at the conference, the essays in these sections are arranged in dialogic relationship to each other. In all, the essays not only engage various aspects of Sanders’s innovative work but also refine, confirm, and often extend his central theses. Hence, Sanders’s notion of “common Judaism” (or “normal Judaism”) in the Second Temple period finds supporting evidence in what Greek and Roman authors say about Jews and Judaism (Cohen), and in the material culture studied in the essays on archaeology by Meyers, Zangenberg, Freyne, and Richardson. Four essays in the section on Judaism (by Baumgarten, Baker, Yuval, and Goodman) probe further some of the methodological and historical questions raised by Sanders’s contributions to the study of Second Temple Judaism. Freyne and Richardson examine first-century Jewish material culture in the context of the ongoing debate about the Jewishness of Jesus’ Galilee. Reinhartz approaches the question of the Hellenization of Jesus’ Palestine by examining the representations of the figure of the high priest Caiaphas and his role in Jesus’ death. And it is this “most solid fact about Jesus’ life” and the circumstances that led to it, namely, the apocalyptic and symbolic act in the temple (according to Sanders’s influential thesis) that are the 1. See E. P. Sanders et al., Jewish and Christian Self-Definition (3 vols.; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1980–1982).

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Introduction

xxi

topic of debate in the essays by Fredriksen and Hultgren. Meier confirms Sanders’s central thesis about Jesus’ relation to the law by considering Jesus and the Sabbath. At the heart of Sanders’s revolution of Pauline studies is his two-headed thesis that, on the one hand, Second Temple Judaism must be characterized as “covenantal nomism” and, on the other hand, the center of Pauline theology is not “justification by faith” but rather “participation in Christ.” Hill briefly surveys and debates the various counterproposals to Sanders’s idea of “covenantal nomism.” Hays and Stowers, accepting Sanders’s thesis, examine the meaning of Pauline “participation in Christ.” It is in the context of Paul’s conception of participation, likewise, that Barclay revisits the perennial ethical problem of the relationship between divine action (“grace”) and human activity (“work”) in the structure of Paul’s thought. Räisänen reappraises, in the face of recent challenges, three of the fundamental conclusions that Sanders draws from his assessment of Paul’s thought: that Paul, in effect, broke with Judaism, that he held conflicting convictions, and that he thought “backwards,” that is, from solution to plight. Both the conference and the volume were funded by a collaborative grant from the American Academy of Religion, by the Paul M. and Barbara Henkels Lecture Series grant, as well as grants from the Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts, the Office of the Dean of Arts and Letters, the Graduate School, the Theology Department, the Program of Liberal Studies, and the African and African American Studies Program—all of the University of Notre Dame. The conference was co-organized by Susannah Heschel, Gregory Tatum, Mark Chancey, and myself. Our particular thanks go to Ms. Harriet E. Baldwin of Notre Dame’s Center for Continuing Education and Professors Gregory Sterling, Michael Signer, and Hindy Najman for their invaluable help in organizing the conference. I am forever grateful to my student assistants, in particular David George and Donna Bauters. Fabian E. Udoh

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Contributors

Cynthia M. Baker, Religious Studies Department, Santa Clara University John M. G. Barclay, Department of Theology and Religion, Durham University Jouette M. Bassler, Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University (Emerita) Albert I. Baumgarten, Department of Jewish History, Bar Ilan University Mark Chancey, Department of Religious Studies, Southern Methodist University Shaye J. D. Cohen, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University Paula Fredriksen, Department of Religion, Boston University Seán Freyne, School of Religions and Theology, Trinity College, Dublin Martin Goodman, The Oriental Institute, Oxford University Richard B. Hays, The Divinity School, Duke University Susannah Heschel, Department of Religion, Dartmouth College Craig C. Hill, Wesley Theological Seminary, Washington, D.C. Stephen Hultgren, Department of Theology, Fordham University John P. Meier, Department of Theology, University of Notre Dame xxiii

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xxiv

Contributors

Eric M. Meyers, Department of Religion, Duke University Heikki Räisänen, Faculty of Theology, University of Helsinki Adele Reinhartz, Department of Classics and Religious Studies, Université d’Ottawa/University of Ottawa Peter Richardson, University College, University of Toronto E. P. Sanders, Department of Religion, Duke University (Emeritus) D. Moody Smith, The Divinity School, Duke University (Emeritus) Stanley K. Stowers, Department of Religious Studies, Brown University Gregory Tatum, École biblique et archéologique française, Jerusalem Fabian E. Udoh, Program of Liberal Studies, University of Notre Dame Israel J. Yuval, Mandel Institute of Jewish Studies, Hebrew University Jürgen Zangenberg, Faculty of Theology, Leiden University

O t h e r C o n f e r e n c e P a r t i c ip a n t s Mary Rose D’Angelo, Department of Theology, University of Notre Dame Margaret M. Mitchell, The Divinity School, University of Chicago Hindy Najman, Department and Centre for the Study of Religion and Jewish Studies Program, University of Toronto Gregory E. Sterling, Department of Theology, University of Notre Dame James C. Vanderkam, Department of Theology, University of Notre Dame

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PART ON E Prologue

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ONE

Professor Sanders at Duke D. Moody Smith

Ed P. Sanders is an outstanding scholar of the first order. His contributions, which affect three centrally important areas of New Testament investigation—Judaism, Jesus, and Paul—have become benchmarks for his colleagues. Any scholar who wants to be taken seriously in these important areas must take his work into account. In chapter two Sanders discusses how and why his scholarly career focused on setting the record straight about the nature of ancient Judaism in its relation to Christian beginnings. Older views of Judaism, largely informed by a reading of the New Testament against the defining background of Christian theology—even theology derived from it—have to be reexamined from the ground up, if not discarded. Judaism must be studied in its own right. This has been affirmed previously, but Sanders has shown more fully than anyone else why this is so. It is probably correct to say that there are more Jewish scholars with a firsthand understanding of ancient Christianity than there are Christian scholars with a firsthand understanding of ancient Judaism. Most Jewish scholars have lived in nominally Christian cultures all their lives. The reverse is not true. In fact, most Christians have looked at Judaism through Christian texts—that is, through Christian eyes. Ed Sanders undertook the difficult task of understanding a religious tradition, into which he was not born, from within. That took a lot of time, effort, and chutzpah, even from someone endowed with his obvious capacities.

3

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4

D. Moody Smith

The importance of Sanders’s scholarship is obvious and well recognized, and there is no need to belabor it. To get tenure at Duke, however, one must qualify in three areas: scholarship, teaching, and university service. Would he have been granted tenure on the basis of qualifications in each of these spheres? In reality this is a moot question, inasmuch as he was already a tenured professor at Oxford when he was invited to Duke. But it is enlightening to consider his contributions to teaching and service. What about Ed P. Sanders as a teacher? First of all, he has been an important teacher of his colleagues. His teaching has been like an axe laid at the root of the tree. It has challenged long-held, but frequently unexamined, assumptions, and it has challenged older paradigms. As one of our colleagues has put it, “it belongs to not knowing not to know that you do not know.” Sanders has taught us to question what we thought we knew, and thus to begin again to learn. This is a fundamental aspect of teaching. What Sanders has done for his colleagues he also has done for graduate students, to whom he emphasizes the importance of working with primary sources—not only reading them, but learning how to read them. In taking the lead in revising Duke’s doctoral program in New Testament, Ed insisted, for example, that students study Judaism by doing research on ancient texts and not on modern ones, not even his own. His seminars on Pharisaism and Paul have been well populated by appreciative students. In dealing with graduate students, in many ways the most vulnerable of mortals, Ed has been a demanding yet sensitive mentor, harder perhaps on good students than on weaker ones. To paraphrase an ancient saying: better to be Sanders’s graduate student than his New Testament colleague. (I tried to think of an analogy to the famous pun on Herod’s hueios and huios, but could not come up with one. What about “Better to be Sanders’s mathētēs, pupil, than his mathēmatikos, mathematician or astrologer”? This is as close as I could come.) Ed P. Sanders also has willingly and effectively taught undergraduate students. He has required them to read the New Testament itself—no small task! He has not simply laid things out systematically for them, which he can do so well. Rather, he has encouraged students to understand imaginatively, in ways meaningful to them, by suggesting modern analogies. He invites—indeed, requires—undergraduates to come to his office to discuss their projects with him before they write papers.

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Professor Sanders at Duke

5

Yes, I think Ed Sanders could have gotten tenure at Duke on the basis of his teaching—demanding yet imaginative, and even humane! What about university service? By comparison, I think of the example set by one of our common mentors, who was alleged to set committee meetings in conflict with one another and then use each as an excuse for not attending the other. Sanders not only attended committees but also chaired them. One that I remember particularly well was the committee of the whole New Testament faculty, which took on the task of reviewing and revising courses, examinations, and other requirements of the Ph.D. program. What should candidates for the Ph.D. in New Testament be required to know and to do? Every student should not have to do the same thing, but there should be commensurability. No one of us was surprised that Ed P. Sanders insisted on firsthand familiarity with primary sources, Jewish and Hellenistic, as well as biblical. What did surprise me was his adroitness in handling the faculty discussion. He adopted a procedure that was one of the two strokes of genius I have observed in the management of academic discussions. Jameson Jones, once dean of Duke Divinity School, invoked the first. He directed that when a proposal was set before the faculty, those opposed to it should speak first. Then, if no one did, there was no need for speeches in favor. This saved an enormous amount of faculty time. Sanders, on the other hand, proposed setting time limits on discussions: “Shall we discuss the means of fulfilling the Greek competency requirement for thirty minutes?” We would agree, and, with an end in view, we often decided what we needed to in that space of time. If we didn’t, we might choose to take fifteen more minutes. Each of these proposals is ingenious. In the first place, they recognize the tendency of academic people to air their views at considerable length, whether to satisfy God, humanity, reason, and truth, or merely in order to fill a vacuum. Such proposals cause colleagues to think about whether they ought to speak at all, and if so, for how long. This is a major achievement. Although Sanders’s move from Oxford to Duke may have astonished many colleagues elsewhere, it had been in the works for a while. In fact, Duke’s decision to invite Sanders to the Department of Religion was not simply an effort to acquire a star, a “world-class scholar,” to use the hackneyed phrase. In a real sense, he filled a lacuna created with the departure of W. D. Davies,

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who had retired nearly a decade before. Davies’s view of the relation of Jesus, Paul, and earliest Christianity to its Jewish roots was, in a real sense, positive and all-consuming. Christianity was not the rejection of Judaism, but its continuation along a new track; yet the rails for that track were already present within Judaism. Davies’s position was congruent with a long-standing point of view at Duke, which, I think, had Calvinist (rather than Lutheran) theological roots, represented by W. F. Stinespring, James L. Price, James M. Efird, and Hugh Anderson, each of whom was Presbyterian or of the Church of Scotland. (Moreover, on the Jewish side, there has been Eric M. Meyers, Lerner Professor of Judaica and Archaeology, who is a leading authority on the archaeology of the Holy Land during the Hellenistic and Roman periods, as well as a prominent Old Testament scholar. Meyers, for more than three decades, has taught and advised many New Testament students as well as students of the Old Testament and Judaism.) The reigning New Testament theologian at Duke was Oscar Cullmann, for whom the Old Testament ended in fulfillment and not, as Rudolf Bultmann put it, miscarriage. Thus, when W. D. Davies read my essay on “The Use of the Old Testament in the New” for the Stinespring Festschrift and exclaimed, “On the last page you have given the game away to Bultmann!” I was astounded. But there was some substance to Davies’s assertion. What I had intended to suggest was that the Old and New Testaments were tied together by a common vocabulary and conceptuality that reflect “a common way of talking and thinking about Man [my cap!] and God in their confrontation and interaction,” that is, a common theological anthropology. After one has read the New Testament in Greek, what is the next easiest Greek text to read? The Septuagint, by far. Bultmann’s view is reflected in these important facts. What is missing in Bultmann is the sense of historical continuity between Old Testament, postbiblical Judaism, and early Christianity that is significant for the constitution of the Christian Bible. But for Bultmann, historical continuity was not an important and positive theological category. Jesus himself stood fully within Judaism. There was no historical or theological continuity even between Jesus and earliest Christianity, for the latter was inaugurated by Jesus’ death and his disciples’ faith in his resurrection. (Of course, the reality of the resurrection lay precisely in that faith, rather than in a historical event.)

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For Cullmann, precisely the opposite is true. In his Christ and Time, which we all read as theological students at Duke, Cullmann affirms, against Bultmann, “I consider it impossible to regard the fact of a development in time as only a framework, of which we must strip the account in order to get at the kernel (‘de-mythologizing’ or ‘myth-removal’).”1 Cullmann rightly sees that for Bultmann the theological interpretation of history was the basic myth with which Christianity, to be true to itself, must dispense. Thus, in the New Testament, Paul and particularly John become Bultmann’s canon within the canon. In Bultmann’s interpretation of John, Jesus’ death and resurrection are the end of history, and the passages that look toward a return of Jesus, resurrection, or final judgment are dismissed as later additions to the original text. These alternative and mutually exclusive ways of viewing history and belief, or theology, make a crucial difference in how one assesses early Christianity’s relation to Judaism historically as well as theologically. On Bultmann’s terms, Christianity is, in effect, the negation of Judaism; on Cullmann’s, it is the continuation, albeit on a new track. This may be an oversimplification, although, I believe, not a misleading one. The negation of the theological significance of history and the negation of Judaism go hand in hand. In the Basel-Duke axis, Scripture, whether the Old or New Testament, was authoritative. Judaism could be viewed as one continuation of scriptural Heilsgeschichte (salvation history), and early Christianity another. In this mix, into which Ed came by his acceptance of a Duke professorship, there is one other religious—perhaps one should not say confessional or theological—ingredient: the Wesleyan. James B. Duke was a Methodist and, appropriately, a religious humanist. When in 1924 he founded Duke University with what was at the time an enormous gift ($40 million) to Trinity College in Durham, North Carolina, he stated, perhaps naively, that he regarded education, along with religion, as “the greatest civilizing influence,” and that “preachers, teachers, lawyers, and physicians . . . can do most to uplift mankind.” A plaque at the center of the Duke campus in effect describes Jesus Christ as the cornerstone of the university: “The aims of Duke University are to assert a faith in the eternal union of knowledge and religion set forth in the teaching and character of Jesus Christ.” Although Jesus is then described as “Son of God,” this is more the young and fearless

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prophet (and teacher) of ancient Galilee than the Christ of the later creeds. In his chapter, Ed Sanders mentions having been brought up in a liberal, Protestant church—the Methodist church. We Methodists may be looked down upon by other major Protestant churches and confessions because of our alleged lack of theology and our pietism. In fact, we are not a confessional church. John Wesley assumed a broadly Christian (specifically Anglican, ultimately Catholic) context in eighteenth-century England. His problem was not Jesus and Judaism or Christianity and other religions, but how the beneficent reality of Jesus might be realized in personal and social life and amid conditions of human degradation. In fact, he did not specify Christian baptism as a prerequisite to partaking of the Lord’s Supper or Holy Communion. Wesley and Wesleyanism were in origin orthodox but, paradoxically, not concerned with orthodoxy. Instead they focused on the redemption of the human condition. Methodist, or Wesleyan, churches have never been state churches. I would argue that Methodists have never persecuted others to the point of death for religious or theological reasons. Growing up a Methodist in South Carolina, I was aware that the Pharisees were bad guys, but it never occurred to me to think of them as Jewish. More seriously, Methodism itself was a renewal movement within the Anglican church. It did not originally involve a fundamental rethinking of basic questions of theology and church order. (Later on, John Wesley himself, as an elder, ordained other elders, having come to believe that the New Testament did not distinguish fundamentally between bishops and elders and thus gave him the right to ordain.) In the continental Reformation, based on Scripture and particularly on the exegesis of Paul’s letters, there was a different situation. Emphasis on faith rather than works in debate and polemic with the Roman Catholic Church went hand in hand with Paul’s insistence on faith, not works, in his polemic against the so-called Judaizers intruding into the Gentile churches that he had founded. For one outside of that continental Reformation tradition, it is not so obvious that the essence of Christianity is to be found in a rejection of works-righteousness in favor of faith in God’s righteousness. Rather, participation in Christ may well seem the more fundamental theological category. So it is with Sanders. (Actually, exegetes in the Reformed tradition, e.g., Albert Schweitzer, sug-

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gested this almost a century ago.) The beginnings of Christianity are not rooted in polemic with or against Judaism or anything else. All this is by way of saying that Ed P. Sanders’s primal instinct to understand Judaism fairly, from the inside, has its own cultural and religious roots. In becoming a colleague at Duke, he was entering a congenial world. There was a tradition of continuity between the Testaments, and the historical bridge for that continuity was what used to be called intertestamental Judaism, which is of course a term that presupposes the Christian Bible. (“Postbiblical” Judaism presupposes the Hebrew Bible. So we settle for “Second Temple Judaism,” which presupposes neither but is unintelligible to most people!) Thus the initial Christian theological impetus is not based upon conflict with Judaism. That came soon enough and was expressed strongly, if in different ways. Christianity began as a renewal movement within Judaism that sought to encompass Judaism. Yet it did not initially define itself over and against Judaism as its opposite, seemingly rejecting Judaism and all its works. Christianity, as it would later become, was originally a positive movement. Needless to say, it soon became involved in polemic, but at least in the case of Paul this polemic was not with Jews per se but with other believers who continued to embrace and enforce aspects of Jewish practice and belief as a matter of course. Jesus and Paul obviously thought of themselves as Jews. Only in John and Acts have “the Jews” become, so to speak, externalized, and in the case of John only after bitter inner-Jewish conflict (see John 9:22; 12:42; 16:2). Having sketched the intellectual and theological context of Sanders’s appointment at Duke, I need to make clear that I am not imputing any or all of these views to Sanders himself. Nor should one assume that as W. D. Davies’s student and successor he continued Davies’s work on Paul and on the Jewish milieu of nascent Christianity along the lines already laid down. He agrees, of course, with Davies that justification by faith (not works) is not the center of Paul’s theology. Yet Sanders’s groundbreaking article “Patterns of Religion in Paul and Rabbinic Judaism” already marks a breakout in an independent direction.2 Paul (and by implication New Testament Christianity in general) represents a pattern of religion different from a Judaism in which “covenantal nomism” was centered in maintaining a relationship already established by

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God. Paul, on the other hand, emphasized first of all not staying in an established relationship with God but getting into a new relationship through the work of Christ as Lord. While that new relationship can be understood retrospectively on the basis of Jewish scripture and tradition, it would scarcely have been anticipated on that basis alone. Sanders’s view is persuasive. Perhaps the analogy of railroad tracks is helpful again: the tracks are there already, but they now are reworked, altered, and bent in new directions. Sanders’s tenure has marked the culmination of Duke’s steady rise to preeminence in certain aspects of New Testament study. Duke has become a leading option for advanced study oriented around scriptural foundations, the Jewish milieu of the development of early Christianity, and the emergence of New Testament theology. In this process, and in the tailoring of doctoral programs to fit Duke’s strengths, Sanders has been a central figure and has played a critical role. As we look toward his eventual retirement from Duke, we ask ourselves, “How shall we replace Ed P. Sanders?” That task will not be easy, for he has spent his entire career learning what he knows. In the present North American religious studies scene, this would be no easy task to replicate, but it was not easy for Ed, either. To study and become learned outside of your own tradition is a rare and difficult accomplishment. But for the world in which we must live, there could scarcely be a more important one.

Notes 1. Oscar Cullmann, Christ and Time (rev. ed.; trans. Floyd V. Filson; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1964), xiii. 2. E. P. Sanders, “Patterns of Religion in Paul and Rabbinic Judaism: A Holistic Method of Comparison,” HTR 66 (1973): 455–78.

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TWO

Comparing Judaism and Christianity An Academic Autobiography

E. P. Sanders

When Fabian Udoh and I discussed the possibility that I would contribute an essay to the conference, we assumed that my effort would be a response to the other papers. I soon realized that this would be impossible. Twenty-four papers were scheduled, and at best I could have discussed only a few points. I decided instead to give an account of the circumstances in which I wrote some of my books. More precisely: What did I think that I was doing? I do not think that my intellectual biography is either impressive or important, and there are dangers in later reflections. Hindsight may serve as rose-colored glasses, and thinking about one’s youth may be merely self-indulgent. Thus I was by no means confident that I should write an academic autobiography. After I presented it at the conference, however, the remarks of others led me to think that it serves a useful purpose. I still think that my books addressed important topics, and it may be worth something if I say how I came to write four of them. I shall begin with a brief account of my youth.

C h i l d h o o d a n d E d u c a t io n I grew up in Grand Prairie, Texas, in the 1940s and 1950s. Although Grand Prairie is close to both Dallas and Fort Worth, families such as mine, 11

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which was at the lower end of the economic spectrum, lived almost entirely in our small town, seldom traveling to the nearby cities. Besides being separated from the influence of major cultural attractions, we were also very remote from the world of advanced learning. Thanks to my mother’s college textbooks, I read extensively in English literature and world history, but despite this I had no conception of a life lived as a scholar and (of course) no idea of what such a life would require. The struggle to learn languages became a dominant factor in my life. I did not meet a foreigner, or even someone who spoke a foreign language, until I went to college. Before I started high school (at age sixteen), the only foreign language available was two years of Spanish (though Spanish speakers had not yet settled in the area where I lived). Thanks to the influence of my boyhood friend Dudley Chambers, who was the son of the superintendent of Schools, two years of Latin became available when we began high school. Dudley and I, together with a few others, dutifully worked on Latin. I attended the only college I could afford, Texas Wesleyan College in Fort Worth, which generously provided a scholarship and arranged for a part-time job. There the only language available was French, which I studied for three years, gaining fair fluency in reading. We had no language laboratories, and I did not acquire the ability to comprehend spoken French. I have been asked why I did not go elsewhere, for example, to Europe, to learn modern languages. There are two answers: (1) I did not think of it, nor did anyone mention it to me; and (2) I could not have afforded it. Since travel is now very cheap relative to incomes, and it is hard to comprehend how difficult it was to escape small-town (or small-college) isolation, I shall offer an anecdote from a novel, published in 1946, that described smalltown America in the 1920s and 1930s. In it, a mind reader is explaining the trick of knowing what is in a person’s mind. First, one must realize that there are only a few subjects: health, wealth, love, travel, and success. The most-asked question was, “Am I ever going to make a trip?”1 Money was not quite as scarce, nor was travel quite as rare, in the 1950s as it had been in the 1920s and 30s, but the circumstances of my own family were not much different from the period of the Great Depression. A round-trip (return) ticket to Europe would have cost more than my father’s annual income, and we were not entirely abnormal. One of my teachers, a member of one of the

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town’s more prosperous families, once spent a week in New York, and her description of the trip filled us schoolchildren with wonder. It was the first time I had heard of anyone traveling so far (except, of course, to fight during World War II). I knew of only one small group of Grand Prairians who went abroad before I graduated from college. The teachers and many other people in Grand Prairie knew that I had abilities. They talked to me about how well I could do in the professions. A local doctor, William Colip, offered to guarantee my expenses in medical school if I made A’s in pre-med courses. Alas! I was interested in the humanities, especially history and literature, and the only well-educated people I knew were in the three professions that flourish in small towns— law, medicine, and ministry. I learned many things from going to church, but not that reading the Bible required Hebrew and Greek, nor that understanding it required German and French. I had local boosters, but none who could point me in the right direction. I knew from the time I was in college (1955–59) that I wanted to study ancient history and specialize in religion. But I did not know what I needed to know, nor did anybody tell me, until I went to the Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University in Dallas (1959–62). There, it readily became apparent that I needed to learn Greek, Hebrew, and German (as well as French). I took all the language courses I could while at SMU (Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, and Syriac), and I took summer courses in German (besides selling cookware, which, along with scholarships and work in local churches, supported me). My life basically changed when William R. Farmer, the senior New Testament scholar at Perkins, decided that I should have a year of study abroad. Bill and Samuel Crossley, a friend and former employer who was then director of Christian Education at University Park Methodist Church, set out to raise money. A large contribution came from a member of First Methodist Church in Fort Worth (where Sam and I had formerly worked). Bill Farmer, for his part, contacted Rabbi Levi A. Olan of Temple Emanuel in Dallas, who received a very large anonymous donation from one of the members of the Temple. I felt overwhelmed by their generosity, and I especially vowed that the gift from Temple Emanuel would not be in vain. Altogether, Bill and Sam raised about $10,000. Bill wrote some letters of introduction. I had met two major scholars when they

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lectured at SMU, and both were very helpful at this stage of my life (as well as later). David Daube encouraged me to come to Oxford and said that he would help me if I were there. Morton Smith contributed letters of introduction and advised me on people who could be helpful in Israel. Most fruitfully, both Bill Farmer and Morton Smith wrote to Yigael Yadin. And I set off on my adventure (1962–63). I studied German in Göttingen from June until October 1962 and then went to Oxford to see what David Daube could arrange. This resulted in my working on rabbinic Hebrew for two terms. Dissatisfied with my progress, I decided to study modern Hebrew to learn how to read unvocalized texts, and went to Jerusalem. There Yigael Yadin twisted the arm of Mordechai Kamrat, who accepted me as a private pupil, and I began to acquire a serious amount of Hebrew. Almost all of the people mentioned in the previous paragraphs are now dead, and some did not live to see whether or not their selfless assistance to a poor, ignorant boy paid off. I hope that I have been half as helpful to a few as these great, busy men were to me.

P a u l a n d P a le s t in ia n J u d a is m ( P & P J) In September 1963, when I started graduate school at Union Theological Seminary in New York, where the New Testament faculty members were John Knox, W. D. Davies, and Louis Martyn, I had three views about the field that I was entering and what I would like to do: (1) Religion is not just theology, and in fact is often not very theological at all. New Testament scholarship then (as now) paid too much attention to theology and not enough attention to religion. Bultmann, who came out of the Religionsgeschichtliche Schule, bore a lot of the responsibility. His turn toward Lutheran theology was part of a larger movement, and I mention him only because he was so influential in New Testament studies. (2) To know one religion is to know none. The human brain comprehends by comparing and contrasting, and consequently comparison in the study of religion is essential, not optional. (3) New Testament scholars ought to study Judaism.

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I cannot now say what had convinced me of numbers 1 and 2 (too much theology, comparison necessary). Bill Farmer had told me item number 3 (study Judaism), and I simply believed him. This explains why, before beginning doctoral work, I had gone to Oxford, where Daube got me into a class, taught by David Patterson, that was translating Mishnah Sanhedrin, and also why I went to Israel to study modern Hebrew. It was furthermore the intention to study Judaism that led me to Union. W. D. Davies was the leading New Testament scholar who wrote about the rabbis, and he had also argued in favor of the interpenetration of Judaism and Hellenism.2 Moreover, Union was across the street from Jewish Theological Seminary, where I took some courses. Although I do not know for sure why I thought that students of religion should not concentrate so exclusively on theology, I do know some of the things I had read. My two favorite books were E. R. Goodenough’s By Light, Light3 and C. H. Dodd’s The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel.4 I liked the mysticism that was so obviously important in the study of Philo and John, and at the time I identified it as part of “nontheological religion”: it is more about experience than about thought. Dodd’s detailed use of passages from Philo and the Revelation of the Thrice-Great Hermes to illuminate John was, I thought, marvelous. And I found Goodenough’s portrayal of mystic Judaism enticing. While at Union, I also started working my way through Goodenough’s Jewish Symbols,5 which impressed me almost as much as By Light, Light. I spent some weeks reading about ancient astrology, which I then started seeing on lots of the pages of the New Testament. Astrology constituted more evidence of a fairly nontheological form of religion. Even if I could, I would not now take you through the rest of my reading list. I found that meeting the requirements of a doctoral program distracted me from my true studies, and I also knew that I could not write a comparative doctoral dissertation. It was bound to take a long time, and I wanted out. So I hopped through the hoops with as much alacrity as I could and finished in two years and nine months, graduating in May 1966. My doctoral dissertation was called “The Tendencies of the Synoptic Tradition.”6 It dealt with a question of form criticism: did the Gospel tradition change in consistent ways, becoming (for example), longer, more

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detailed, and less Semitic? This question went back to the interest in synoptic studies that Bill Farmer had planted in me,7 although I did not write on the “synoptic problem” as such.8 The dissertation left me knowing less about the “authenticity” of the synoptic tradition than Bultmann (for example) had known, since it argued that there were no “laws” of the tradition that governed change. The material had altered in the course of transmission, but I concluded that we do not know in what ways it changed. At the time, I did not see any way of beginning work on the historical Jesus, but I wanted to postpone that anyway, since I intended, after graduation, to begin a career as a comparativist. Having written a doctoral dissertation that was substantially influenced by the agenda of Bill Farmer, I proposed after my doctoral work to take up a project that would be more like the work of W. D. Davies. My plan was then to return to Israel to begin reading rabbinic literature. I won a scholarship, but job offers began to arrive. The year was 1966; the United States had recently learned that the Constitution did not prohibit teaching about religion in tax-supported universities. The baby boomers were arriving in full force; universities were expanding; departments of religion were springing up and growing. Growth and expansion affected Canada as well. Eugene Combs of McMaster University (Hamilton, Ontario) phoned and asked if I would come for an interview. I replied, as I had to others, that I was going to Israel. Eugene, however, proposed that I come for two years and then take leave to go to Israel; they wanted to get New Testament studies started in their new department. So that’s what I did. I remained at McMaster from 1966 to 1984, though I spent a few years away, either on leave or as a visiting professor elsewhere. Why study the rabbis when what had most interested me was Hellenistic astrology and mysticism? I had thought of a Jewish topic that was not theological and that allowed for comparison and contrast—the three points that I regarded as essential. First, I would carry out an intra-Jewish comparison. Then I would figure out a way to compare something Jewish with something Christian. My conception of project number one, an intra-Jewish comparison, was largely determined by E. R. Goodenough. I had read in his Jewish Symbols—and of course I believed it—that George Foot Moore’s Judaism9 really existed, though it was a long way from being “normative.” Moore’s rabbinic Judaism, rather, was a small island in a vast ocean of Hel-

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lenistic Jewish mysticism. Goodenough was not expert in rabbinic literature, though, as Samuel Sandmel observed, by reading it in English he “absorbed a tremendous amount of its quantity and quite a bit of its quality.”10 Perhaps out of modesty, Goodenough had little to say about how Moore’s rabbinic Judaism and his own Hellenized Judaism related to each other, except that they were quite distinct and that Hellenized Judaism was by far the larger kind of Judaism.11 I had read Wolfson12 and Belkin13 on Philo, and so I knew that there were studies of Philo and the rabbis. But I thought that Goodenough’s Philo—not Wolfson’s—was the real Philo, and that therefore the real Philo had not yet been properly compared and contrasted with the rabbis.14 I also knew that there were lots of things that I could not do, such as study the legal topics common to Philo and the rabbis. Nor, I thought, was it necessary, in view of previous work. Since mysticism was appealing, I first thought of comparing Philonic mysticism with rabbinic, but I decided against it on the grounds that mysticism was generally not very important in rabbinic literature.15 Apart from mysticism and astrology, I knew of another nontheological aspect of religion: pious practices. I usually called these “practical piety,” but “pious practices” is a superior term. I did not know anything about ancient pious practices. Well, I knew about prayer and—very vaguely—sacrifice, and I also knew from Goodenough that mysticism might include mystic rites. Guided by ignorance and a few clues, I thought that there must be bunches of pious practices, that I would be able to find them, and that by comparing rabbinic and Hellenistic Jewish practices I could make a contribution to understanding the relationship between Goodenough’s Judaism and Moore’s Judaism. Thus I could do a Jewish, comparative study on a nontheological aspect of religion and eventually follow it up by turning to pious practices in early Christianity. To say that at this stage I “saw through a glass darkly” would be to claim far too much. In any case, the plan was hatched: compare the pious practices of the rabbis and Goodenough’s Jews (Philo + Jewish symbols). I realized that I would have to dig for the pious practices. Moore and Goodenough did not give sufficient information. Cheered on by my colleagues and the administration at McMaster,16 I won a fellowship and headed to Israel to study the rabbis (1968–69).17

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I should confess that it never occurred to me that I could not do what I proposed. Along with a great deal of ignorance, I carried out of Texas the simple assumption that anyone could do anything. Ignorance, in a way, was bliss. Had I known the difficulties, I would probably have tried something much more modest. But, as things were, I wrote a grant application, referees wrote letters, and a committee approved the application. The project appeared feasible, given a bit of work. It was, in fact, several years after I completed Paul and Palestinian Judaism that I realized that it was all beyond my abilities. I have felt like a fraud ever since, although I have worked hard to try to cover it up. (I have by now reached the point of viewing it as salutary that when one learns a lot, one also learns how much is yet to be done.) Perhaps I could put this reflection thus: At a fairly early stage, I became aware of the fact that I sometimes applied the principle “nothing ventured, nothing gained,” and other times the principle “better safe than sorry,” but that I did not know in advance which one to follow. When young, of course, I mostly lived by the first maxim. In the fall of 1968, my beloved friend and teacher, Mordechai Kamrat, took me in as a student again. Kamrat was one of the two most remarkable people I have ever known; the other was David Daube, with whom I had had numerous discussions in Oxford from 1962 to 1963. Kamrat knew all languages. I once heard him converse in Danish, and once he and I watched a TV program from Cyprus: he translated, though he had never been in a Greek-speaking country.18 And he could teach anyone anything. Like many Israelis, he was chronically short of money. I paid him a weekly sum that seemed reasonable at the time; it was about the same as I later paid for my daughter’s piano lessons. Dr. Kamrat had started studying the Talmud at the age of four in Poland. Befriended by a Catholic priest, he was given access to a library and began to acquire languages other than Yiddish, Aramaic, Hebrew, Polish, and Russian, and knowledge other than Talmudic. He ended up with a Ph.D. from the University of Krakow in pedagogical psychology, went to Britishcontrolled Palestine (the only one in his family to escape the Holocaust), and figured out how to teach Hebrew to immigrants from anywhere.19 He taught me modern Hebrew and rabbinics in the same way: inductively, with drill. We started with the Mekhilta. I went to Moshe Schreiber Buchhand-

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lung, dusted off my five-year-old modern Hebrew, and asked advice about editions. I came back with most of the Tannaitic midrashim. Fortunately, I did not know that Lauterbach had translated the Mekhilta into English. When I later consulted the existing German translations of the midrashim, I am glad to say, I found the Hebrew clearer than the German. I don’t mean to say that I achieved fluency in rabbinic Hebrew. A long way from it. I read slowly and sometimes needed help, even at the end of the year. And now, thirty-five years later, my Hebrew is quite rusty, and I have to look up lots of words that I once knew. As I indicated above, I shared the common American weakness of starting to learn foreign languages after I became an adult. Moreover, I’m not gifted. Being around Kamrat was sufficient to make me very modest about my ability to learn languages. I was very fortunate that we started and ended with the Tannaitic midrashim, in which I had no translations available. I had Danby20 with me, but luckily we did not read the Mishnah, and so I had to figure out the rabbis in their own language—with, of course, Dr. Kamrat’s help. I fell in love. The first things I noticed about the rabbis were their humanity, tolerance, and good humor. I also noted, of course, their academic love of precision. They wanted to find out what animal the Passover victim should be, how it should be cooked,21 and so forth, and they were keen to establish the meaning of ben ha‘arabayim.22 Besides the desire to understand the sacred text, which makes them very much like New Testament scholars, toleration of disagreement was their strongest and most consistent characteristic. The discussion of how long a man could be alone with a woman who was not his wife—which we eventually reached—struck me as a notable case of rather humorous whimsy. There was a kind of playful oneupmanship. Is “as long as it takes to swallow an egg” longer or shorter than “as long as it takes for a palm tree, bent by the wind, to snap upright”?23 Besides making it through most of the major and minor Tannaitic midrashim,24 the other book that I read that year was J. N. Epstein’s Mevo’ot le-Sifrut ha-Tannaim.25 It was eye-opening. I toyed with efforts to translate it, but it is full of quotations, for many of which the editor did not give the source. This is all very well for those who have memorized the Talmud, but it was too much for me. What I learned, though, is that it is possible to do critical historical work with the literature, and in particular to identify the

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setam, the anonymous voice in each tractate or even each chapter. I knew, of course, that I could never do it, but Epstein’s demonstration has caused me ever since to look suspiciously at critical work that does not begin with identification of the anonymous voice. At the end of the year, I reread George Foot Moore’s Judaism. I planned to compare his Judaism to that of Goodenough, and now that I had read some of Moore’s favorite sources, I thought it was time to reread his great work. I have mentioned that I was struck by the humanity and tolerance of the rabbis. I had, therefore, begun to form the view that what some of my favorite New Testament scholars, such as Rudolf Bultmann, had told me about Pharisaic or rabbinic Judaism26 was not true. Now, as I read Moore, I saw a polemic against another view between the lines. And I concluded that on more or less every point that he discussed, he was correct. The rabbis really believed in the grace of God and the efficacy of repentance. So Moore wrote; so the mere reading of rabbinic literature proved. I did not like Moore’s organization of the material, which basically followed the Christian creed: the idea of God, followed by Man (which now would be called Humanity), Sin, Atonement, and the Hereafter (along with some other topics). I thought that it should be possible to present the material in a way that was more natural to it. By now, my topic had begun to change. I had, of course, found several pious practices, but I was distracted from them by the growing feeling that many influential New Testament scholars had misrepresented the rabbis. I did not have Bousset27 or Jeremias28 with me, and I did not yet know about Moore’s own polemical article on Christian scholars who had written about Judaism,29 but the need to do something about mendacity was growing. I had been told that the rabbis were deeply concerned with the effort to save themselves by doing more good deeds than bad, and that they were therefore either anxious (because they were uncertain of how the count stood) or arrogant (because they were confident that they had done enough good deeds to save themselves). I realized that possibly such rabbis were lurking somewhere in the Mishnah and Tosefta—which I had not yet read—but I doubted it. They were certainly not to be found in the Tannaitic midrashim. (It eventually turned out that they cannot be found anywhere.)

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“You all know the rest, in the books you have read”: When I returned to McMaster, I was ready to write an argument about how to see rabbinic literature theologically, without recourse to the phony category “legalism.”30 That is, since I thought that rabbinic literature as a whole had been misrepresented, it would not suffice to publish on only a few of its details, such as pious practices. I felt compelled, rather, to offer a more holistic presentation, especially of rabbinism’s undergirding theology.31 Nevertheless, this new requirement did not remove my main conviction: I had to compare, just as Gene Kelly had to dance. But besides leaving behind the intention to study pious practices, I had moved a long way from Philo, and I felt the need to look at Palestinian literature earlier than the rabbis. So I spent some time studying the Dead Sea Sect and comparing the Scrolls with the rabbis.32 Then I studied the Pseudepigrapha of Palestinian provenance. At some point along the way, “covenantal nomism” came to me. It seemed to me to grow organically out of the material: the literature is not about what Protestants call “legalism” (now sometimes called “merit theology”), which is effort toward self-salvation, but it does deal with law. It is “nomistic” in its basic subject matter. But why did the rabbis and other Jews pursue these subjects at all? Was it not because God had given the law? And why should Jews obey it? To save themselves? Rabbinic literature lacks concern with individual salvation. So why did they pursue the details of law? Does not the effort presuppose the concept of election? And so on. I shall summarize the main arguments of the book below. When it turned out that the Dead Sea Sect, while differing in some ways from the rabbis, held approximately the same views of election and law, I knew that I needed a contrast. And so I turned to Paul, who was largely a stranger to me, but who was the man who previously had been compared with the rabbis by my teacher, W. D. Davies. Before reaching this point in the writing of what became Paul and Palestinian Judaism, my New Testament expertise was in the Synoptic Gospels, on which I had spent several years. I had taken (if I remember correctly) a total of two courses on the Greek text of parts of Paul’s letters, one taught by Victor Furnish at Perkins and one by Louis Martyn at Union. I had also read a list of books about Paul and had been examined on Paul as part of my doctoral work. When I began lecturing at McMaster University, I tried to

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present a Bultmannian Paul. I soon realized that this just did not work (the theory did not fit the text) and that I needed to do something else. By then I had learned the most important lesson of my life: you really know what you learn for yourself by studying original sources. I would never have come to my understanding of the rabbis by reading secondary literature. I could decide without firsthand study that Moore was better than Bousset, but that was by no means the same as internalizing the rabbis’ modes of argument and their spirit. Furthermore, I remembered that one of the most exciting afternoons of my life was when I had read the Pauline letters through at a single sitting. Putting these two things together, I simply started reading through Paul’s letters and making notes. Second Corinthians 12 made it perfectly clear that Paul was some sort of mystic. “Being crucified with Christ,” “dying with Christ,” and “being one person with Christ” were obviously very important concepts to him, though brushed aside by most Protestant research in favor of “justification by faith,” which was understood as judicial declaration of fictional (“imputed”) righteousness. After going through the letters a few times, I returned to Albert Schweitzer33 and then read some of the pre-Schweitzer German scholars, who wrote prior to the re-Lutheranization of German scholarship. I was relieved to see that other people had found approximately the same Paul that I had “discovered.” These bodies of literature—rabbinic literature, Dead Sea Scrolls, selected Pseudepigrapha, and Paul’s letters—made up the sections of the book. I originally wrote the parts on Jewish literature without polemic, trying to imitate the tone achieved by Moore in his major work, which omitted the vigorous attacks of his article. But, near the end of my work, during what was about the sixth revision of the section on the rabbis, I decided that Moore had been wrong. Bultmann cited Moore as if he only gave additional details about the rabbis to flesh out the portrait in Bousset’s book.34 I was not going to let that happen again, and so I decided to make it clear that some scholars were wrong and that the rabbis had been misrepresented. Thus the polemics of the book when it finally appeared. The only important point not yet covered is the question of “getting in and staying in.” This came from studying the issue of what to compare with what, and the principal negative example was the work of my revered supervisor, W. D. Davies. W. D. started with basic biblical and Jewish

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conceptions—the exodus and the giving of the law—and went in search of parallels in Paul. He found a few and concluded that Paul was a rabbinic Jew who simply replaced an unknown Messiah with a specific candidate, Jesus. There was a new exodus and a new law, the law of Christ. It seemed to me that this gave to these two points an importance that, in fact, they do not have in Paul’s letters. I could not see “dying with Christ” as a new exodus, nor did I find a great concern in Paul to establish a new “law of Christ.” So I dubbed the effort Motivsgeschichte, the study of individual motifs, and went looking somewhere else. I failed to note, I am embarrassed to say, that W. D.’s exodus and law are my covenantal nomism. In rejecting the way in which W. D. had set up the comparison, I did not grasp how close we were on the Jewish side. His error (as I still think it to be) in the analysis of Paul, which led him to miss what was both novel and essential in Paul’s letters, blinded me to his correct perception of the two ingredients of Judaism that determine its basic characteristics. (I am sure that the largest category of my brain consists of things that are buried in it but that I do not call to consciousness at the right time.) In any case, I decided to enlarge the categories and to discuss “getting in and staying in.” The weight of each topic is, of course, quite different in the various bodies of literature. Paul is obsessed with getting people into the new movement, and his discussions of correct behavior, once in, are rather cursory.35 The rabbis were concerned with correct behavior by the in-group and seldom had occasion to mention “getting in”—but, of course, concern over the behavior of the in-group implies that it existed. In the Scrolls one finds both emphases. Despite the unequal weight, I had a topic that is important all round—even when, or perhaps all the more when, it is assumed rather than argued. In-group literature assumes the importance of being in the in-group.36 Paul’s break with Judaism, I thought, had to do with getting in; on behavior within the in-group he agreed closely with other Jews of his day. The difference is his requirement of faith in Christ. This, and only this, I proposed, led to a break between Pauline religion and his native Judaism. I had some regret that the topic had become theology—but only some, since the mendacity of much of New Testament scholarship had become so important to me. The book did at least meet my other two goals: a comparison that included Judaism.

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By the time I had finished the book, I realized that in many ways it was very close, both in method and substance, to the work of Samuel Sandmel.37 Sam agreed to read the typescript, and I visited him at his home in Cincinnati. For the entirety of two afternoons, we sat on his porch while he patiently commented on aspects of the work. He persuaded Ben Zion Wacholder to check my translations of previously untranslated rabbinic passages. I add these names to the list of those who donated large amounts of precious time to my work.38 I sent the book to the publisher in October 1975. Very negative readers’ reports in both England and the United States led to a delay. Thanks to the fact that John Bowden, managing editor of SCM Press, finally read the typescript himself, the book as I had submitted it was published in 1977. I shall now give a summary of the principal arguments, beginning with a negative point: (1) The book is not about the sources of Paul’s thought. I granted that many or most topics in Paul could be paralleled in Jewish literature, but I was not pursuing an argument about where Paul got his ideas. Failure to note this point has misled several readers, some of whom have criticized me for using Jewish material later than Paul, while some have even imagined that in proposing that Paul had a different “pattern of religion” I meant that he had no connection with Judaism. (2) In most of Palestinian literature, the “pattern” of “getting in and staying in” is simple: one is in by virtue of the election (or covenant); one stays in by remaining loyal to the Jewish law. These two basic convictions gave rise to the term “covenantal nomism.”39 (3) In Paul, all are “out” of the people of God and may enter only by faith in Christ. (4) The two sets of terminology summarized by the phrases “being justified [righteoused] by faith” and “becoming one person with Christ” essentially mean the same thing: these are the terms that indicate entry into the people of God: one “dies” with Christ or is righteoused by faith and thus transfers into the in-group. (5) Once in, the member of the body of Christ should behave appropriately. In detail, this usually means the adoption of Jewish rules of ethics and other forms of behavior. (6) In both Judaism and Paul, people in the in-group are punished or rewarded depending on how well they adhere to the standards. Punishment and reward, however, are not “salvation”; people are saved, rather, by being in the in-group, and punishment is construed as keeping them in (as

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in 1 Cor 11:27–32). (7) Paul does not accept the adequacy of the Jewish election for getting in; he begins the process of a theological rupture with Judaism by requiring faith in Christ. (8) Formally, Paul sometimes accepts “the whole law,” but it turns out that his Gentile converts do not actually have to keep all parts of the Jewish law, and that sometimes even Jewish Christians should depart from Jewish practice (as in the case of Peter in Antioch). (9) Consequently, Paul’s “pattern” of religion is not the same as “covenantal nomism.” The efficacy of the election is rejected, and the law is accepted with qualifications. (10) Paul’s pattern is, however, like covenantal nomism in that admission depends on the grace of God, while behavior is the responsibility of the individual—who, of course, is supported in his or her efforts by God’s love and mercy. (11) Since one gets in by dying with Christ, and since Paul’s outlook is strongly eschatological, I dubbed his pattern “participationist eschatology,” though “eschatological participationism” might have been better.40

Jesus and Judaism (J&J) When I told my wife that I did not have much to say about Jesus and Judaism, she expressed her regret, since (she said) it is my best book. But, still, the explanation of what I was trying to accomplish is much briefer than the story of how I came to write P&PJ. The period during which I wrote J&J (1975–84) included the period of the McMaster project on Jewish and Christian Normative Self-Definition, the title of which contributes to the title of the present volume.41 For various reasons, these were difficult years for me, and I want to record my thanks for the kindness of friends and colleagues: Al Baumgarten, Phyllis DeRosa Koetting, Alan Mendelson, Ben Meyer, John Robertson, and Gérard Vallée. The most important person in my life, however, was my daughter, Laura, who grew from five to fourteen years old during that time. With regard to the book: I thought of calling it “how to write a book about Jesus without knowing much about what he actually said.” In the years since my doctoral dissertation, I had become even more distrustful of relying on a collection of “authentic” sayings to tell us what we want to

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know about Jesus, and the most important academic decision I made was to shift the discussion away from Jesus’ sayings. I had spent years on criteria of authenticity and had all sorts of lists, but I finally concluded that adding up a list of authentic sayings was never going to explain who he was or what happened. And so I went for what I regarded as better evidence: the skeleton outline of his career and especially his symbolic actions, namely, the calling of twelve disciples, the entry into Jerusalem, and the turning over of tables in the forecourt of the temple. There was also the highly significant fact that John the Baptist, who was an eschatological preacher, and early Christianity, which was a Jewish eschatological movement, frame Jesus’ career. During a brief but memorable conversation with Morton Smith at a meeting of the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas (SNTS) in Toronto, we agreed that one has to focus on such facts as these. I was enormously cheered. I was already inclined to give a good deal of weight to Jesus as a healer, since I wanted to emphasize “deeds” to help offset the tendency of academics to present Jesus as only a teacher, and, of course, talking with Morton about miracles strengthened that inclination.42 I wanted to base J&J on the most reliable or “bedrock” tradition, but when I later wrote The Historical Figure of Jesus for the “general reader,” I realized that criteria for authenticity strike most readers as being merely a convenience by which an author gets rid of unwanted material. Moreover, the importance of finding the right context grew in my mind, with the result that I eventually concluded that if one has the right context for Jesus, which sayings are quoted do not matter very much. Consequently, in Historical Figure I quoted many more sayings as coming from Jesus than I had used in J&J. This does not imply full belief that they are all authentic.43 My principal concern in J&J was to establish what led to the results: first to Jesus’ death and then to the formation of a group of his followers into a new sect. I doubted the authenticity of most of the passages depicting Jesus in conflict with the Pharisees, and in any case I found the disputes to be rather minor. So what drove history if not fatal Pharisaic animosity? I proposed that it was Jesus’ self-conception as the one who announced the reassembly of Israel and the coming of the kingdom of God, his dramatic acts (especially the entry into Jerusalem and the temple scene), and the system in Judea, which made the high priest responsible for maintaining locally

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the pax Romana. Unhappily, I did not use the word “system,” and, in a book written at about the same time, Ellis Rivkin explained “what killed Jesus” more clearly than I did.44 Still, I thought, I was helping to put to rest the view that dominated much scholarship: that Jesus was killed because he offended the Pharisees by favoring love, mercy, and grace. I submitted the manuscript to the publisher in the spring of 1984; the book appeared early in 1985.45 To put the main arguments of the book briefly: Jesus was a prophet of the restoration of Israel who began as a follower of an eschatological prophet (John the Baptist) and whose ministry resulted in an eschatological Jewish movement (early Christianity, especially as seen in Paul’s letters). He pointed to restoration in word and deed, proclaiming the kingdom as soon to arrive and indicating the restoration of Israel especially by calling the Twelve. He made dramatic symbolic gestures pointing to this hope. One of them, overthrowing tables in the temple court, led Caiaphas to the view that he might start a riot. The requirements of the Roman system resulted in his execution. His followers continued his movement, expecting him to return to reestablish Israel. This naturally led to their incorporation of the prophetic hope that in the last days the Gentiles would turn to worship the God of Israel.46

J u d a is m : P r a c t i c e a n d B e l i e f , 6 3 B . C . E . – 6 6 C . E . (P & B) In September 1984 I moved to Oxford and again, as when I first read the rabbis, fell in love—this time with the environment created by scholars in other aspects of the ancient world: Geza Vermes, soon the young Martin Goodman, Robin Lane Fox, Fergus Millar, Angus Bowie, and Simon Price. I wanted to be like them. Well, I could never be that clever or learned, but I could go back to nontheological religion and, specifically, to religious practice, which I had dropped after 1968–69. While writing Jesus and Judaism I had become fascinated with the riches of Josephus, whom I had neglected when writing P&PJ.47 When I had to explain the history of Jesus in light of the power structure of his day, of course, the only source outside of the Gospels was the work of Josephus— not the Mishnah. In 1968–69, I had learned from Epstein that most Tannaitic

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literature comes from the period of R. Akiba and R. Ishmael or later—that is, the last three quarters of the second century. I never thought that rabbinic law governed Jewish Palestine in Jesus’ day. The very first bit of rabbinic literature I read (please remember) was Mishnah Sanhedrin, which obviously is not a manual of how law courts worked.48 I remember being told by friends at what is now the Albright Institute of Archaeological Research that they were scandalized because an Israeli scholar—whose name (alas!) I do not remember—had told them that M. Sanhedrin does not represent the law in effect at Jesus’ time. This was no surprise to me. To understand the legal and governmental system, I turned to Josephus, and I found him to be most illuminating with regard to how things really worked politically and judicially. Furthermore, the Gospels and Acts support him. In the days of the prefects and the procurators, Jerusalem was governed by the aristocratic priesthood. So now, when I decided at long last to return to pious practices, I wanted to make more use of Josephus, while incorporating other literature (including early rabbinic literature) when possible. I tried to decide what Jews really did in a few dozen cases. I do not think that I have ever written down what my rules of thumb were, and so I shall summarize them. Assume five sources: the priestly writer, Josephus, the Mishnah (standing in for Tannaitic literature), Philo, and other (Dead Sea Scrolls, late biblical books, Pseudepigrapha, and Apocrypha). Agreement among the first three is decisive: Leviticus, Josephus, and the Mishnah. That is what people really did in the first century. Agreement between Leviticus and Philo alone is dubious: it probably shows only that Philo read the Bible. Even agreement between Leviticus and Josephus alone must be queried, especially so if Josephus’s wording is exclusively that of the Septuagint: sometimes he told his assistant just to write down a summary from the LXX (or so I imagine). Josephus plus the Mishnah against everybody else is highly probable. These rules of thumb do not cover everything. No combination works every time; sometimes a source in the “other” category, such as Nehemiah, weighs very heavily. In a few cases the Dead Sea Scrolls make a major contribution to the study of general practice, especially when a passage has a close parallel in rabbinic literature. Put briefly, the DSS + the Mishnah = a genuine pre-70 c.e. topic (but not necessarily a decision about what the majority practice was).

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Why not cut articles out of the Encyclopedia Judaica and paste them in a book organized by subject instead of alphabetically? The Encyclopedia Judaica is biased in favor of the rabbis. Too few of its authors had shaken off the old views that all rabbinic material is traditional and that the rabbis always governed Israel, which leads (for example) to the use of fourth- or fifth-century Babylonian material to determine what first-century Jews did in Palestine. Besides trying to improve on the Encyclopedia Judaica on several topics, I wanted to pursue the question of who ran what, which involved study of the Pharisees’ role and the passages about a Sanhedrin. Moreover, I argued in favor of a common Judaism, consisting of a few beliefs and several practices, which, with variations, were very widespread or even universal. Thus, the contents of the book are mixed. The common denominator of these various studies is real life: how things actually worked and what most Jews actually did when they were observing the commandments. Apart from the primary literature itself, the strongest single influence on my views of the Pharisees’ role, the judicial system, how government worked, and how to define common Judaism was the work of Morton Smith. He had pointed out that Josephus’s narrative does not support some of his summaries, such as the statement that whenever the Sadducees were in office they had to submit to the views of the Pharisees, who controlled the populace.49 Smith had said that “normative Judaism” should be defined as whatever the Pentateuch, the ordinary priests, and the common people agreed on.50 He had also sponsored a “low” view of the authority of the Pharisees, a view that lives on in the work of his students and admirers.51 After I finished the chapter “Who Ran What?” I thought of sending the typescript to Morton, but I decided to wait and give him a copy of the book, which I imagined I could deliver in person. That was a mistake that grieves me: he died, so he did not know that I was fully in support of him on these points. What is so wonderful about Morton’s views, of course, is that they reflect the primary sources so beautifully. I think that those who work their way through the material will come to the same conclusions—unless, of course, they are in the grip of presuppositions and prefer summaries to the study of cases as they appear in detailed narrative—the narratives of Josephus, the Gospels, and Acts. When I moved to Duke University in August 1990 and started reading the work of members of the Jesus Seminar, I realized that I should have

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added a section about government from the Roman point of view—how different parts of the empire were governed and were not governed—and about the placement of the Legions. I tried to repair some of these omissions in the Festschrift for Professor Räisänen.52 I wanted the main value of P&B to be the studies of actual practice.53 In addition to these, the principal arguments are: (1) There were beliefs and practices common to worldwide Judaism, not dictated by any party, that constitute “common Judaism.”54 (2) The Pharisees were, after the time of Salome Alexandra (76–67 b.c.e.), a small but highly respected party within Judaism that had a varying amount of influence from time to time and issue to issue. (3) Real power, however, resided in the rulers: one of the Hasmoneans; one of the Herodians; the prefects or procurators of Judea (after 6 c.e.); and, in Jerusalem during the period of “direct” Roman rule, the aristocrats, especially the aristocratic priesthood. The evidence indicates that the Pharisees did not dictate policy to any of these groups or individuals.55

Co n c lu s io n It is not up to me to say what, if anything, I have achieved. I can say that I still find the main theses of these three books—all the theses listed above, plus a few not mentioned—correct. I can name lots of mistakes and have thought often of things that could have been done in a better way. But I still believe in covenantal nomism and that it (and many practices) were shared by most Jews; that Paul’s only fundamental objection to his native religion was that it did not include faith in Christ; that it was Jesus’ symbolic actions in Jerusalem that alarmed Caiaphas into thinking that he might start a riot. And so (alas!) I am largely unrepentant. Somewhere along the way, Hellenistic mysticism dropped out—not the mysticism that figures in the study of Paul, but Hellenistic mysticism of the sort described by Goodenough: the quest to leave the material world and enter the noetic, real world. I had not realized how completely this sort of mysticism had disappeared from my view until the spring of 2002, when, for the first time in more than thirty years, I taught a course on Philo. The course was mostly on the historical treatises and the Special Laws,56

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although we did note the passage according to which Moses entered the darkness where God was,57 we made passing reference to the mystic meal in Joseph and Aseneth chapter 16, and we considered Goodenough on the scene from Dura Europos in which Israelites cross the sea.58 By Light, Light, which I reread, no longer grips and persuades me as it once did, but I am nevertheless sorry that I never got back to Hellenistic mysticism and that I did so little in Greek-speaking Judaism. In this connection, I should return to the question of the sources of Paul’s thought. Troels Engberg-Pedersen recently indicated to me that he expected me to oppose the work that he and others have done on Paul and the Stoics.59 That is not at all my attitude. I compared and contrasted Paul to the Jewish literature that I had studied, with no intention to claim that he relates only to it, or that he derived all of his ideas from it. I am incompetent to treat Paul’s sources thoroughly, since I am incompetent to compare him to Greco-Roman material. If I had two decades ahead, with as much energy as I had in my thirties, forties, and fifties, I would love to take up this issue. My first instinct would be to review Goodenough’s project and to begin with hellenized Judaism. Let me put it this way: Paul wrote that “we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal” (2 Cor 4:18). In 1 Cor 15:53 he wrote about imperishability and immortality. In such passages, it seems to me, we hear a very “Greek” voice, and, in fact, 2 Cor 4:18 sounds downright Platonic.60 Did Paul read Greek philosophical sources? Did he absorb such ideas from his culture? Had this terminology and way of thinking already been accepted in the Judaism in which he grew up? In the case of Philo, we may be fairly confident that he inherited a strongly hellenized Judaism and added to it by direct study of Greek philosophical works, including at least some of Plato. I would be inclined to think that Paul did not have the sort of supplemental education in Greek philosophy that Philo had, and so I would try my hand first at the third possibility: the idea of an unseen world that is eternal (= real) in contrast to the sensible world, which is transient (= not real), had already penetrated the Judaism that Paul inherited. I do not know this to be true, but that is what I would assume at the outset, which would lead me to the study of Greekspeaking Judaism, including both the literature and the symbols. Philo was

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not conscious of putting a Greek veneer on something like rabbinic Judaism; rather, true Judaism as he saw it was deeply impregnated with Hellenistic thought (following Goodenough).61 The same thing, though put less strongly, might be true of Paul. It seems to me that we need further study of this whole issue, of both the indirect influence of Greek thought on Paul via the synagogue and the direct influence coming from Paul’s own knowledge of his environment. I would not wish anything that I have written to be seen as opposing such efforts. On the contrary, I think that further study is required, and I wish that I could join in. I have never lost my confidence that Goodenough really discovered something—a deeply hellenized Judaism. Nothing could please me more than to see this enormous topic pursued with renewed vigor. With regard to my own life and work, however, Goodenough was demoted, and his influence is probably imperceptible.62 In terms of the sort of scholarship that I have found most helpful, I have a list of major items: Albert Schweitzer on both Jesus and Paul,63 Morton Smith’s essays,64 Saul Lieberman’s Tosefta ki-Fshutah,65 Epstein’s Mevo’ot,66 Davies’s The Gospel and the Land,67 the dozens of essays by Daube,68 Robin Lane Fox’s books on Alexander and Pagans and Christians,69 Burkert’s Greek Religion and Homo Necans,70 Fergus Millar’s The Roman Near East,71 A. H. M. Jones’s Cities of the Eastern Roman Provinces,72 and Lee Levine’s Jerusalem.73 I list these books, I suppose, partly to indicate my long-standing interest in works that deal with the nitty-gritty of religion (such as sacrifice) and those that allow us to set religion firmly in a historical and social setting. Most of these works have the additional advantage of having been published early enough to influence my interests and views during their formative period.74 When discussing my early interest in mysticism and astrology, I hinted but did not say that I was very attracted to the Religionsgeschichtliche Schule and, in fact, to pre–World War I German New Testament scholarship in general—before the turn toward Luther, which has narrowed that scholarship, to its detriment. For a long time I thought that Deissmann had written the best book on Paul, and these days I rather miss the company of these now ancient Germans. I should look at some of them again. I still think that many of the people now engaged in New Testament research know far too little about ancient history and far too little about ancient

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sources other than the Bible. I continue to hope for more and better comparative studies. They are not all that easy, but they are an awful lot of fun.

Notes 1. William Lindsay Gresham, Nightmare Alley (New York: Rinehart, 1946) reprinted in Robert Polito, ed., Crime Novels: American Noir of the 1930s and 40s (Library of America 94; New York: Library of America, 1997), 517–795. 2. W. D. Davies, Paul and Rabbinic Judaism: Some Rabbinic Elements in Pauline Theology (London: SPCK, 1948; repr., Mifflintown: Sigler, 1998). “Interpenetration” is the subject of chapter 1. 3. E. R. Goodenough, By Light, Light: The Mystic Gospel of Hellenistic Judaism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1935). 4. C. H. Dodd, The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953). 5. E. R. Goodenough, Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman Period (13 vols.; Bollingen Series 37; New York: Pantheon Books, 1953–1968). 6. E. P. Sanders, The Tendencies of the Synoptic Tradition (SNTSMS 9; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969). 7. While I was a student at Perkins, William R. Farmer was writing The Synoptic Problem: A Critical Review of the Problem of the Literary Relationships between Matthew, Mark, and Luke (New York: Macmillan, 1964). 8. Much later, my interest in both the synoptic problem and form criticism led to E. P. Sanders and Margaret Davies, Studying the Synoptic Gospels (London/ Philadelphia: SCM/Trinity Press International, 1989). I contributed the sections on source criticism, form criticism, and life-of-Jesus research. Meg wrote the section on holistic readings. 9. George Foot Moore, Judaism in the First Centuries of the Christian Era: The Age of Tannaim (3 vols.; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1927–1930). 10. Samuel Sandmel, “An Appreciation,” in Religions in Antiquity. Essays in Memory of E.R. Goodenough (ed. Jacob Neusner; Studies in the History of Religion XIV; Leiden: Brill, 1968), 8–9, 10. 11. I have been unable to find the source of the analogy “like a small island in a vast ocean.” On the two kinds of Judaism, however, and their relative scope, see Goodenough, Jewish Symbols 12:185–90, 197–98; 4:3–24. In By Light, Light, Goodenough had hesitated about the relative size of “normative” and nonnormative, mystical Judaism: the latter was the Judaism of “at least an important minority” (p. 5; similarly p. 9). Even here, however, some of his claims were stronger: “if Judaism in the circles that were using the Septuagint had come to mean what I

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have indicated . . .” (p. 9). In any case, it seems to have been the work that went into producing Symbols that resulted in his confidence that mystic Judaism was far larger than rabbinic Judaism. 12. Harry A. Wolfson, Philo: Foundations of Religious Philosophy in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (rev. ed.; 2 vols.; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962). 13. Samuel Belkin, Philo and the Oral Law (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1940). 14. My only published effort at comparing Palestinian and Hellenistic Judaism is E. P. Sanders, “The Covenant as a Soteriological Category and the Nature of Salvation in Palestinian and Hellenistic Judaism,” in Jews, Greeks and Christians: Religious Cultures in Late Antiquity: Essays in Honor of William David Davies (ed. Robert Hamerton-Kelly and Robin Scroggs; SJLA 21; Leiden: Brill, 1976), 11–44. I wrote this when Paul and Palestinian Judaism was almost finished, and so the section on Palestinian Judaism repeated covenantal nomism (though I made use of 2 Baruch, which I decided not to include in P&PJ). I proposed that Joseph and Aseneth and the “real” Philo (Goodenough’s Philo) reflect forms of mystical Judaism, but that, nevertheless, in parts of Philo the importance of the covenant (called by him the politeia, “commonwealth”) shines through, as does the view that the law should be obeyed. 15. Emphasis is on the word “generally.” I had read Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (Jerusalem: Schocken, 1941; repr., 1961); Gershom Scholem, Jewish Gnosticism, Merkabah Mysticism, and Talmudic Tradition (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1960). 16. Along with numerous others, I am deeply indebted to the senior administration of McMaster University. Though the sciences predominated in the university and accounted for its reputation in Canada, the administrators wanted strength in the humanities and social sciences, and this included sponsoring and paying for a large and excellent Department of Religion. Our work—and, I admit, especially mine—was materially assisted in numerous ways. I remember with deep gratitude Mel Preston, Bill Hellmuth, Alvin Lee, Art Bourns, Saul Frankel, and Peter George. 17. The fellowship was from the Canada Council, later called the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). 18. “All languages” is hyperbolic. As far as I discovered, he knew Latin and Greek, as well as all of the Slavic, Germanic, Romance, and Semitic languages that are spoken today. He once told me that he had dabbled in Chinese—which may have meant that he knew quite a lot. 19. Mordechai Kamrat, Inculcation of the Hebrew Language (in Hebrew) (Tel Aviv: Karni, 1962). 20. Herbert Danby, trans., The Mishnah: Translated from the Hebrew with Introduction and Brief Explanatory Notes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1933).

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21. Exodus 12 and Deuteronomy 16 do not entirely agree on the animal or how it was cooked, and so the rabbis had to sort these matters out. See, e.g., Sifre Deut Pisqa 129. 22. “Between the two evenings” perhaps originally (Exod 12:6; Num 9:3) meant “twilight.” That did not allow sufficient time, however, to slaughter tens of thousands of animals in the temple courts, clean up, and perform the regular evening sacrifices. Thus the “right” meaning of the term had to be discovered. According to Mekilta Pisha (Bo’) 5, it meant “after the sixth hour of the day,” i.e., after noon; see Jacob Z. Lauterbach, Mekilta de-Rabbi Ishmael (3 vols.; Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1933), 1:43. 23. Sifre Zuta to Num 5:13. See H. S. Horovitz, Siphre d’Be Rab, Fasciculus primus: Siphre ad Numeros adjecto Siphre zutta (Leipzig: Wahrmann Books, 1917; corrected ed.; repr., 1966), 233. See also t. Sot ̣ah 1.2. See Saul Lieberman, ed., The Tosefta (3 vols.; New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1955–1973), Sot ̣ah, 151. My memory is that Dr. Kamrat and I read h ̣azārat deqel as “restoration of a palm tree [bent by the wind].” In light of lehaqqîf in Sifre Num. Pisqa 7 (Horovitz, Siphre d’Be Rab, 12), one might translate “as long as it takes to encompass [walk around] a palm tree.” 24. We read the Mekilta, Sifre on Numbers and Deuteronomy, most of Sifra, Sifre Zuta on Numbers, and parts of the Mekilta of R. Shime’on b. Yohai. 25. J. N. Epstein, Introduction to Tannaitic Literature (ed. E. Z. Melamed; Jerusalem: Magnes, 1959). 26. It took a long time for the difference between Pharisees and rabbis to emerge into full consciousness in Jewish and Christian scholarship. I am inclined to attribute general clarity on the distinction to Jacob Neusner, The Rabbinic Traditions about the Pharisees before 70 (3 vols.; Leiden: Brill, 1971–1972). On the other hand, during 1968–69 I knew that I was studying the rabbis and not the Pharisees, and I conceived my project in terms of bodies of literature, not named groups. Epstein (see n. 25) was doubtless influential, but I am unable to give the history of my own early views about the relationship between the pre-70 Pharisees and rabbinic literature. 27. Wilhelm Bousset, Die Religion des Judentums im Späthellenistischen Zeitalter (3rd ed.; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1926). 28. Joachim Jeremias, Jerusalem zur Zeit Jesu (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1962). The English translation, Joachim Jeremias, Jerusalem in the Time of Jesus (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1969), appeared in 1969. 29. George Foot Moore, “Christian Writers on Judaism,” HTR 14 (1921): 197–254. 30. For some years, I have been lecturing on the false construction “legalism,” pointing out that, in addition to other flaws, it requires a degree of individualism that cannot be found in ancient Jewish literature. It assumes that Jews thought that

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each individual had to achieve self-salvation, with no group benefits and no collective privileges. Legalism is an invention of polemical attack on Roman Catholicism and Judaism. I hope eventually to publish this and other related lectures. 31. Reading the works of Max Kadushin made a holistic study even more attractive, and helped me think that it could be done. See, for example, Max Kadushin, Organic Thinking: A Study in Rabbinic Thought (New York: Bloch, 1938); Max Kadushin, The Rabbinic Mind (2nd ed.; New York: Blaisdell, 1965). I was also encouraged to search rabbinic literature for basic assumptions and underlying theological principles by reading Abraham Joshua Heschel, Torah min ha-Shamayim ba-Aspaqlaryah shel ha-Dorot (2 vols.; London: Soncino, 1962–1965). The work has now been translated into English: Heavenly Torah: As Refracted through the Generations (ed. and trans. Gordon Tucker with Leonard Levin; New York: Continuum, 2005). 32. In those ancient days, twelve principal scrolls comprised the collection. See Eduard Lohse, ed. and trans., Die Texte aus Qumran (2nd ed.; Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1971). I also found it possible to read through virtually the entirety of the secondary literature. Perhaps needless to say, this could not be done now, except by someone whose full-time occupation is Scrolls research. 33. Albert Schweitzer, The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle (2nd ed.; London: Adam and Charles Black, 1953). 34. See E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison of Patterns of Religion (Philadelphia/London: Fortress/SCM, 1977), 43–47. 35. Paul often displays great ingenuity in arguing for certain behavior, as in the chapters on idolatry in 1 Corinthians 8 and 10. But the result is not in the least novel: do not directly engage in the worship of idols. Often, however, he simply gives general admonitions, such as “be blameless” (1 Thess 5:3). His creativity appears in his discussions of “getting in” and in some of his arguments about behavior, not in the content of that behavior. 36. The argument about “assumption” or “presupposition” in Jewish literature has proved hard for many readers to see: they seek proof texts. I have discussed this and related issues in “Covenantal Nomism Revisited,” to appear in a forthcoming volume of the Jewish Studies Quarterly, edited by Dana Hollander and Joel Kaminsky. 37. Especially Samuel Sandmel, “Parallelomania,” JBL 81 (1962): 1–13; Samuel Sandmel, “The Need of Comparative Study,” in Theological Soundings: Notre Dame Seminary Jubilee Studies 1923–1973 (ed. I. Mihalik; New Orleans: Notre Dame Seminary), 30–35. 38. I also had fruitful discussions of the book with C. F. D. Moule and W. D. Davies. These trips, as well as my salary and secretarial assistance, were supported by a Killam Senior Research Scholarship. The scholarship was continued for the year 1975–76, while I worked on Jesus and Judaism and began (with Ben Meyer and Al Baumgarten) the McMaster Project on Normative Self-Definition; see n. 41.

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39. Covenantal nomism appears even in Philo (“The Covenant as Soteriological Category,” n. 14). In P&PJ, I described it by using such words and phrases as “common,” “basic,” “assumption,” “presupposition,” “underlying agreement,” “underlying pattern,” and “basic common ground” (e.g., 70, 71, 75, 82, 85, 424). I thought of it as a “lowest common denominator” of many types of Judaism, though I chose not to write that phrase. In rereading Goodenough in the spring of 2004, I discovered that he had written that Jews were loyal to “some common Jewish denominator,” which consisted of loyalty to the Jewish people and belief in the Bible. He also referred to this as “minimal Judaism.” He wrote that Philo “still believed with all his heart that Jews had a special revelation of God in the Torah, and a peculiar relationship with him.” See Goodenough, Jewish Symbols, 12:6–9. These pages, which I had read in 1964 or 1965, contained no pencil marks indicating that I had regarded the terms or the proposal as important. I nevertheless wonder whether they lodged in my subconscious mind, to surface ten years later. I wish that I had remembered these pages, since I would have been delighted to have Goodenough’s support on both Philo and Judaism in general. 40. E. P. Sanders, Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983, repr., 1985) was, as John Bowden complained to me, basically a long footnote to the Paul section of P&PJ. The earlier book had dealt with Paul in a less detailed way than New Testament scholars expect, and I wanted to give full exegetical detail of the most complicated topic: the law. I remain satisfied with the discussion of the various contexts in which Paul writes about the law. He answers diverse questions, and the answer to each question is consistent, but the various answers, when placed side-by-side, give a confusing picture. One cannot derive from them a systematic view of the law. To this discussion I appended a treatment of his view of the Jewish people, offering fairly detailed exegesis of Romans 9–11. 41. This project was supported by a very generous five-year “Programme Grant” from the SSHRC (1976–81). Our work was continued for another year with sponsorship from McMaster University. 42. Morton Smith, Jesus the Magician (New York: Harper & Row, 1978). 43. E. P. Sanders, The Historical Figure of Jesus (London: Allen Lane Penguin, 1993). 44. Ellis Rivkin, What Crucified Jesus? The Political Execution of a Charismatic (Nashville: Abingdon, 1984). Rivkin’s book appeared after I submitted the manuscript to the publisher. Unfortunately, in the summer and fall of 1984 I was engaged in moving to Oxford, and I did not read Rivkin’s book until after I had sent in the proofs. In retrospect, I see that I should have insisted on inserting a footnote even at that late date. 45. J&J was written with the aid of a Killam Senior Research Scholarship at the beginning of the project and a SSHRC Leave Fellowship near the end. Most of the book was written while I was Visiting Fellow Commoner at Trinity College, Cambridge (1982).

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46. I assumed that Seán Freyne had accurately and adequately explained what Galilee was like in Jesus’ day, and so I saw no need to say much about it. When later I moved to the United States (August 1990), I began slowly to learn that completely erroneous views were becoming popular here. Nevertheless, when I finished Historical Figure in 1992, I had not perceived the full influence of these views. I thought that they would gradually disappear. On Freyne’s work and my own later efforts, see n. 74. 47. Bill Farmer had urged me to read Josephus’s Jewish War while I was at Perkins (1959–62), and I had complied. What he saw in it, however, was (1) that lots of Jews were zealous for the law, which led to the view (2) that the Pharisees controlled Judaism and made people zealous, which was bad because (3) zeal for the law is the same as legalism, which is horrible. I eventually learned that items 2 and 3 were not true, but this experience made me miss most of the actual treasures in Josephus. Farmer’s views of Judaism were taken entirely from Joachim Jeremias. Approximately this same view of Josephus and Pharisaic control has now been argued by M. Hengel and R. Deines, “E. P. Sanders’ ‘Common Judaism,’ Jesus, and the Pharisees: Review Article of Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah and Judaism: Practice and Belief by E. P. Sanders,” JTS 46 (1995): 1–70. The view is no better now than it was then. 48. This statement applies to the tractate taken as a whole, including especially the structural statements and the view that “sages” constituted the membership of courts. I assume that some of the material is pre-70 and may even be of Hasmonean origin. 49. On case studies versus summaries, see E. P. Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief, 63 b.c.e.–66 c.e. (2nd ed.; London/Philadelphia: SCM/Trinity Press International, 1994), esp. 318, 393–94, 401–2, 481–90. 50. M. Smith, “The Dead Sea Sect in Relation to Ancient Judaism,” NTS 7 (1960–1961): 356; also Morton Smith, “Palestinian Judaism in the First Century,” in Israel: Its Role in Civilization (ed. Moshe Davis; New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1956), 73–74. 51. See Sanders, Judaism, 401 and 535, n. 45. 52. E. P. Sanders, “Jesus’ Galilee,” in Fair Play: Diversity and Conflicts in Early Christianity: Essays in Honor of Heikki Räisänen (ed. Ismo Dunderberg et al.; Leiden: Brill, 2001), 3–41. 53. In the course of working on P&B, I wrote several studies, many of which would not fit. Some of these were collected and published in E. P. Sanders, Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah: Five Studies (London/Philadelphia: SCM/Trinity Press International, 1990) (hereafter JLJM). The main subjects are “The synoptic Jesus and the law”; “Did the Pharisees have oral law?”; “Did the Pharisees eat ordinary food in purity?”; “Purity, food, and offerings in the Greek-speaking Diaspora”; and “Jacob Neusner and the philosophy of the Mishnah.” 54. John P. Meier, Companions and Competitors (vol. 3 of A Marginal Jew; New York: Doubleday, 2001), uses both the terms “common” and “mainstream” Judaism

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(pp. 7–8; also pp. 329, 384). “Mainstream” excludes the Qumran sectarians because they did not worship in the Jerusalem temple. This is certainly a fair distinction, but I would note that even here there was common agreement on the temple considered abstractly, the disagreement focusing rather on architecture, calendar, and the high priesthood. 55. Work on JLJM and P&B was supported by a Guggenheim Fellowship, and P&B was completed while I was on leave from Duke University. The study of immersion pools (miqva’ot) in Israel was funded by a British Academy Research Grant. I am indebted to Hanan Eshel for instruction during visits to many archaeological sites. 56. Whereas once upon a time I felt totally inadequate to compare Philo’s legal opinions with those of others, I now feel reasonably able to do this. On the other hand, I have no confidence in my ability to discuss mysticism in a comparative way, and I have always been incompetent to discuss Philo’s relationships with the Greek philosophical schools. 57. Philo, Mos. 1.158. 58. Goodenough, Jewish Symbols, 11, West Wall plate XIV; 10, chapter 16. On the importance of this scene for Goodenough’s overall view, see 12:188–89. 59. T. Engberg-Pedersen, Paul and the Stoics (Edinburgh/Louisville, Ky.: T & T Clark/Westminster John Knox, 2000); T. Engberg-Pedersen, ed., Paul Beyond the Judaism/Hellenism Divide (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 2001). 60. Alpha privatives, such as the two words in 1 Cor 15:53, or words that may be alpha privatives (as in 2 Cor 4:18), always catch my eye. If Paul were Philo, would he have written the antitheses of 2 Cor 4:18 in such a way as to include aorata (a word that he uses in Rom 1:20; see later Col 1:15–16)? 61. E.g., Goodenough, Jewish Symbols, 12:9, 12. 62. Except in Sanders, “Covenant as a Soteriological Category.” 63. Schweitzer on Paul, see n. 33; on Jesus, see Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus: A Critical Study of Its Progress from Reimarus to Wrede (New York: Macmillan, 1906; repr., 1961). 64. Morton Smith, Studies in the Cult of Yahweh (2 vols.; ed. Shaye J. D. Cohen; Religions in the Graeco-Roman World 130; Leiden: Brill, 1996). 65. Lieberman, ed., Tosefta, and Saul Lieberman, Tosefta Ki-Feshutah (13 vols.; New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1955–1988). Whenever I faced a really difficult passage, I prayed that it would have a parallel somewhere in the first three orders of the Tosefta, since in that case Lieberman would have explained it. The most essential volumes for work on the rabbis were the superb concordances published by members of the Kasovsky family; see E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 564–65. 66. See n. 25. 67. W. D. Davies, The Gospel and the Land: Early Christianity and Jewish Territorial Doctrine (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974).

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68. As did many, I cut my teeth on David Daube, The New Testament and Rabbinic Judaism (London: Athlone, 1956; repr., London: Arno, 1973). See also David Daube, New Testament Judaism (ed. Calum M. Carmichael; Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000). 69. Robin Lane Fox, Alexander the Great (London: Allen Lane, 1973), and Pagans and Christians in the Mediterranean World from the Second Century A.D. to the Conversion of Constantine (London: Viking, 1986). 70. Walter Burkert, Greek Religion: Archaic and Classical (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985), and Homo Necans: The Anthropology of Ancient Greek Sacrificial Ritual and Myth (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983). 71. Fergus Millar, The Roman Near East 31 b.c.–a.d. 337 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993). 72. A. H. M. Jones, Cities of the Eastern Roman Provinces (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1937; repr., 1998). 73. L. I. Levine, Jerusalem: Portrait of the City in the Second Temple Period (538 b.c.e.–70 c.e.) (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2002). 74. Here I wish to mention some of my main debts to people who gave papers at the conference. I take them in chronological order: (1) During our long years at McMaster (1973–84), I learned many, many things from Al Baumgarten. I was able to make use of some of his articles in E. P. Sanders, “The Dead Sea Sect and Other Jews: Commonalities, Overlaps and Differences,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls in Their Historical Context (ed. Timothy H. Lim; with Larry W. Hurtado et al.; Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 2000), 7–43. Unfortunately, Baumgarten’s masterful book on the sects, The Flourishing of Jewish Sects in the Maccabean Era: An Interpretation (SupJSJ 55; Leiden: Brill, 1997), was not available when I wrote P&B. (2) While I was working on J&J, Seán Freyne, Galilee from Alexander the Great to Hadrian: 323 b.c.e. to 235 c.e. (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1980; repr., Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 2000), allowed me not to spend time and pages on Galilee. Now that Galilee has become a contentious issue, my support for Freyne is indicated in “Jesus’ Galilee” (see n. 52) and in E. P. Sanders, “Jesus’ Relation to Sepphoris,” in Sepphoris in Galilee: Crosscurrents of Culture (ed. Rebecca Martin Nagy et al.; Raleigh: North Carolina Museum of Art, 1996), 75–79. (3) While we were writing books on Paul and the law, Heikki Räisänen and I exchanged manuscripts; see H. Räisänen, Paul and the Law (2nd ed.; WUNT 29; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1987). This benefited me enormously. (4) M. Goodman, The Ruling Class of Judaea: The Origins of the Jewish War against Rome, a.d. 66–70 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), and M. Goodman, State and Society in Roman Galilee, a.d. 132–212 (Totawa, N.J.: Rowman & Allanheld, 1983), were of appreciable use when I was writing JLJM and P&B. (5) My article on “Jesus’ Galilee” was greatly improved thanks to my association with Eric Meyers, partly because we jointly supervised the dissertation of Mark

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Chancey (The Myth of a Gentile Galilee [SNTSMS 118; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002]), partly by frequent contact with him, and partly by his publications, both articles and edited books. See “Jesus’ Galilee,” nn. 1, 3, 6, 10, 64, 83. (6) Peter Richardson, Herod: King of the Jews and Friend of the Romans (Personalities of the New Testament; Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1996; repr., Minneapolis: Fortress, 1999), was very helpful while I was writing “Jesus’ Galilee.” I wish it had been available during the composition of P&B. Perhaps I may add that, were I ever to write again on Jesus or Paul, the works of most of the other scholars whose essays appear here would be strongly represented.

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THREE

The Problem of Self-Definition What Self and Whose Definition?

Jouette M. Bassler

You will find the spirit of Caesar in this soul of a woman. —Artemisia Gentileschi, artist, b. 1593 [Artemisia] was a lascivious and precocious girl. —Rudolf and Margot Wittkower, historians of art, 1963

I n S e a r c h o f a D e f in it io n Three symposia convened by E. P. Sanders twenty-five years ago (1978–80) addressed the topic of Jewish and Christian self-definition. Authors of the essays in this volume were asked to reconsider that topic in light of subsequent scholarship. Let us look briefly at the results of those symposia (conveniently published in a three-volume series)1 in order to orient our own explorations to that foundational work. The symposia’s participants were charged with focusing on the process of “normative self-definition,” and they worked from a common understanding of that process: “The two-fold movement towards excluding some views of what it meant to be either Jewish or Christian and [taking] mea42

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sures to assure that the favoured options became normative.”2 The words “normative” and “exclude” seem to have been particularly important in shaping the work of the symposia, for the vast majority of the papers addressed the question of group, not individual, self-definition (hence “normative”) and understood this as a process of separation and boundary drawing over against internal and external opponents. Both by design (the reference to “taking measures to assure that the favoured options became normative”) and by necessity (the limitations of the textual evidence), the investigation focused on the thoughts and deeds of group leaders as they hammered out in polarized situations, and hammered home to their constituencies, a vision of their group’s distinctive self-definition. The titles, subheads, and conclusions of most of the essays in the first volume reflect this common agenda. A few of the essays show less concern with how self-definition was achieved by exclusion and more concern with how it was enhanced by inclusive means (for example, through Clement’s identification of Christianity as part of a unified oikoumenē and Origen’s presentation of it in terms of contemporary philosophical culture3). Nevertheless, self-definition as an exclusionary process was the prevailing model in this volume. This model continued to dominate the essays of the second volume, though there is evidence of some critical reflection on its adequacy. James H. Charlesworth, for example, noted that the object of the inquiry into self-definition in early Christianity cannot have a single self-definition as its goal, for there were “numerous normative self-definitions” within Christianity at that time.4 He was referring, of course, to the extraordinary diversity that characterized Christianity in the first three centuries, but another participant, Bernard Jackson, suggested that even within a given community there may have existed “different grades or types of normative self-definition, each of which may be of importance, though for different purposes.”5 In connection with this, Jackson proposed “an extension of normative self-definition into the non-concrete, non-explicit,” indeed, into the “realm of the subconscious.”6 He recognized that psychology might “appear unacceptably hazy and imprecise a discipline to suit the tastes of historians and lawyers. But,” he noted wryly, “times are changing.”7 This was a radical proposal. Jackson did not abandon the quest for group self-definition, since

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he was asking after the subconscious social mind; however, he dramatically broadened the meaning of normative self-definition, he recognized the importance of an interdisciplinary approach to a topic of such complexity, and he did not flinch from posing the issues in terms of “personal hunches.”8 His was, however, an isolated voice for change. In the essays of the third volume, which explore a wide variety of institutions in the Greco-Roman world, the question of normativity is more problematic, and the understanding of self-definition becomes more diverse. A few examples illustrate these developments. In the opening essay, Walter Burkert explored the normative self-definition of Orphism and Pythagoreanism. He concluded by comparing his meager findings—that normative self-definition was nonexistent for Orphism and a failed experiment for Pythagoreanism—with the enduring “normal self-definition” of a Greek man.9 By introducing “normal” as a counterpoint to “normative,” by considering individual self-definition alongside that of a group, and by insinuating gender distinctions into the issue, Burkert raised a fingerpost to emergent themes in this final volume. Thus, for example, Tran tam Tinh suggested that self-definition in Isiacism can best be understood in terms of the piety of individual devotees and their sense of mystical communion with the goddess.10 In his study of the Asclepius cult Howard C. Kee redefined “selfdefinition” in terms of “the seeking self,” and noted that this individual self adopts an identity through inclusive rather than exclusive means, “through acceptance—either by passive conformity or by conscious choice—of a framework of meaning through which one’s origins, purpose and destiny are defined.”11 The focus on individual instead of group self-identity continued in Albert Henrichs’s essay on the cult of Dionysus, but Henrichs also sharpened that focus with the recognition that differences in the sex and age of these worshippers fostered different modes of self-definition.12 The editors noted that the essays of this final volume failed to turn up any developments analogous to the normative self-definition of Judaism and Christianity,13 though one wonders what would have happened if some of the writers of the earlier essays had taken individual rather than group self-definition as the object of their inquiry. At the very least, though, the later essays put the question of what is meant by “self-definition”—or what can be meant by it—squarely on the table. Alongside the notion of group

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self-definition now stands the question of the self-definition of the individual. And inclusion stands alongside exclusion as an important aspect of the process. The emergence in the final volume of an interest in inclusive avenues of self-definition parallels a development in psychology that was occurring at the same time. The understanding that dominated this field through the 1970s was that the individual concept of self—and therefore individual self-definition—is acquired by separating oneself out from the matrix of others.14 The process was construed as one of self-differentiation marked by a series of crises, discontinuities, or turning points as boundaries are drawn between the self and others.15 This pattern was, however, developed from studies of men. When investigators turned in the late 1970s and early 1980s to look specifically at women’s development, they found quite a different pattern. Women’s concept of self, they discovered, is acquired through positive identification with and connectedness to others. This process is one of essential continuity characterized by self-enhancement, self-development, and self-in-relation, not self-differentiation.16 Thus by the time of the third and final symposium two models of self-definition were essential to the study of individuals and available to the study of groups.17 (It is important to keep in mind, though, that there are ongoing debates over whether the gendering of the process is essentialist and absolute.)18 In what follows I approach the question of first-century Christian selfdefinition with an understanding of the task that has been informed by the work of the earlier symposia (especially the final one) and expanded by the alternative model of self-definition that has emerged from feminist studies. In particular, I am interested in an understanding that does justice to the lived realities of individual first-century Christians. I will therefore focus on the self-definition of the individual members of the group rather than on the self-definition of the group itself. I will explore the possible and the plausible rather than the normative.19 I will even dare, like Johnson, to follow some personal hunches, and like him, I will turn to a variety of disciplines to explore them. I will not be bound by the presupposition that self-definition is established only—or even primarily—over against some other entity. And I will be concerned with the impact of gender on this process of self-definition.

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My thesis, in short, is that the foundational self-definition of the individual members of the Pauline churches was not acquired over against something, whether the outside world or inside opponents. Rather, it arose from their experiences of participation in Christ that made plausible the self-defining claim that Christ was in them. More to the point, I will argue that this self-definition had a distinctive effect on the women of these communities. In a culture that defined women in negative anthropological terms, they now defined themselves—spiritually and anthropologically— through their identification with the male Christ.

T h e E m b o d ie d S e lf It was E. P. Sanders, of course, who redirected our attention to the prominence of participationist categories in Paul’s thought. Schweitzer was right, Sanders argued, in his claim that participation in and union with Christ—not juristic concepts like justification and reconciliation—constitute the heart of Paul’s soteriology and Christology.20 Like Schweitzer, Sanders insisted that this participation was real, even though, he says, “we seem to lack a category of ‘reality’—real participation in Christ, real possession of the Spirit—which lies between naive cosmological speculation and belief in magical transference on the one hand and a revised self understanding on the other.”21 In rejecting “revised self understanding” as an appropriate interpretive category, Sanders was rightly challenging Bultmann’s existentialist approach. Yet he admits that there is some truth to Bultmann’s claim: “It would seem to me to be erroneous to deny the existential significance of what Paul wrote. That accepting the gospel was accepting the grace of God and that this resulted in a revised self understanding of one’s position before God is, I believe, true. But this seems to be the individual and internal consequence of Paul’s theology rather than the exhaustive interpretation of it.”22 I would like to return to the question of individual and internal consequences, but with a different agenda and a different set of presuppositions. Regarding agenda, I do not claim that what follows is an exhaustive interpretation of Paul’s theology. Indeed, it is not a study of Paul’s theology at all, but an investigation of the primal religious experience of the members of

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Paul’s churches and the impact of that experience on their self-definition (or self-understanding).23 Regarding presuppositions, I will work with an understanding of “self ” that differs dramatically from that presupposed by both Bultmann and Sanders. Bultmann understood the “self ” in classically, and hopelessly complex, existentialist terms. He distinguished the “I” or “subject-self ” from the “object-” or “soma-self ” and further divided the former in its fallen state into a willing self and a self under the power of sin.24 True selfhood, or “life,” requires the integration of self and self (that is, integration of the divided subject-self), a restoration of the capacity to be fully the subject of one’s own actions. The revised self-understanding of which Bultmann speaks is the acknowledgment of the futility of attempting to achieve this selfhood (or “authentic existence”) by one’s own efforts and the acceptance of selfhood as a gift from God. This interpretation spoke profoundly to many twentiethcentury readers, but rooted as it is in a modern existentialist concept of the self, it does little to clarify the effective process of self-definition among first-century followers of Christ. Anthropology takes our understanding of the self in a different direction.25 Actually the social sciences provide a plethora of selves from which to choose, a roster as richly complex as Bultmann’s but rooted in social and cultural realities rather than philosophical categories. Bruce Malina lists (among others) the physical self, the physical-motor or psychophysical self, the social self, the meaningful self, the collective self, and the individual self.26 A certain primacy attends, though, to the psychophysical self, also known as the “self as body.” It is, says one social psychologist, “the minimum self that a person can have.”27 The body, some anthropologists assert, “is the self.”28 This does not mean, of course, that the physical organism comprising flesh, blood, and bones is the self. It is the experiencing body that is designated the “self ” or, more descriptively, the “body-self.”29 This concept has been developed at greater length by medical anthropologists, who seek to supplement the semiotic approach to the body (made popular among New Testament scholars by the work of Mary Douglas)30 with a phenomenological account of the active role that the body plays in the production of meaning. They assume as a postulate that “the body is not [merely] an object to be studied in relation to culture, but is to be considered

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as the subject of culture, or in other words as the existential ground of culture” and self.31 If the perception of self, or self-definition, is understood as a process, these anthropologists would ask where this perception begins. The answer, they claim, is with the body or, to be more precise, with the body in the world.32 This does not imply that culture plays no role in the process of self-definition. Certainly embodied experiences are given cultural meaning, but “bodily experience is originally a creative force that only later gets taken up by dominant cultural discourses.”33 It is, of course, axiomatic among New Testament scholars that in the firstcentury Greco-Roman world, the concept of the “socially embedded or group enmeshed self ” was dominant.34 However, as Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Margaret Lock have observed, it is “difficult to imagine a people completely devoid of some intuitive perception of the independent self. We think it is reasonable to assume that all humans are endowed with a self-consciousness of mind and body, with an internal body image, and with what neurologists have identified as the proprioceptive or ‘sixth sense,’ our sense of body selfawareness, or mind/body integration, and of being-in-the-world as separate and apart from other human beings.”35 In fact, in the period under consideration (first and second centuries c.e.) the Greco-Roman world was marked by what has been called a “cultural turn toward the body.”36 The prominence of physicians in the second century, the popularity of the cult of Asclepius in the early empire, and the focus on the body in the writings of Ignatius, Aristides, and Marcus Aurelius all point to an understanding of the “self ” that was closely linked with the physical body. Although the “self ” was not universally constructed as the body,37 the physical state of the body was widely thought to mirror the state of the soul (the more commonly construed locus of the self).38 Thus, it is probably not too anachronistic to apply to the first century an assertion made originally for the twentieth: a powerful bodily experience—the “body-self ”—“has a far stronger purchase on one’s sense of who and what [one] is than do any social roles.”39

A d j u s t in g t h e F o c u s These insights from the field of anthropology have provided a “self ” to focus on in this study of self-definition in the Pauline churches: the expe-

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riencing body-self. Thus, it is the bodily experience of participation—the bodily experience of possession of the Spirit and the bodily experience of baptismal participation in Christ—that will be the object of this investigation40 and distinguishes it from other recent psychologically oriented studies of the relationship between identity and experience.41 It can, of course, be argued that a focus on the body-self cannot do full justice to the experience of participation in Christ: other “selves” should be included in the analysis. The theological interpretations that have been given to these events by Paul and others coming before and after him would clearly have an impact on the way individuals came to define their collective selves as, say, members of the body of Christ. Likewise, the social consequences of participation were obviously important for Christian selfdefinition as converts became acculturated as brothers or sisters of a new family or as members of the worldwide ekklēsia of God.42 And the ethical consequences of participation that are hammered home in the vice and virtue lists of Pauline exhortation would forge a new understanding of the religious self as, for example, one of those “called to be saints.” Important as these theological, sociological, and ethical dimensions are for understanding the definition of self that emerges from participation in Christ, they are all second-order reflections on events that had, for the individuals involved, an experiential immediacy. If the anthropologists are correct in claiming that the perception and production of self begins in the body—and it has the weight of common sense and a growing number of cross-cultural studies to support it—then it seems reasonable to conclude that an exploration of the process of individual self-definition in Pauline Christianity must begin with the experiences of those first-century bodies. A comparison of several recent studies of the reception of the Spirit and baptismal union with Christ in the Pauline churches should clarify the distinctiveness of this focus on the physicality of the participatory experience. In his monograph Baptism and Resurrection, A. J. M. Wedderburn explores the development of the Pauline baptismal tradition.43 He reconstructs the experiences of the members of Paul’s churches, noting, for example, the “surging confident life” that resulted from their reception of the Spirit in baptism44 and the views they (probably) held of their baptismal union with Christ.45 However, these reflections serve in Wedderburn’s investigation primarily as counterpoints to Paul’s views, for his real concern regarding

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the members of Paul’s churches is the intelligibility of Paul’s ideas to them. He imagines Paul’s audiences rummaging around in their stockpile of ideas to find parallels that would help them make sense of the apostle’s thought,46 and he devotes much of his study to analyzing this stockpile. Wedderburn’s approach intellectualizes the issue, and the conclusions he draws belong to the history of ideas and have little to do with the lived experiences of the members of Paul’s churches. And, given his focus, Wedderburn makes no gender distinctions in his analysis. Antoinette Wire, on the other hand, is careful to make gender distinctions in her book Corinthian Women Prophets.47 Indeed, her basic premise is that the Corinthian women’s self-definition was different from that which Paul would impose on them, and also different, both in content and in the process by which it was achieved, from the self-definition of the men in the community.48 In many respects her thesis is similar to mine. It is in Christ that women find new identity, new self-understanding, and new selfdefinition.49 She identifies baptism as the key event in this transformation50 and participation—union with Christ—as its primary means.51 Yet Wire’s interests are rhetorical. It is with speech that she begins—Paul’s rhetoric in 1 Corinthians through which she reconstructs the self-understanding of the women prophets. And it is with speech that she ends—the women’s newly confident speech as evidence of their new self-understanding. Words are, of course, our only means of access to the experiences of others,52 but for Wire it is these linguistic manifestations, not the (embodied) experience of union with Christ, that occupy her attention. What would it mean to take the body, not rhetoric, as the starting point of the analysis? Dale Martin does precisely that in The Corinthian Body.53 Yet there is an important difference between his approach and the one proposed here. His concern is with the conflicting ideologies of the body at work in and behind the disputes in Corinth, not with the embodied experiences of the new Christians there. A single lengthy—but relevant—example drawn from the rich resources of this book can suffice as an illustration. Like Schweitzer and Sanders, Martin assumes that, for Paul, Christian identity (what I am calling “self-definition”) is “constructed upon participation” in Christ.54 He interprets Paul’s rebuke of Christian men who were visiting prostitutes in starkly participationist terms:

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The Christian man’s being is defined by his participation in the body of Christ. “Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Will I therefore take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Absolutely not!” (6:15). The pneumatic union between the body of the Christian man and the body of Christ (6:17) is what identifies the Christian man. The man’s body and Christ’s body share the same pneuma; the man’s body is therefore an appendage of Christ’s body, totally dependent on the pneumatic life-force of the larger body for its existence.55 These observations should have powerful implications for Christian selfdefinition. Martin has already noted the role of pneuma in the ancient construction of self: “Pneuma is a kind of ‘stuff ’ that is the agent of perception, motion, and life itself; it pervades other forms of stuff and, together with those other forms, constitutes the self.”56 Thus, a pneumatic union between a man’s body and Christ’s body should have a decisive impact on that man’s self-definition, but Martin does not explore that. Nor does he reflect on how a pneumatic union between a woman’s body and Christ’s body might affect her self-definition.57 Instead he focuses on the different ideologies of the body—whether it is an entity defined by the hierarchical arrangement and internal balance of its constituents or one defined by its dangerous permeability—and the corresponding etiologies of disease that could be informing, respectively, the actions of the “Strong” in Corinth and the reactions of Paul. But if Martin does not explore the connection between bodily experience and Christian self-definition, his research into first-century ideologies of the body provides a solid foundation for the present investigation of that link.

G e n d e r e d S e lf - D e f i n it io n i n t h e P a ul i n e Ch ur ch es Martin notes that from the perspective of first-century physiology, material bodies do not change. Thus, he says, Paul would conclude that “until the resurrection, women’s bodies will be different from men’s, more porous, penetrable, weak, and defenseless.”58 On the other hand, the GrecoRoman “self ” was viewed as a continuum of substances—body, pneuma,

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and psyche interacting with each other and with the environment.59 According to a widespread view, the body was vulnerable to invasion by external substances, which carried the potential of changing the very being of the embodied self.60 Similarly, sexuality was understood not as a dichotomy between male and female, but as a continuum of possibilities. To be sure, this was not a horizontal continuum. There was a top and a bottom to it, a hierarchy of position, with the male end of the spectrum (associated with strength, rationality, self-control, activity, and perfection) exercising a natural dominance over the female end (associated with weakness, sexuality and procreation, passion, passivity, and imperfection).61 Each human body comprised male and female aspects, and depending on the relative strength of these aspects each individual would be located at a specific point along the male-female axis. Moreover, under the influence (or absence) of certain internal or external forces such as diet, environment, or physical manipulation of the body (binding, massage, and the like), male or female aspects could be enhanced. When this occurred, an individual—especially a malleable youth—could slide along the spectrum, “slipping down the precarious slope to femininity”62 or rising to a greater degree of masculinity. Thus, one’s sexual definition was not only part of one’s embodied self but also—in theory at least—like the self an unstable, transient state of affairs.63 Martin’s eschatological conclusions concerning sexual definition focus on the immutability of the body. Only at the resurrection, he says with regard to women, will “the inferior nature of their female stuff . . . be transcended as their bodies are raised to a higher level on the spectrum extending from higher male to lower female.”64 But if Christian bodies cannot change before the resurrection, the pneumatic material within the body could.65 By Greco-Roman logic, this could alter the balance of substances that constitute the self to a sufficient degree that the self—though not the body—would be redefined. Again by Greco-Roman logic, this new selfdefinition could include aspects that suggest a relocation to a point higher on the spectrum extending from female to male. The key to this process was the reception of the Holy Spirit—described interchangeably by Paul as the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Christ, or simply Christ—into their bodies. What can we surmise about the nature and impact of the experience of Christ present in them? First, I take it to have

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been a real, physical experience—and so does Paul. It is to this palpable experience that he appeals for parenesis, consolation, and debate (e.g., Gal 3:1–5; 2 Cor 13:5; Rom 8:9–11). Second, this experience of Christ present in them would have been of a piece with their perception of the world.66 As we have seen, the Greco-Roman body was subject to penetration by daimons, deities, angels, and the like, and this penetration was understood to alter temporarily the state of the body—polluting it, weakening it (through illness), empowering it (to prophesy). Third, the indwelling presence of Christ was not a liminal, transitory experience (such as that associated with prophecy, illness, and the like), but an enduring phenomenon changing permanently the balance of substances that constituted the self. I suggest that we can see the impact of this experience and this transformation reflected in early Christian claims of greater strength (“We are weak, but you are strong,” 1 Cor 4:10; see also 2:4, 10:22; Phil 4:13), a greater degree of perfection (“Yet among the perfect we do speak wisdom,” 1 Cor 2:6; see also Phil 3:15), greater power (“Anyone who claims to be a prophet, or to have spiritual powers, must acknowledge that what I am writing to you is a command of the Lord,” 1 Cor 14:37; see also 13:2, 12:28; 2 Cor 4:7; Gal 3:5), and even greater rationality (“We have the mind of Christ,” 1 Cor 2:16; see also Rom 12:2; 1 Cor 1:6).67 Together these claims describe a transformation that moved the newly baptized, including the women among them, upward on the gender scale toward greater masculinity. One gets the same result by reflecting on the impact of Christian baptism. There is substantial agreement that in Gal 3:28 Paul cites a baptismal unification formula known and widely used in his churches. The performative words “there is no male and female” announced the reversal of the primordial gender separation described in Gen 1:26–27 and the restoration in the Second Adam of the androgynous wholeness of the first. It has long been argued that this baptismal reunification had concrete social consequences: “a one-time privilege of male over female is supplanted by a single identity in Christ, which is the new creation in God’s image. No one has headship or authority over another in body or spirit.”68 “Paul insists on the equality of role of man and woman in this community which is formed already by the Spirit that belongs to the end of days.”69 The hierarchical patterns of this world are gone; in Christ women (qua women) are equal to men.

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This happy conclusion that incorporation into the androgynous Second Adam overcomes the hierarchical gender patterns of this world has, however, recently been challenged. Noting that in the ancient world “androgyny was invariably defined in male terms,” Martin endorses a different interpretation of Paul’s baptismal statement: in Christ “believers are no longer male or female inasmuch as they have become one male person.”70 Thus, Martin concludes, “neither Paul’s androgynous statement in Galatians 3:28 nor his admission of women to important positions within his churches demonstrates that he was a gender egalitarian. He can subscribe to eschatological androgynous statements without believing that Christian women are equal to Christian men ontologically—or that female will equal male eschatologically.”71 Nevertheless, with the experience of baptism something significant did change. As Elizabeth Castelli notes, if being “in Christ” or “putting on Christ” did not reconstitute believers within an egalitarian androgyne, it “somehow undid or made more complex the commonplace opposition between male and female” and “destabilize[d] the markers of cultural, social, or gender identity.”72 Commenting on logia 22 and 114 in the Gospel of Thomas73 and on the martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas, Castelli notes a complex interaction between contemporary gender conventions and the Christian ideology that insisted upon the necessity and possibility for personal and corporate transformation; these ideological constructions interacted in turn with the embodied experiences of Christian women (experiences mediated through commonplace notions of female nature). It is both too simple and too anachronistic an explanation to argue that these pieties offered women “liberation” from social conventions in any sense approximating modern notions of women’s liberation; neither is it adequate to argue the opposite, that women who became men were victims of an ideology that ultimately robbed them of something essential and authentic, their “femaleness.” Castelli concludes that “this asymmetrical process of transformation . . . marks an important early, but by no means unique, example of a remarkable cultural phenomenon, the destabilization of gender identity.”74

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Castelli speaks of the post-Pauline church, but her comments are also valid, I believe, for the earlier Pauline congregations. The “destabilization of gender identity” was not simply “an embryonic and undeveloped notion”75 in the earlier Pauline churches, but plausibly a real factor in the process of self-definition. The passages once read as evidence of the egalitarian ethos of early Christianity can just as easily be read as evidence that the self-definition of women who experienced the indwelling presence of Christ was shifted toward the male end of the spectrum: with Christ in them women were empowered as male. In particular, the preference for celibacy and virginity that is well attested in Corinth and present still in second-century Pauline churches76 was, for the women at least, a rejection of culturally prescribed gender roles in favor of a status that, according to Mary Beard, implied bodily ambiguity.77 Though Paul does not record the motives of the women he corrects in 1 Corinthians 11, it is difficult to imagine that they did not include a new sense of (masculine) invulnerability to the hostile spiritual forces against which the discarded veils offered some protection78 and resistance to cultural norms of distinctively female dress and decorum.79 If 1 Cor 14:34–35 are authentic (as Wire argues), they show women in Corinth engaged in the active, public roles typically reserved for men. If these verses were added by a later hand, they add to the evidence from the deuteropauline letters that this phenomenon flourished in post-Pauline churches. Actions linked neither explicitly to women nor exclusively to men contribute to this evidence of a masculinization of the congregation: the Corinthian claim to authority (4:6); to wisdom, strength, and honor (4:10); to freedom (9:1); and to knowledge (8:1). As Castelli has noted, there is strong evidence from the second century that becoming male was for women a plausible, desired, and occasionally necessary part of Christian self-definition. Thecla is one of the earliest postPauline examples: a woman whose sexual renunciation, male attire, and assertive actions proclaim gender ambiguity in her self-definition even as the author of the narrative emphasizes her female body.80 Though Thecla must reflect the ideal of some early Christian communities, she is only a literary character. The diary of Vibia Perpetua, on the other hand, though from the early third century (203 c.e.) and not the second, is regarded by most scholars as genuine.81 In this remarkable first-person account, the young

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Christian martyr records her gradual rejection of the female roles of dutiful daughter and nursing mother, her gradual assumption of “masculine” authority within the group of imprisoned Christians, and her final vision of herself stripped of female flesh and revealed as a man. Her constant attention to the responses of her body makes her diary a rare early witness to a Christian woman’s “self-definition achieved through bodily experiences.”82 The Gospel of Thomas (logion 114), of course, seems to make “becoming male” a necessary, and therefore normative, outcome of Christian initiation. All of this second-century evidence of an embodied, gender-transforming component of Christian self-definition is linked to that of the first-century Pauline letters by a shared cultural focus on the body,83 suggesting that the more ambiguous first-century evidence points in the same direction. If it is plausible to maintain that events in Corinth reflect the new regendering self-definition fostered by participation in Christ, some insights into the possible dynamics of this process can be found in the work of Caroline Walker Bynum on spirituality of the late Middle Ages.84 Though this period is far removed in time and culture from the churches of Paul, assumptions about the physiological and ontological inferiority of women were virtually unchanged. Unlike the first century, though, spiritual writings from both men and women survive from this later period, making the comparison of gendered experiences easier and the conclusions about selfdefinition more secure. In the devotional literature of this period, female imagery abounds. Alongside the traditional male imagery for God and Christ there is the concept of the nurturing motherhood of Christ and (somewhat less frequently) of the Holy Spirit. The soul, especially the redeemed soul, was also envisioned as female—sometimes as the bride of Christ, the object of his love, but often with an emphasis on the weak and “ ‘womanly’ dependence of the good Christian on a powerful, ‘fatherly’ God.”85 But whether the topic was the experience of the indwelling presence of Christ, the soul embraced by Christ, or imitation of Christ, the dominant religious image for the self—for both men and women—was female. This marked for men a dramatic experience of reversal, an inversion of their ordinary status and self-definition. This reversal from male to female, from strength to weakness, from authority to dependence was rarely

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assessed negatively. Quite the contrary, the redefinition of the male self as female “expressed something very positive: their desire to reject the world, to become the meek who inherit the earth.”86 Thus, it captured the religiosity of renunciation that prevailed in the medieval church under the symbol of the cross. Ironically, it even became at times a claim to “superior lowliness.”87 Women, on the other hand, did not—indeed, could not— experience their spirituality as cruciform reversal. When they described their experiences using male imagery for themselves (as they occasionally did), there was an implied reversal, but it was a reversal of elevation, not renunciation, and thus at odds with the core values of medieval Christianity.88 When they used female imagery to describe their religious experience (as they often did), there was no sense of dramatic status reversal, only continuity with what they were.89 As a consequence, Bynum notes, women’s spirituality tended to take a different form. Women writers of this period embraced their femaleness not as a sign of weakness or renunciation, but as a sign of their humanity and physicality, and they saw themselves linked through that with Christ’s humanity. “Thus women reached God not by reversing what they were but by sinking more fully into it.”90 When we examine the fruits of the current study alongside Bynum’s observations regarding religiosity in the Middle Ages, a pattern emerges that is nearly the mirror image of the medieval situation.91 Among the women and men in the Pauline churches, male images of God and male values for the religious self—authority, wisdom, strength, honor—prevailed, and a religiosity of renunciation had not yet taken hold in the church. Indeed, the energy with which Paul argued for such a religiosity suggests that other views had far more popular appeal. Under these circumstances it would have been the men who experienced continuity, for the emergent religious self-definition was of a piece with their cultural self-definition.92 They would have reached God not by reversing what they were, but by sinking— or rising—more fully into it. In contrast, it would have been the women who experienced the more radical break. The reception of the Spirit and the experience of the indwelling Christ imparted to them a new sense of self that was at odds with their cultural self-definition. It provided a significant advance toward the social and spiritual standard of maleness, and thus for them a dramatic status reversal.

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Co n c lu s io n “Becoming male” was, of course, a common metaphor in late antiquity for achieving self-mastery,93 but I have been reaching here for something more than metaphor—an actual connection in the Pauline churches between women’s bodily experiences of participation in Christ and the emergence among them of a new, masculinized definition of self. These musings have been necessarily speculative: the body of evidence is small, and none of it contains the women’s own perceptions. Speculative though they are, they are also necessary, for as Bynum asserts, “It is no longer possible to study religious practice or religious symbols without taking gender—that is, the cultural experience of being male or female—into account.” It is no longer possible because we now know that to neglect these gendered differences is to distort the historical record. Bynum again: “Religious experience is the experience of men and women, and in no known society is this experience the same.”94 In the absence of new evidence about the experience of women in Paul’s churches, though, the only way to proceed has been by speculation, by putting familiar evidence into a matrix of new presuppositions, and by recasting old conclusions in light of new theories. But what does it have to do with Paul? He would not, I suspect, object to the premise that participation in Christ was the foundation for new Christian self-definition: “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me” (Gal 2:19b–20). He was not, however, interested in the “self ” that I have isolated for investigation, nor was he concerned with its masculinization per se. Paul was interested in other selves—the social self and its ethical responsibilities, the redeemed self and its soteriological hope. He had to deal, however, with the gendered repercussions of the experiences of the body-self. And if my proposal is anywhere near the mark, his response was to encourage another regendering of the self-definition. If participation in Christ, or sharing the Spirit of Christ, fostered within the church a masculinization of the sense of self that manifested itself in augmented strength, power, authority, and perfection, Paul’s insistence that the Christ whose indwelling presence defined them was himself defined by foolishness, weakness, and humility was tantamount to an attempt at normative feminization of their self-definition.95

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Notes 1. E. P. Sanders, ed., Jewish and Christian Self-Definition (3 vols.; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1980–1982). 2. E. P. Sanders, ed., The Shaping of Christianity in the Second and Third Centuries, vol. 1 of Jewish and Christian Self-Definition, ix. 3. Raoul Mortley, “The Past in Clement of Alexandria: A Study of an Attempt to Define Christianity in Socio-Cultural Terms,” in Shaping of Christianity, 186–200; P. M. O’Cleirigh, “The Meaning of Dogma in Origen,” in Shaping of Christianity, 201–16. 4. James H. Charlesworth, “Christian and Jewish Self-Definition in Light of the Christian Additions to the Apocryphal Writings,” in Aspects of Judaism in the Graeco-Roman Period, vol. 2 of Jewish and Christian Self-Definition, 27–55, esp. 55. 5. Bernard S. Jackson, “On the Problem of Roman Influence on the Halakah and Normative Self-Definition in Judaism,” in Aspects of Judaism, 157–203, esp. 379, n. 274. 6. Ibid., 199–200. 7. Ibid., 195. 8. Ibid. 9. Walter Burkert, “Craft Versus Sect: The Problem of Orphics and Pythagoreans,” in Self-Definition in the Graeco-Roman World, vol. 3 of Jewish and Christian Self-Definition, 1–22, esp. 22. 10. Tram tam Tinh, “Sarapis and Isis,” in Self-Definition, 101–17. 11. Howard C. Kee, “Self-Definition in the Asclepius Cult,” in Self-Definition, 118–36, esp. 119. 12. Albert Henrichs, “Changing Dionysiac Identities,” in Self-Definition, 137– 60, esp. 138. 13. Ben F. Meyer, “Preface,” in Self-Definition, x. 14. This, in turn, was rooted in the modern concept of the self as “a free, autonomous, disengaged, self-sufficient, and self-responsible entity.” For an analysis of the development of this concept and a description of contemporary challenges to it from several fronts (though not from a feminist framework), see William C. French and Robert A. DiVito, “The Self in Context: The Issues,” in The Whole and Divided Self (ed. J. McCarthy and D. E. Aune; New York: Crossroad, 1997), 23–45, esp. 29. 15. See, e.g., Daniel J. Levinson, The Seasons of a Man’s Life (New York: Ballantine, 1978); Jean Baker Miller, “The Development of Women’s Sense of Self,” in Women’s Growth in Connection: Writings from the Stone Center (ed. J. V. Jordan; New York: Guilford, 1991), 11–26. 16. See, for example, the now-classic study by Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development (Cambridge: Harvard

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University Press, 1982); also Marianne Walters, “Toward a Feminist Perspective in Family Therapy,” in The Invisible Web: Gender Patterns in Family Relations (ed. M. Walters; New York: Guilford, 1988), 15–30; Caroline W. Bynum, “Women’s Stories, Women’s Symbols: A Critique of Victor Turner’s Theory of Liminality,” in Anthropology and the Study of Religion (ed. R. L. Moore and J. E. Reynolds; Chicago: Center for the Scientific Study of Religion, 1984), 105–25; and the essays in Jordan, ed., Women’s Growth in Connection. 17. The essays from the earlier symposia that seemed idiosyncratic from the perspective of the operative understanding of normative self-definition as a process of separation seem now to have been prescient in anticipating this alternative model. 18. See, for example, Judy Auerbach et al., “On Gilligan’s In a Different Voice,” Feminist Studies 11, no. 1 (1985): 149–61. 19. The word “normative” appears nowhere in the title or description of the current symposium probably in deference to our postmodern sensitivities. 20. E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison of Patterns of Religion (Philadelphia/London: Fortress/SCM, 1977), 453. Albert Schweitzer, The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle (2nd ed.; London: Adam and Charles Black, 1953), 123, argued, however, that the original Pauline conception was a collective one: “the sharing by the Elect in the same corporeity with Christ,” most adequately expressed as membership in the body of Christ. A full analysis of Pauline participation terminology is found on pp. 121–27; see also Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 456–63. 21. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 522. This assumption of real participation is resisted by some, who see in Paul’s comments a “spatial metaphor” instead; see, e.g., Robert H. Gundry, Soma in Biblical Theology with Emphasis on Pauline Anthropology (SNTSMS 29; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976; repr., 1987), 223–44; John A. T. Robinson, The Body: A Study in Pauline Theology (SBT 5; London: SCM, 1952), 61–62. However, as James Dunn has recognized, behind Paul’s theological conception lies a real and individual experience: “the reception of the Holy Spirit, who thereafter dwells within the Christian as the Spirit of Christ, giving the experience of ‘Christ in me.’ ” See J. D. G. Dunn, Baptism in the Holy Spirit: A Re-Examination of the New Testament Teaching on the Gift of the Spirit in Relation to Pentecostalism Today (SBT, 2nd series, 15; Naperville, Ill.: Allenson, 1970), 149. 22. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 522. 23. These terms were often used interchangeably in the earlier symposia; see, e.g., Sanders, ed., Shaping of Christianity, 100, 152, 160; Self-Definition, 119, 138. 24. Rudolf Karl Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament (2 vols.; trans. Kendrick Grobel; New York: Scribners, 1951–1955), 1:197, 245–46, 330–31. For an exposé of inconsistencies in Bultmann’s concept of the self, see Gundry, Soma in Biblical Theology, 184–216.

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25. Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament, 2:239, of course, was well aware of this and explicitly rejected “scientific anthropology” in favor of existential philosophy. 26. Bruce Malina, “Pain, Power, and Personhood: Ascetic Behavior in the Ancient Mediterranean,” in Asceticism (ed. Vincent L. Wimbush and Richard Valantasis; New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 162–77, passim. There is considerable overlap in these categories. See also Rom Harré, “The ‘Self ’ as a Theoretical Concept,” in Relativism: Interpretation and Confrontation (ed. Michael Krausz; Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989), 387–417; Rom Harré, The Singular Self: An Introduction to the Psychology of Personhood (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 1998); Mike Featherstone, Mike Hepworth, and Bryan S. Turner, The Body: Social Process and Cultural Theory (Theory, Culture & Society; Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage, 1991). 27. Roy F. Baumeister, Escaping the Self: Alcoholism, Spirituality, Masochism, and Other Flights from the Burden of Selfhood (New York: Basic Books, 1991), 17; see also Malina, “Pain, Power, and Personhood,” 164. 28. Anthony Synnott and David Howes, “From Measurement to Meaning: Anthropologies of the Body,” Anthropos 87 (1992): 147–66, esp. 163; emphasis in the original. This means, of course, something utterly different from Bultmann’s similar-sounding claim that the sōma is the (object) self. See Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament, 1:195. 29. Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Margaret Lock, “The Mindful Body: A Prolegomenon to Future Work in Medical Anthropology,” Med Anthrop Q., n.s., 1 (1987): 6–41, esp. 7. See also the Boston Women’s Collective, Our Bodies, Ourselves (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1976). 30. Mary Douglas, Natural Symbols: Explorations in Cosmology (New York: Pantheon, 1970). Douglas’s work has been extremely influential in New Testament studies; see, for example, John Gager, “Body Symbols and Social Reality: Resurrection, Incarnation and Asceticism in Early Christianity,” Religion 12 (1982): 345–63, and Jerome H. Neyrey, “Body Language in 1 Corinthians: The Use of Anthropological Models for Understanding Paul and His Opponents,” Semeia 35 (1986): 129–70. 31. Thomas J. Csordas, “Embodiment as a Paradigm for Anthropology,” Ethos 18, no. 1 (1990): 5–47, esp. 5; emphasis in the original. See also Thomas J. Csordas, “Introduction: The Body as Representation and Being-in-the-World,” in Embodiment and Experience: The Existential Ground of Culture and Self (ed. T. J. Csordas; Cambridge Studies in Medical Anthropology 2; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 1–24 (as the title of this volume makes clear, “existential” means something quite different in this context from what it does in Bultmann’s writings). 32. Csordas, “Embodiment as a Paradigm,” 9. See also Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Phenomenology of Perception (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1962); Mark Johnson, The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination, and Reason (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987); David Howes, ed., The Varieties of

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Sensory Experience: A Sourcebook in the Anthropology of the Senses (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991). 33. Paul E. Brodwin, “Review Essay: Knowledge, Power and Practice: The Anthropology of Medicine and Everyday Life, Ed. S. Lindenbaum and M. Lock; and Embodiment and Experience: The Existential Ground of Culture and Self, Ed. T. Csordas,” Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 21 (1997): 497–511, esp. 503. 34. See, for example, Malina, “Pain, Power, and Personhood,” 164–67. 35. Scheper-Hughes and Lock, “Mindful Body,” 14. See also Gundry’s now dated but still useful critique of a fully collective interpretation of Pauline references to the body in Soma in Biblical Theology, 217–22. 36. Judith Perkins, “The ‘Self ’ as Sufferer,” HTR 85 (1992): 245–72, esp. 249. 37. Aelius Aristides apparently constructed his self in this way, and he is regarded as “not . . . so far outside the parameters of what was normal for the period”; see ibid., 261. 38. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality (vol. 3 of The Care of the Self; trans. R. Hurley; New York: Random House, 1986), 39–68. 39. Robert F. Murphy, The Body Silent (New York: Holt, 1987), 105; see also the essays in Csordas, ed., Embodiment and Experience. 40. For a recent study of the “Christ-in-you” and “in-Christ” formulae, see William B. Barcley, Christ in You: A Study in Paul’s Theology and Ethics (Lanham, Md.: University of America Press, 1999). 41. See, e.g., Peter Lampe, “Identification with Christ: A Psychological View of Pauline Theology,” in Texts and Contexts: Biblical Texts in Their Textual and Situational Contexts: Essays in Honor of Lars Hartman (ed. T. Fornberg and D. Hellholm; Oslo: Scandinavian University Press, 1995), 931–43; and Klaus Berger, Identity and Experience in the New Testament (trans. Charles Muenchow; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003). 42. See especially Wayne A. Meeks, The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983). 43. A. J. M. Wedderburn, Baptism and Resurrection: Studies in Pauline Theology against Its Graeco-Roman Background (WUNT 44; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1987). 44. Ibid., 294. 45. Ibid., 59. 46. Ibid., 356. 47. Antoinette Clark Wire, The Corinthian Women Prophets: A Reconstruction through Paul’s Rhetoric (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990). 48. Ibid., 62–71, 130. Indeed, Wire calls for a parallel study of the men in the church of Corinth (9). 49. Ibid., 68, 111; Wire prefers the terms “self understanding” or (less frequently) “self identity” (see n. 22).

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50. Ibid., 95, 111, 167. 51. See, e.g., ibid., 93. 52. Csordas, “Body as Representation,” 11. 53. Dale B. Martin, The Corinthian Body (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995). 54. Ibid., 131. 55. Ibid., 176. 56. Ibid., 21. 57. Indeed, Martin, Corinthian Body, 300, n. 73, expresses clear reluctance to speculate about the point of view of the women. 58. Ibid., 249. 59. Ibid., 21–25. 60. See, for example, ibid., 186, 191. 61. Ibid., 34, 221, 230–31. 62. Ibid., 33. 63. Ibid., 25. See also Elizabeth Castelli, “ ‘I Will Make Mary Male’: Pieties of the Body and Gender Transformation of Christian Women in Late Antiquity,” in Body Guards: The Cultural Politics of Gender Ambiguity (ed. Julia Epstein and Kristina Straub; New York: Routledge, 1991), 29–49, esp. 31; Wire, Corinthian Women Prophets, 63. 64. Martin, Corinthian Body, 249. 65. Since the pneuma was the agent of perception, this seems to correspond to Csordas’s distinction between the body defined as a biological, material entity and embodiment defined by “perceptual experience and mode of presence and engagement in the world.” See Csordas, “Body as Representation,” 12. 66. Martin, Corinthian Body, 153, concludes that the “invasion etiology” of disease and pollution, reflecting a concept of the body as fragile and porous, “held sway in popular thought.” He argues, though, that the Strong in Corinth (a minority of the church) adhered to a different etiology, one of balance that was more characteristic of the elite. 67. (Note that biblical citations in this chapter are nrsv.) There is some debate on this issue. Robert Jewett, Paul’s Anthropological Terms (AGJU 10; Leiden: Brill, 1971), 385–86, objects that “the gospel does not make one more intelligent.” That, however, misses the point, which is captured better by Dunn’s observation that “for Paul spiritual renewal of the people must begin in the inwardness of a person and must include not least the person’s power of thought and reason.” See James D. G. Dunn, Romans 9–16 (WBC 38B; Dallas: Word Books, 1988), 718. 68. Wire, Corinthian Women Prophets, 186. 69. Wayne A. Meeks, “Image of the Androgyne: Some Uses of a Symbol in Earliest Christianity,” HR 13 (1974): 165–208, esp. 208; see also Krister Stendahl, The Bible and the Role of Women: A Case Study in Hermeneutics (Philadelphia: Fortress,

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1966), and Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her: A Feminist Reconstruction of Christian Origins (New York: Crossroad, 1983). Many commentaries on Galatians also reflect this interpretation. 70. Martin, Corinthian Body, 231, emphasis added; Martin is commenting on Dennis MacDonald, “Corinthian Veils and Gnostic Androgynes,” in Images of the Feminine in Gnosticism (ed. Karen L. King; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1988), 285. See also Halvor Moxnes, “Social Integration and the Problem of Gender in St. Paul’s Letters,” ST 43 (1989): 99–113; Lone Fatum, “Image of God and Glory of Man: Women in the Pauline Congregations,” in Image of God and Gender Models in Judaeo-Christian Tradition (ed. Kari Elisabeth Børresen; Oslo: Solum Forlag, 1991), 56–137; Lone Fatum, “Women, Symbolic Universe and Structures of Silence,” ST 43, no. 1 (1989): 61–80; John S. Kloppenborg, “Egalitarianism in the Myth and Rhetoric of Pauline Churches,” in Reimagining Christian Origins: A Colloquium Honoring Burton L. Mack (ed. Elizabeth A. Castelli and Hal Taussig; Valley Forge, Pa.: Trinity Press International, 1996), 247–63. Martin, Corinthian Body, 294, n. 4, notes that in a private conversation with him, Meeks said that he has abandoned his earlier position “and now recognizes that androgyny does not imply equality in Paul’s conception.” 71. Martin, Corinthian Body, 231–32. 72. Castelli, “Pieties of the Body,” 30. 73. Logion 22 (in part): “When you make the two one, and make the inside like the outside, and the outside like the inside, and the upper side like the under side, and when you make the male and the female into a single one, so that the male will not be male and the female will be female . . . then you shall enter [the kingdom].” Logion 114: “Simon Peter said to them: Let Mary go away from us, for women are not worthy of life. Jesus said: Lo, I shall lead her, so that I may make her a male, that she too may become a living spirit, resembling you males. For every woman who makes herself a male will enter the kingdom of heaven.” 74. Castelli, “Pieties of the Body,” 46–47. 75. Ibid., 30. 76. See Jouette M. Bassler, “Limits and Differentiation: The Calculus of Widows in 1 Timothy 5.3–16,” in A Feminist Companion to the Deutero-Pauline Epistles (ed. Amy-Jill Levine with Marianne Blickenstaff; Cleveland: Pilgrim, 2003), 122–46. 77. Mary Beard, “The Sexual Status of Vestal Virgins,” JRS 70 (1980): 12–27, esp. 19–22; cited with approval by Castelli (“Pieties of the Body,” 45). See also Karen J. Torjesen, “In Praise of Noble Women: Gender and Honor in Ascetic Texts,” Semeia 57 (1992): 41–64. 78. See Martin, Corinthian Body, 242–49, though he does not speculate on the women’s point of view (300, n. 73). 79. See Wire, Corinthian Women Prophets, 130–31, though she interprets this behavior as a manifestation of a sense of female equality.

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80. See Castelli, “Pieties of the Body,” 44; Kerstin Aspegren, “The Thecla Figure,” in The Male Woman: A Feminine Ideal in the Early Church (ed. R. Kieffer; Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1990), 99–114; Dennis R. MacDonald, The Legend and the Apostle: The Battle for Paul in Story and Canon (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1983), passim; Virginia Burrus, Chastity as Autonomy: Women in the Stories of the Apocryphal Acts (Studies in Women and Religion 23; Lewiston, N.Y.: Mellen, 1987); Ross S. Kraemer, “The Conversion of Women to Ascetic Forms of Christianity,” Signs 6, no. 2 (1980): 298–307; Sheila E. McGinn, “The Acts of Thecla,” in Searching the Scriptures: A Feminist Commentary, vol. 2 (ed. E. Schüssler Fiorenza; New York: Crossroad, 1994), 800–828. 81. The diary is embedded in a composite text, The Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas, which also includes the vision of another (male) martyr as well as an editor’s introduction and conclusion. Though the possibility exists that the editor altered the diary, most scholars who have analyzed the text take it to be Perpetua’s own words; see Maureen A. Tilley, “The Passion of Perpetua and Felicity,” in Searching the Scriptures: A Feminist Commentary, 2:829–58, esp. 833. 82. Tilley, “Passion,” 837. See also Castelli, “Pieties of the Body,” 33–43; Fannie J. LeMoine, “Apocalyptic Experience and the Conversion of Women in Early Christianity,” in Fearful Hope: Approaching the New Millennium (ed. Christopher Kleinhenz and Fannie J. LeMoine; Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1999), 201–6; Joyce E. Salisbury, Perpetua’s Passion: The Death and Memory of a Young Roman Woman (New York: Routledge, 1997); Patricia Cox Miller, Dreams in Late Antiquity: Studies in the Imagination of a Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994). 83. See nn. 37–39 above. 84. See especially Caroline W. Bynum, “ ‘. . . And Woman His Humanity’: Female Imagery in the Religious Writing of the Later Middle Ages,” in Gender and Religion: On the Complexity of Symbols (ed. Caroline W. Bynum, Stevan Harrell, and Paula Richman; Boston: Beacon, 1986), 257–88; also Bynum, “Women’s Stories”; Caroline W. Bynum, Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982); Caroline W. Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986). 85. Bynum, “Female Imagery,” 268. 86. Ibid. 87. Ibid., 269. 88. Ibid., 273. 89. Bynum, “Women’s Stories,” 117. Bynum thus argues that Turner’s concept of liminality fails to describe the experiences of medieval women; in fact, she says, in general it “may best fit the experience of elites” (118). 90. Bynum, “Female Imagery,” 274.

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91. Already anticipated by Bynum; see “Female Imagery,” 279. 92. Thus Wedderburn’s description of the male initiate of a mystery cult is in some ways also apt for the male Christian convert: “That involves not so much a change of nature or substance as a change of status and potential. In some sense that makes him ‘divine,’ but then he may often have been viewed as ‘divine’ in some sense before his initiation, by virtue of being rational” (Baptism and Resurrection, 341). 93. See, for example, Kari Vogt, “ ‘Becoming Male’: A Gnostic and Early Christian Metaphor,” in Børreson, ed., Image of God, 172–87; Stephen D. Moore and Janice Capel Anderson, “Taking It Like a Man: Masculinity in 4 Maccabees,” JBL 117 (1998): 249–73. 94. Caroline W. Bynum, “Introduction: The Complexity of Symbols,” in Bynum, Harrell, and Richman, eds., Gender and Religion, 1–20, esp. 1–2. 95. Ibid., 2.

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PART TWO Judaism

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FOUR

Common Judaism in Greek and Latin Authors Shaye J. D. Cohen

The idea of “common Judaism” is one of the most felicitous suggestions to have emerged from the fertile pen and brain of E. P. Sanders. Influenced by the work of Morton Smith, Sanders proposes that: “Normal” or “common” Judaism was what the priests and the people agreed on. . . . In general Jews of the Greek-speaking Diaspora shared in this normal Judaism. . . . “Normal” Judaism was, to a limited degree, also “normative”: it established a standard by which loyalty to Israel and to the God of Israel was measured. . . . Whatever we find to have been “normal” was based on internal assent and “normative” only to the degree that it was backed up by common opinion.1 In other words, common Judaism (or “normal Judaism”) is a social formation; it denotes what people known as “Jews” (Ioudaioi, Iudaei) commonly did, in the fulfillment of what they believed to be the laws of their God. This Judaism was not only common but also normative in the sense that it denotes what people known as Jews were expected by society to do in the fulfillment of what they believed to be the laws of their God. Some scholars of Jewish antiquity have objected to the use of the term “Judaism” in the singular on the grounds that it suggests a theological normativity not susceptible to rational inquiry and a social uniformity that never 69

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existed. These scholars have argued that there was no Judaism in antiquity, only “Judaisms.” In the conclusion to this essay I shall return briefly to this argument.2 Here I simply note that Sanders’s proposed common Judaism is immune to the objections leveled against “Judaism.” Common Judaism is not a function of theology, polemic, or anachronism. There was a country in antiquity known as Ioudaea; its citizens were Iudaei, conventionally translated “Jews.”3 We are entitled to inquire about the distinctive ways and manners of these Iudaei just as we are entitled to inquire about the distinctive ways and manners of the Egyptians, Syrians, Cappadocians, and Phoenicians of antiquity, whether in their homelands or in Diaspora settings. The adjective “common” before the noun “Judaism” makes it clear that we are in pursuit of life as lived by real people in historical time, not some theological abstraction or some hypostatized reality that exists only in the mind. What then was the common Judaism of the late Second Temple period? Here is Sanders’s summary: In many large areas of life Jews all over the world did much the same things: 1. They worshipped God daily and weekly, saying the Shema, recalling the Ten Commandments and praying. In Sabbaths they studied the law by hearing it read and expounded. . . . Most Jews believed in God and in the Bible, and they prayed to the one and studied the other. 2. Similarly they kept the Sabbath . . . as a day of rest. 3. . . . Jews circumcised their sons. 4. Some purity observations were also general. The peculiarity of the Jewish diet was almost as famous as observance of the Sabbath. 5. . . . There was another large area where most Jews agreed: support of the temple.4 These areas of conspicuous orthopraxy were accompanied by a “common theology” of belief in the one God.5 Sanders is under no illusion that all Jews everywhere in antiquity observed all of these practices or observed them the same way. He means, of course, that most Jews in most places observed most of these practices, and that members of Jewish communities around the world were expected to observe these practices.

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As evidence for this reconstruction, Sanders cites Josephus (including the Roman edicts and letters cited by Josephus),6 Philo, the New Testament, the Qumran scrolls, other Jewish writings of the Second Temple period, and rabbinic texts. He also makes abundant use of archaeological evidence, especially the remains of miqva’ot (immersion pools). One body of relevant evidence that Sanders does not cite as assiduously as these others is the corpus of Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism assembled and edited with great care and erudition by the late Menahem Stern.7 Sanders cites these texts in his footnotes from time to time,8 but not consistently or systematically; they certainly were not formative influences on his thinking. And so, in this little essay in honor of E. P. Sanders, I would like to survey the evidence provided by Greek and Latin writers for common Judaism. Before I begin this exercise, I must admit a few qualifications. I have carefully read through Stern’s anthology from Herodotus to Suetonius9 looking for evidence concerning customs and practices that these authors claim are observed by Jews, whether in the land of Israel or outside it. I have ignored passages about the natural features of the land of Israel and about figures and events of Israelite and Jewish history (e.g., Abraham, Joseph, Moses, Solomon, Herod).10 Because I am interested in Judaism as actually practiced by the broad reaches of the Jewish populace, I have also ignored reports about what allegedly transpired inside the Jerusalem temple. I have also ignored generalizations about Jewish character traits (e.g., misanthropy, lustfulness, laziness) unless the generalizations are accompanied by specifics about practice and custom. I am under no illusion that the evidence provided by these texts is transparent or unproblematic. Even if these authors are free of the polemical stance that affects so much Christian testimony about Jews and Judaism, they of course have their own biases, prejudices, and perspectives. Indeed, these writers should not really be treated as a single collective; they write in different languages, settings, and genres, and they each have their own purposes. Many of these writers seem confused or ill-informed about Jewish things. We understand too that they are most likely to notice those Jewish practices that are public or distinctive, slighting or ignoring those practices that are private or universal. Even if we attribute great accuracy and acumen to these Gentile writers, their collective testimony is at best only a partial

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glimpse at the public face of ancient Judaism. Nevertheless, in spite of these and related problems, let us look at the Greek and Latin writers for evidence about Judaism as lived and practiced in the last centuries b.c.e. and the first century c.e. Do they support Sanders’s notion of a common Judaism, and if they do, does the common Judaism to which they give witness resemble that described by Sanders?

E l em e n t s o f C o m m o n J u d a is m Here again is Sanders’s list of the five elements of common Judaism with my commentary drawn from the passages of Greek and Latin writers. 1. Jews worship God daily and weekly; they recite the Shema, the Ten Commandments, and prayers; they study Torah in synagogues on the Sabbath. Greek and Latin writers know that the Jews do not worship “the Gods,”11 and that they worship their God in an unusual way—without images.12 Who is their God? Some say that this is an unknown God.13 Others suggest that he is Dionysos (or Liber), or Jupiter Sabazios, or the clouds or the heavens.14 But the specifics of the Jewish worship of the Jewish God—the Shema, the Ten Commandments, prayers,15 the Sabbath, the synagogue—is unknown to Greek and Latin authors. Many authors know that Jews refrain from all manner of work on the Sabbath (see below), but few know of any positive side to Sabbath observance. Only one, Agatharchides of Cnidus (mid or late second century b.c.e.), knows of a connection between Sabbath and prayer. He writes, “The people known as Jews, who inhabit the most strongly fortified of cities, called by the natives Jerusalem, are accustomed to abstain from work every seventh day and on these occasions neither to bear arms nor to engage in farming nor to take care of any other labor, but to pray with outstretched hands in the temples until the evening.”16 Agatharchides goes on to report that Ptolemy I Soter took advantage of the Jews’ folly and superstition and conquered their city on a day when they refused to defend it. The plural “the temples” (tois hierois) is a problem.17 Perhaps Agatharchides thinks that Jerusalem, like any other city, has many temples, or per-

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haps he is referring to what we would call “synagogues,” assimilating them to temples.18 I see no sure way to decide between these alternatives, although I would simply note that if the latter is seen as preferable, we must assume that Agatharchides has learned about synagogues (places for regular public prayer) from his stay in Egypt, where he spent a good part of his adult life. We may be sure that Jerusalem in the second century b.c.e., let alone the fourth century b.c.e., had few synagogues (places for regular public prayer). In any event Agatharchides is the first Greek writer to mention rest on the Sabbath,19 and the only one to connect Sabbath rest with prayer.20 Many writers in our corpus know that the Jews have “laws” or “customs,” but few mention that the laws are contained in a sacred book, and none associates rest on the Sabbath with study, either of that book or of anything else.21 What are we to make of this relative silence regarding prayer? Shall we conclude that the daily and weekly worship of God was not in fact a feature of the common Judaism of antiquity? Such a conclusion is possible, of course, but not necessary. Surely a more reasonable conclusion would be that the Jews worshipped their God with prayers and hymns, and that Greek and Latin authors found this behavior completely unremarkable. Synagogue buildings were still a rarity in Second Temple times, both in the land of Israel and in the Diaspora; places for regular public prayer clearly did not attract much attention from outsiders. 2. Jews kept the Sabbath as a day of rest. Agatharchides, cited above, is one of the first, if not the first, Greek writer to comment on the Jews’ abstention from work on the seventh day. He specifically mentions that they neither bear arms nor farm.22 The refusal of the Jews to bear arms or to march on the Sabbath, well attested by many authors in our corpus after Agatharchides, has been much discussed by modern historians but does not concern us here, since it is an aspect of common Judaism under emergency conditions, and we are searching for common Judaism under normal conditions.23 The Jewish refusal to work on the seventh day is well-known.24 Many authors know that the Jews call the seventh day, the day of Saturn, “Sabbath” and revere it as a “sacred day.”25 But few authors give us specific information about what exactly the Jews do, and do not do, on their day of rest. Agatharchides is the only author to

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comment on the abstention from farming. Meleager, a somewhat younger contemporary of Agatharchides and the first to refer by name to “the Sabbath,” calls the day “cold,” presumably because Jews on that day do not light a fire or cook.26 Some Latin poets of the Augustan age assume that Jews, and Gentiles who affect their ways, would not talk business or embark on a new venture on the Sabbath.27 Most remarkably, a series of authors, mostly Latin and associated with the city of Rome, assume that the Jews observe the Sabbath by abstaining from food; in other words, the Sabbath is a fast day.28 How to interpret these statements is a subject of debate. Most scholars argue that these authors are simply confused; from the fact that Jews do not work or cook on the Sabbath, these authors incorrectly deduced that Jews also do not eat on the Sabbath. A few scholars, however, have suggested that this testimony should be taken seriously.29 For most Jews the Sabbath was (and is) a day of joy and celebration, a tradition that also is attested in Greek and Latin authors, as we shall see in a moment, and that becomes normative in rabbinic Judaism. For some Jews, however, so runs this argument, the Sabbath was a day of melancholy and mortification. This view is explicitly attested in various strands of medieval Jewish piety and is implicitly attested by the claims of Jewish fasting on the Sabbath. So what shall we do with the Latin testimony regarding the Sabbath as a fast day? Is it a sign of confusion and error or valuable evidence of an ill-attested Jewish practice in antiquity? Most scholars prefer the former, but the latter cannot be ruled out.30 On the negative side, the Jews refrain from all manner of work on the Sabbath. They do not farm; they do not bear arms or engage in military campaigns; they do not talk business or embark on new ventures. And, perhaps, they do not eat. So much for what Jews do not do on the Sabbath; on the positive side, what do Jews do so as to observe the Sabbath? Agatharchides says that on that day the Jews “pray with outstretched hands in the temples until the evening.” This is the public observance of the Sabbath. The private, domestic observance of the Sabbath is the subject of the following lines by the Roman poet Persius (first half of the first century c.e.): “But when the day of Herod comes round; when the lamps wreathed with violets and ranged round the greasy window-sills have vomited forth their thick clouds of smoke; when the tail of the tuna, curled round the dishes of red

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ware, swims (in the sauce) and the white jar brims with wine—you silently twitch your lips, turning pale at the Sabbath of the circumcised.”31 The subject is a favorite one of the Roman satirists: the silly things people do as a result of their superstitions and passions. Persius here mocks the superstition of a Roman, presumably a Gentile who “fears the Sabbath,”32 who “turns pale” at the arrival of the Sabbath, “the day of Herod.”33 And how do the circumcised ones celebrate the Sabbath at home according to Persius? (1) They place lighted lamps near the windows; (2) they eat a meal of tuna (in sauce); and (3) they drink wine. Persius clearly is not one of those who believe that the Sabbath is a fast day; on the contrary, it is a day of feasting.34 All three of these customs are attested by rabbinic sources. Rabbinic law makes much of the lighting of lamps for the Sabbath, but as far as I know, rabbinic sources do not mention decorating the Sabbath lamps with violets or placing the lamps at or near windows.35 Rabbinic texts also know the custom of eating fish on the Sabbath36 and drinking wine in honor of the Sabbath.37 Persius is in Rome, but the Jewish piety that he is describing would be at home in the rabbinic circles of Judea and Babylonia. The lighting of lamps for the Sabbath is also mentioned by another Roman writer, Seneca the philosopher, a contemporary of Persius, but he does not add any interesting details.38 Plutarch, however, the famous essayist and biographer who lived at the end of the first century c.e., has many interesting details to add about the importance of wine in Jewish practice. In some learned table talk reported by Plutarch, some Greek intellectuals are discussing the identity of the God of the Jews. Moiragenes the Athenian argues that the God of the Jews is really Dionysus. His first set of proofs, which is full of interest but which I cannot discuss here, is the cycle of the fall harvest festivals, the fast and the feast of Tabernacles, which are celebrated, argues Moiragenes, in a Dionysiac manner. The second set of proofs is the Jewish observance of the Sabbath: “I believe that even the feast of the Sabbath is not completely unrelated to Dionysus. . . . The Jews themselves testify to a connection with Dionysus when they keep the Sabbath by inviting each other to drink and to enjoy wine; when more important business interferes with this custom, they regularly take at least a sip of neat wine.”39 Plutarch (Moiragenes), a Greek author living in Greece, here adds an important point to what Persius, a Latin author living in Rome, says. Not only

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do Jews drink wine on the Sabbath individually, they do so communally. They celebrate the Sabbath by “inviting each other to drink and to enjoy wine”; an alternative translation of the latter phrase would be “to become drunk.”40 The Sabbath is not a fast day but a feast day! The importance of wine to the social fabric of the community is emphasized by Plutarch (Moiragenes) at the close of his exposition: “To show that what I have said is the practice of the Jews we may find no slight confirmation in the fact that among many penalties employed among them the one most disliked is the exclusion of a convicted offender from the use of wine for such a period as the sentencing judge may prescribe.”41 Plutarch is no longer speaking of the Sabbath—in fact we are not sure what he is speaking about. Stern suggests that this is a confused reference to the nazir, who was of course forbidden by oath from drinking wine (Num 6:3–4), but this seems unlikely. I wonder whether the passage is somehow an allusion to the practice of the Qumran sectarians (or some similar group) who punished wayward members through exclusion from the food and drink of the group.42 In any case, Plutarch (Moiragenes) sees wine as an essential component of Jewish communal life, especially on the Sabbath. 3. Jews circumcised their sons. Numerous Greek and Latin writers mention the circumcision of the Jews. Although the Jews are not the only people in the Hellenistic east to observe this custom, for Greek and Roman authors circumcision is quintessentially a Jewish practice. A circumcised male is presumed to be a Jewish male.43 The geographer Strabo, who flourished near the end of the first century b.c.e., reports that Jewish women are excised, but this report is unique and unconfirmed; in all likelihood it is in error.44 4. Purity rules and peculiarity of diet. Jewish abstention from pork is “almost as famous,” as Sanders says, as the abstention from work on the seventh day and, I might add, circumcision. Numerous authors refer to it.45 As we have seen, Petronius suggests that the Jews worship a “pig-god,” and indeed Plutarch, in another report of learned table talk, wonders whether the Jews abstain from pork because they revere the pig or abhor it.46

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What is striking here is what the Greek and Latin authors do not say. They do not comment on the Jewish aversion to the meat of various other animals, fish, and birds. Nor do they comment on the prohibition of eating animal blood. They also do not connect the Jewish aversion to pork with Jewish antisocial behavior; that is, many authors accuse the Jews of misanthropy and social segregation, including separation at table (“they sit apart at meals,” Tacitus says47), but these antisocial tendencies are not said to explain, or to be explained by, the Jewish refusal to eat pork. As for the rest of the purity requirements of the Torah (purification before entering the temple after contacting a corpse, a dead impure animal, a menstruant, etc.) that Sanders suggests were also part of common Judaism, at least for Jews about to enter the temple or contact sacrificial meats, Greek and Latin authors know nothing. No doubt their silence here is to be explained by the fact that Jewish behavior in this respect is not unusual or distinctive. All peoples in antiquity purified themselves before entering a temple or other sacred space. As the emperor Julian comments, “Jews agree with the Gentiles except that they believe in only one God. That is indeed peculiar to them and strange to us, since all the rest we have in a manner in common with them—temples, sanctuaries, altars, purifications, and certain precepts.”48 The observance of purity rules and dietary taboos did not in and of themselves make the Jews distinctive in the ancient world. 5. Support of the Jerusalem temple. Numerous Greek and Latin authors in our corpus know of the temple in Jerusalem, beginning with one of the first, Hecataeus of Abdera (circa 300 b.c.e.).49 The historian Polybius (mid second century b.c.e.) explains that the Jews (Judeans) are those “who live around the temple called ‘Jerusalem.’ ”50 Polybius goes on to comment about this temple’s “renown.” Both Cicero and Tacitus denounce the contributions sent by Jews and sympathizers around the world to (the temple of) Jerusalem.51 Numerous historians speak of the temple of Jerusalem in wartime, and numerous authors purport to describe the rituals that take place within.52 None of the authors in our corpus comments on the multitudes who thronged to the temple for the pilgrimage festivals,53 but the importance of the Jerusalem temple to the Jews is well-known.

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P e t r o n iu s a n d J u v e n a l o n C o m m o n Jud a i sm Two poems in our corpus, both written in Latin within a century of each other, apparently in Rome, are practically textbook illustrations of Sanders’s idea of common Judaism. The first is a remarkable epigram, probably but not certainly by the satirist Petronius (mid first century c.e.), which highlights the importance of circumcision in the Jewish community:54 The Jew may worship his pig-god, And clamor in the ears of high heaven, But unless he also cuts back with a knife the region of the groin, And unless he looses artfully the knotted head— Cast forth from the people he shall migrate from a Greek city And shall not tremble at the fasts of Sabbath imposed by the law. Much is obscure in this little poem, but much is clear. Here is a prose paraphrase: even if a Jew abstains from pork55 and prays mightily to his God,56 nevertheless, unless he also is circumcised, he is not part of his people and has no need to fast on the Sabbath.57 In other words, circumcision is essential to membership in the Jewish community and to full participation in Jewish religious life. The epigram gives a good concise sketch of common Judaism: abstention from pork, prayer to the one God, circumcision, and Sabbath. Four of the five elements of Sanders’s common Judaism are present; the Diaspora setting no doubt explains the absence of the Jerusalem temple. Of the four items listed, circumcision is stated by the poet to be the most important for maintaining status within the community. We can only speculate as to the social realia, if any, that inspired this epigram—and its contemporary, Paul’s letter to the Romans.58 Two lines of the poem, the fourth and the fifth, are obscure. The fourth line, “unless he looses artfully the knotted head,” can be construed as a reference to either a haircut or circumcision. If the former, Petronius is saying that if a Jew keeps his hair knotted in a certain way he will be ejected from his people. He must let the knots out; he must let his hair down. If this be the meaning, I have no idea what Petronius is talking about. Rabbinic law and lore are familiar with a certain type of haircut that in their estimation was non-Jewish and quintessentially Gentile59—is this what Petronius is refer-

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ring to? Alternatively, and I think more likely, the line refers to circumcision. “Head” is “penis,” so “the knotted head” is the foreskinned penis; hence the line means “unless he skillfully removes the foreskin from the penis.”60 The problem with this explanation is how to understand the relationship between the third line and fourth line, since they both refer to circumcision. Is the poet simply repeating himself? Or, perhaps, this may be the earliest reference to the two stages of circumcision known in rabbinic parlance as milah, the excision of the foreskin, and periah, the removal of the membrane under the foreskin. No other prerabbinic document refers to periah, so if this is the correct interpretation, this epigram’s importance is even further enhanced.61 The fifth line is more obscure than the fourth. The text as it has been transmitted, “cast forth from the people he shall migrate from a Greek city,” clearly makes no sense. Migrating from a Greek city would not seem to have any logical connection with expulsion or removal from the Jewish people. Numerous emendations have been proposed: “he shall migrate from his ancestral city,” “he shall migrate from the sacred city,” or “he shall migrate to Greek cities.”62 In any case, as a consequence of the failure to be circumcised, a Jew is separated from his people both physically (he migrates) and religiously (he no longer observes the Sabbath). Another Latin poem, this one by Juvenal the satirist (early decades of the second century c.e.), highlights the same four elements that appear in Petronius’s poem: Sabbath, prayer to the one God, abstention from pork, and circumcision. Like Petronius, Juvenal highlights the importance of circumcision for full integration into the Jewish community:63 Some, who have had a father who reveres the Sabbath, Worship nothing but the clouds and the divinity of the heavens, And see no difference between eating human flesh and swine, (4) From which their father abstained; soon they have their foreskin removed. Having been wont to flout the laws of Rome, They learn and practice and revere the Jewish law, Whatever Moses handed down in his secret scroll: (8) Not to point the way to anyone except the one worshipping the same rites, And to lead none but the circumcised to the desired fountain.

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For all this the father is to blame, he for whom every seventh day was Idle, not touching any part of life. This passage has been much discussed for the information that it may provide about “God-Fearers,” a topic that does not concern me here. Juvenal depicts a Roman father who reveres the Sabbath (lines 1, 10–11) and does not eat pork (4); as a result of his father’s baneful influence, the son is worse than the father. The son worships only the Jewish God (line 2) and has himself circumcised (line 4). The son is given over completely to the antisocial tendencies of the Jews: to flout the laws of Rome, to observe only the Jewish laws handed down by Moses, and to show the way only to his coreligionists, those who have been circumcised (lines 5–9). The father is a “sympathizer” or a “God-Fearer,” while the son is a convert to Judaism. Like Petronius, Juvenal thinks that circumcision is essential for full membership in the Jewish community. For both poets Jewish observance (Judaism) consists not only of circumcision but also of Sabbath, abstention from pork, and worship of the imageless God. Juvenal adds two things to his account of Judaism that are missing from that of Petronius. First, Juvenal is hostile to Jews and Judaism, while Petronius is not. For Juvenal, as for Tacitus, Judaism is a sinister and dangerous antisocial force. The specific reference of lines 8–9 (“Not to point the way to anyone except the one worshipping the same rites, And to lead none but the circumcised to the desired fountain”) is most obscure and has been much debated, but the general point is clear: Jews are hostile to all but their own. Second, Juvenal emphasizes that Jews study the law of Moses, a point omitted by Petronius. If we ignore Juvenal’s reference to the scroll’s secrecy (line 7), which is simply part of his “conspiracy” view of Judaism, what remains coheres nicely with Sanders’s “common Judaism”: Jews, and those who join them, are expected to “learn and practice and revere” the law that Moses handed down in his scroll.

F i v e C o n c lu s io n s First, Sanders’s conception of common Judaism, and his identification of its five constituent elements, receive strong support from the corpus

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of Greek and Latin authors on Jews and Judaism assembled by Menahem Stern. Sanders did not base his thesis on the testimony of these authors, so the confirmation that they provide is important. Second, these authors know little of living Judaism beyond these five points. For example, Plutarch is the only author in our corpus to mention the festival of tents (Tabernacles, Skēnē), Tacitus the festival of unleavened bread.64 In the land of Israel these two festivals were widely celebrated in the late Second Temple period, but Greek and Latin authors paid them little heed (perhaps because their celebration in the Diaspora was more muted). Other isolated details are mentioned by one author or another, but they do not amount to much;65 the five elements of Sanders’s common Judaism account for almost everything that appears in the description of Judaism of these authors. Third, these authors are primarily interested in Jewish difference, not necessarily because these authors are anti-Jewish but because it is the convention of Greek ethnography to focus on difference. For example, one of the earliest authors in our corpus comments about the Jews that “their marriage and burial customs differ from those of other nations”—what their marriage and burial customs are he does not say, since he has already said the essential, that they are different.66 He also comments that they are required to rear all their children, a point that struck two later observers as well, since this policy contrasts with that of the Greeks and Romans, who regularly exposed unwanted children.67 The philosopher Epictetus puts the Jewish aversion for pork in the context of food taboos: almost every nation and group has foods that it will eat and foods that it won’t, and therefore, he says, there is nothing unusual about the Jewish abstention from pork.68 Most Greek and Latin authors, however, ignored this ethnographic truism and focused on Jewish difference: how odd of the Jews not to eat pork. This emphasis on Jewish difference, inherited from the Greek ethnographic tradition, perhaps explains some of the omissions from our corpus. As I have already noted, Greek and Latin authors know that the Jews worship their peculiar God, but they have almost nothing to say about Jewish prayers and hymns, probably because worshipping a God through prayers and hymns was thoroughly typical of the ancient world. Similarly, our authors are familiar with the Jewish abstention from pork but mention nothing of the

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other impurities avoided by Jews or the purifications practiced by them before entering the temple. Our authors are familiar with the importance of the temple of Jerusalem but mention nothing about pilgrimage. In these cases, too, we may assume that the Greek and Latin authors did not comment on what seemed to them to be “normal” or universal practice. Fourth, in spite of what I have just written in the third conclusion, some of the omissions from our corpus may be significant and may suggest that we need to moderate some of Sanders’s conclusions. For example, the recitation of the Shema; communal study of the Torah; the sacred book of Moses; communal prayer; the avoidance of nonkosher foods aside from pork, including the prohibition of consuming animal blood—the complete or nearly complete failure of our authors to comment on these markers of Jewish distinctiveness may suggest that these markers were not yet in place everywhere in the common Judaism of the late Second Temple period. Similarly, the Greek and Latin authors testify to two very different ways of observing the Sabbath: either a day of lights, feasting, and wine or a day of fasting and abstinence. The first of these will become normative in rabbinic Judaism, the second will not. Fifth, the collective testimony of the Greek and Latin authors surveyed here not only confirms the plausibility of Sanders’s reconstruction of the common Judaism of the late Second Temple period and the utility of common Judaism as a heuristic category, it also confirms the plausibility and utility of the concept of Judaism in the singular. Of course there was variety in ancient Judaism, but these Greek and Latin authors do not know it;69 of course there were diverse Jewish schools and movements, but these authors pay them little heed;70 of course we need to distinguish in certain contexts the Judaism of the land of Israel from the Judaism of the Diaspora,71 the Judaism of learned elites from the Judaism of the unlettered, the Judaism of pietists from the Judaism of plain folk, etc.—but none of these necessary distinctions calls into question or weakens the concept of the singular Judaism. The word “Judaism” does not appear in our corpus, but the concept surely does.72 “Judaism” denotes the ways and manners of the Ioudaioi, the people who worship the God whose temple is in Jerusalem. The ways and manners of these Jews/Judeans cluster around five points, and these constitute not only common Judaism but also Judaism, simple and singular. The existence

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of Judaism in the singular is perhaps the most important yield from this brief survey of Greek and Latin authors, and perhaps the most important implication of the common Judaism thesis promoted by E. P. Sanders.

Notes 1. E. P. Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief 63 b.c.e.–66 c.e. (London/Philadelphia: SCM/Trinity Press International, 1992), 47. Sanders develops his common Judaism thesis in E. P. Sanders, “The Dead Sea Sect and Other Jews: Commonalities, Overlaps and Differences,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls in Their Historical Context (ed. Timothy H. Lim et al.; Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 2000), 7–43. 2. The most prominent exponent of the notion of “Judaisms” is, of course, Jacob Neusner. See for example, Jacob Neusner, “From Judaism to Judaisms,” in Ancient Judaism: Debates and Disputes, Second Series (South Florida Studies in the History of Judaism 5; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1990), 181–221. For a full and rich assessment of Neusner’s conception see James Pasto, “Who Owns the Jewish Past? Judaism, Judaisms, and the Writing of Jewish History” (Ph.D. diss., Cornell University, 1999). 3. Following Sanders and common practice, in this essay I use “Jew(s)” to translate Greek Ioudaios/Ioudaioi and Latin Iudaeus/Iudaei. A more accurate translation would be “Judaean(s),” as I discuss in Shaye Cohen, The Beginnings of Jewishness: Boundaries, Varieties, Uncertainties (Berkeley: University of California, 1999), 69–106, but I do not wish to be distracted here from my main point. 4. Sanders, Judaism, 236–37. 5. Ibid., 241–78. 6. See esp. ibid., 212. 7. Menahem Stern, ed., Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism (3 vols.; Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1974–1984). I cite Stern’s English translations, which are usually those of the Loeb Classical Library, but I have modified them when necessary. In the footnotes below I do not give the original source for each citation; I content myself with Stern’s numeration. If the excerpt is long, I provide additional information (e.g. line number, paragraph number) in parentheses. For example, the citation “Posidonius 44 (79)” is short hand for “Posidonius in Stern, Greek and Latin Authors, no. 44, para. 79.” Any reference to a text in Stern’s anthology is also a tacit reference to Stern’s commentary. I omit from my corpus the testimony of Theophrastus (Stern no. 4) and ps.-Hecataeus (Stern no. 12). I omit Theophrastus because the reference to Ioudaioi in the first line is almost certainly a gloss; see Jean Bouffartigue and Michel Patillon, eds., Prophyre de l’abstinence Tome II: Livres II et III (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1979), 58–67. I omit ps.-Hecataeus

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because it is almost certainly the work of a Jewish writer; see Bezalel Bar-Kochva, Pseudo-Hecataeus “On the Jews” (Berkeley: University of California, 1996). 8. Sanders, Judaism, 211; 213, n. 2; 214, n. 6; 216; 239, n. 43. 9. In other words, all of Stern, Greek and Latin Authors, vol. 1 and vol. 2, 1–131. I end with Suetonius (Stern no. 320) because by the mid second century c.e. the Greek and Latin testimony concerning Judaism is being affected by testimony concerning Christianity. When I refer to “our corpus of Greek and Latin writers,” I mean this subset (Herodotus to Suetonius) of Stern’s entire corpus. 10. I am aware that passages about Israelite/Jewish history may be implicit commentaries on Jewish manners and practices, and I will cite such passages below only when there is clear evidence that Greek and Latin authors knew those manners and practices. There is some uncertainty here, to be sure. 11. Jews do not worship “the Gods”: Posidonius 44 (79) and Apollonius Molon 48 (79); Nicolas of Damascus 86 (in the name of the Ionians); Apion 169 and 170; Tacitus 281 (5.2). See Manetho 21; Lysimachus 158 (309). On this theme see Peter Schäfer, Judeophobia: Attitudes toward the Jews in the Ancient World (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997), 34–65. 12. Jews worship without images: Hecataeus 11; Varro 72a; Tacitus 281 (5.4 and 9.1); Juvenal 301; see Strabo 115 (35). 13. Unknown God: Livy 133 and 134; Lucan 191. 14. Dionysos: Plutarch 258 (6.2). Liber: Tacitus 281 (5.5). Jupiter Sabazios: Valerius Maximus 147b. Heaven: Hecataeus 11 (4); Strabo 115 (35). Clouds or heaven: Juvenal 301. 15. References to Jewish prayer: Petronius 195; Juvenal 301. 16. Agatharchides 30a (209). 17. Shaye Cohen, “Pagan and Christian Evidence on the Ancient Synagogue,” in The Synagogue in Late Antiquity (ed. Lee Levine; New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1987), 159–81; esp. 161–62. 18. See Stern’s comment on Tacitus 281 (5.4); Cohen, “Pagan and Christian Evidence,” 161–65. Other writers who mention synagogues: Apion 164 (see Cohen, “Pagan and Christian Evidence,” 162–63); Juvenal 297. 19. The word “Sabbath” appears for the first time in Meleager of Gadara 43 (a younger contemporary of Agatharchides). 20. For prayer with outstretched hands, see commentaries on 1 Tim 2:8. 21. Holy books: Diodorus 63 (4). Secret book: Juvenal 301 (see below). The Roman decree cited by Josephus, A.J. 16.164, proscribes the theft of “sacred books” (tas hierous biblous) from a Jewish “Sabbath house” (sabbateion), that is, a synagogue. No other pagan source associates so closely the synagogue, the Sabbath, and the Torah book. 22. I understand Agatharchides’ first clause (“they are accustomed to abstain from work every seventh day”) as synonymous with the fourth (“nor to take care

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of any other labor”), with the two clauses in between (“neither to bear arms nor to engage in farming”) providing specific illustration of the generalizations. The noun leitourgia, which I have translated “labor,” is ambiguous; it may refer to public service (or corvée), or to any kind of menial labor. Thackeray (followed by Stern) takes it in the former sense (“nor engage in other form of public service”), the editors of the Josephus concordance in the latter; see K. H. Rengstorf, ed., A Complete Concordance to Flavius Josephus (4 vols.; Leiden: Brill, 1973–1983), 3:26. On the Sabbath in Greek and Latin authors, see Schäfer, Judeophobia, 82–92. 23. See Nicolas of Damascus 88; Strabo 115 (40); Frontinus 229; Plutarch 256; cf. Apion 165 (21) (no marching on the Sabbath). For full discussion and bibliography, see Lutz Doering, Schabbat: Sabbathalacha und -Praxis im antiken Judentum (TS 78; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1999), 537–65. 24. Seneca 186; Tacitus 281 (4.3); Juvenal 301. 25. Some form of the word “Sabbath” appears in Meleager 43; Horace 129; Pompeius Trogus 137 (2.14); Ovid 143; Petronius 195; Pliny the Elder 222; Martial 239; Plutarch 255; Juvenal 298 and 301; Suetonius 303. The seventh day, day of Saturn: Tibullus 126; Ovid 141 and 142; Tacitus 281 (4.3–4). The Jews hold it sacred: Ovid 141; see Tibullus 126. 26. Meleager 43. Stern refers to two much later texts for elucidation, the Scholia on Virgil 537c and Rutilius Namatianus 542 (389). 27. Tibullus 126; Horace 129; Ovid 142. 28. Pompeius Trogus 137 (14); Petronius 195; Martial 239; Suetonius 303; perhaps also Strabo 104 (66) and 115 (40); Lysimachus 158 (308); and Tacitus 281 (4.3). 29. The classic exposition of this view is Yitzhak Gilat, “Fasting on the Sabbath,” in Studies in the Development of the Halakha (Ramat-Gan: Bar Ilan University Press, 1992), 109–22. 30. For example, both Schäfer, Judeophobia, 90 (245), n. 63, and Doering, Schabbat, 288, n. 29, think that the testimony about fasting is an error. 31. Persius 190. 32. Juvenal 301, metuentem Sabbata. 33. For brief discussion of this phrase, see Stern’s commentary in Greek and Latin Authors. For full discussion see William Horbury, “Herod’s Temple and ‘Herod’s Days,’ ” in Templum Amicitiae: Essays on the Second Temple Presented to Ernst Bammel (ed. William Horbury; JSNTSup 48; Sheffield: JSOT, 1991), 103–49; esp. 123–34. 34. Similarly, if Juvenal’s references to baskets and hay have been correctly explained (the Jews use baskets and hay to keep their food warm on the Sabbath), he too does not believe that the Sabbath is a fast day. See Juvenal 296 (14) and 299 (543). 35. Hanukkah lamps, under certain circumstances, should be placed at the window (b. Śabb. 21b). 36. See Stern’s commentary on Persius 190 (183).

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37. m. Ber. 8.1; b. Pesah ̣ 106a. 38. “Let us forbid lamps to be lighted on [for?] the Sabbath,” Seneca 188. The lighting of Sabbath lamps may be lurking behind Lysimachus 158 (308). 39. Plutarch 258 (6.2, 672A). 40. As Schäfer, Judeophobia, 91, notes, “[the phrase “enjoy wine”] may also allude to much more colorful drinking habits on the Sabbath than we would expect from our knowledge of contemporary Jewish literature.” 41. Plutarch 258 (6.2, 672B). 42. See, for example, The Community Rule, 1QS 7.20. 43. Diodorus 55, 57; Timagenes 81; Strabo 100, 115 (37), 118, 124; Horace 129; Ptolemy 146; Apion 176; Persius 190; Petronius 193, 194, 195; Martial 240, 241 (perhaps) and 245; Juvenal 301; Tacitus 281 (5.2); Suetonius 320. For discussion see Schäfer, Judeophobia, 93–105; Cohen, Beginnings of Jewishness, 39–49,110–29, 207, 225–28, and 351–57. 44. Strabo 115 (37), 118, 124. For full discussion, see Shaye Cohen, Why Aren’t Jewish Women Circumcised? Gender, Jewishness, and the Covenant (Berkeley: University of California, 2005), 55–66. 45. Apion 176; Petronius 195; Erotianus 196; Epictetus 252, 253; Plutarch 258 (5), 263; Tacitus 281 (4.2); Juvenal 298, 301. Strabo 115 (37) mentions abstinence from foods. On this theme, see Schäfer, Judeophobia, 66–81. 46. Plutarch 258 (5). 47. Tacitus 281 (5.2). 48. Julian 481a (306 B). 49. Hecataeus 11 (3). 50. Polybius 32 (136). 51. Cicero 68 (67); Tacitus 281 (5.1). 52. See Stern’s index for the list of passages. 53. I am not persuaded by Stern’s commentary on Menander of Laodicea 446. 54. Petronius 195. Stern accidentally omits the translation of the fourth line. 55. “Worship his pig-god.” See Plutarch 258 and next section. 56. See note 15. 57. On Sabbath fasting, see discussion under point 2, “Jews kept the Sabbath as a day of rest.” The manuscript reading of the last line is “And the Sabbath fast, imposed by law, shall not oppress him.” 58. If the epigram is indeed by Petronius it will be almost exactly contemporary with Paul’s letter to the Romans, and I am puzzled that the epigram has attracted so little scholarly attention. 59. t. Śabb. 6.1 (Saul Lieberman, ed., The Tosefta [3 vols.; New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1955–1973], 22) and b. Me’il. 17a. See Cohen, Beginnings of Jewishness, 28, n. 11.

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60. In favor of this interpretation, see Cohen, Beginnings of Jewishness, 40, n. 54. 61. On periah, see Cohen, Beginnings of Jewishness, 225, n. 66; Shaye Cohen, “Between Judaism and Christianity: The Semicircumcision of Christians according to Bernard Gui, His Sources, and R. Eliezer of Metz,” HTR 94 (2001): 285–321; Cohen, Why Aren’t Jewish Women Circumcised? 3–54. 62. See E. Courtney, The Poems of Petronius (American Classical Studies; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1991), 70. 63. Juvenal 301 (I have numbered the lines of the excerpt). Schäfer, Judeophobia, 79, comments on the closeness of the two poems. 64. Plutarch 258; Tacitus 281 (4.2). 65. Perhaps the strangest of these practices are those recorded by Hermippus 25 in the name of Pythagoras. 66. Hecataeus of Abdera 11. 67. Ibid.; Strabo 124; Tacitus 281 (5.3). For discussion, see Adele Reinhartz, “Philo on Infanticide,” SPhilo 4 (1992): 42–58. 68. Epictetus 252, 253; cf. Sextus Empiricus 334; Porphyry 454. 69. In fact, the much repeated statements of Jewish misanthropy and social segregation imply strong unity and concord within the fold. 70. Essenes are mentioned by Pliny 204 and by Dio Chrysostom 251. 71. Even though not a single author in our corpus does so. 72. On the word “Judaism,” see Cohen, Beginnings of Jewishness, 109–39.

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FIVE

Setting the Outer Limits Temple Policy in the Centuries Prior to Destruction

Albert I. Baumgarten

Ed Sanders is one of a number of scholars who have rightly emphasized the role of the Jerusalem temple in the life of Jews in the centuries prior to the Great Revolt, which culminated in the destruction of the temple.1 The temple had a crucial place in fixing, in the words of the folk song, the “old time religion” that was “good enough for father [and mother],” hence “good enough for me,” and was therefore deserving of the loyalty of the vast majority of Jews. For that reason, control of the temple was an important aspect of religious, social, and political life of the Jews in that time. Various groups, each with its own agenda for temple policy, contested the way the temple was run.2 Characterizing the power of the temple authorities and of their ability to control Jewish life is no easy matter. Was their rule effective, or was the sword of their law rusty? Rabbinic sources3 report that murder and adultery were so prevalent at some time prior to the destruction that biblically ordained ceremonies intended to atone for or deter such sins were abolished.4 Other rabbinic sources note people’s extreme piety and devotion to purity and then comment that the temple was destroyed because these same very pious folk hated each other passionately but for no reason.5 Given the variation in information provided by our sources, what can we say with any assurance about the religiosity of the vast majority of Jews in the land of Israel? Archeological evidence may be of some help and is often cited by Sanders 88

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and others to prove that many Jews were careful in their observance of the law, but even that evidence is suggestive at best and far from conclusive. This was a tumultuous era, with many groups competing for domination. Who controlled the temple, and just what advantages accrued to those who did? To what extent could these temple authorities set the standards of Jewish life? How does one account for changes in the groups that controlled the temple and in the degree of temple control from one time to another? One can be fairly certain that temple power was not constant. It is important to avoid the extremes in answering these questions. Control of the temple must have yielded some advantages and some leverage to implement an agenda, or else that control would not have been an object of strife between groups. At the same time few, if any, contemporary scholars would accept the arguments for a primitive temple-based Jewish orthodoxy put forward by Neil McEleney some thirty years ago.6 Most would agree with McEleney’s critics that he posited a Jewish orthodoxy far beyond anything that can be justified on the basis of the ancient sources, in order to serve as a foundation for an argument for a primitive orthodox Christianity.7 The latter was essential to McEleney as an alternative to the Bauer thesis, which argued that the history put forth by the tradition was rewritten to suit its conclusion. Contrary to the narrative promoted by the Christian orthodox tradition, Walter Bauer concluded, orthodoxy stood at the end of the growth of the church, rather than at its beginning.8 McEleney was determined to undermine this aspect of the Bauer thesis and return to a narrative more congenial to that promoted by the orthodox tradition. In order to accomplish this goal, he greatly overstated the degree of orthodoxy in Second Temple Judaism. Disagreeing with both Bauer and McEleney, I believe there is ample evidence that while the temple authorities could not and did not usually regulate the small details of the behavior of Jews in the land of Israel, they did try to set certain limits. This was a feasible task, undertaken to avoid collapse into chaos, and it was a task that could often be accomplished with success. This was far from a world where “anything goes.” The temple authorities could be “bloody minded”9 in dealing with certain sorts of dissent that challenged the heart of the system as they understood it, where their interests or authority faced challenges that could not be ignored. Nevertheless, the temple

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authorities (one would like to believe) were aware of what they could achieve as opposed to what was beyond their power. Reluctant to shoot themselves in the foot by attempting the impossible, which would only hurt their standing in the eyes of the people and ultimately impair their ability to influence certain aspects of life in which their chances of success were greater, they concentrated their attention on what was feasible.10 To oversimplify or summarize my position in one statement: while those at the temple could not usually determine what Jews would do, they could establish what Jews should not do, and they often took steps to set such limits. Determining these aspects of temple policy is important for several reasons. The last centuries prior to 70 c.e. were years of flourishing (some would say virulent) sectarianism. The interaction between sectarians and the mainstream institutions of their time and place is a key aspect of the dynamics of sectarianism. Without understanding the actions of the temple authorities, our comprehension of that dynamic is defective, too much like the sound of one hand clapping. Furthermore, the first century c.e. saw the rise of Christianity. Whether the focus is on the trial of Jesus, the persecution of his disciples, their trial before the Sanhedrin,11 or the execution of James the brother of Jesus, all of these crucial incidents involved the temple authorities. Viewed in isolation these actions imputed to the temple can never be fully understood. A context is necessary to make these measures comprehensible, and the best context into which these events should be put is the policy and actions of the temple powers in dealing with other analogous issues of the time.

D e v i a n t C a le n d a r s The centrality of the calendar as a focus of disagreement has often been overstated in recent scholarship on Second Temple Judaism. Disputes over the calendar, unlike many (if not all other) disputes, have been assumed to be beyond resolution. And yet much of the evidence cited for this conclusion—ancient, medieval, and modern—supports the opposite conclusion. Calendar disputes are no more or less the cause of inevitable fragmentation than any other issue.12

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Nevertheless, celebrating Yom Kippur on a date other than that set by the central authorities was going too far. Not agreeing on the time divinely set for repentance and restoration of purity could not be overlooked. Such a challenge to authority required a response. This is apparently the reason for the uncompromising demand made by R. Gamaliel II of R. Joshua that he appear with his staff and money in his hand on the day when Yom Kippur fell (i.e., flagrantly violating the sanctity of the day, if it were indeed Yom Kippur) according to R. Joshua’s reckoning, as related in m. Roš Haš. 2.8–9. Moreover, R. Gamaliel’s actions prompted R. Akiba to offer a series of arguments intended to validate calendar reckonings of the authorities, whether or not they agreed with the astronomical evidence. R. Akiba argued that sanctity of time is not set by nature, as one might imagine, but by proclamation of the appropriate human powers that be. Furthermore, every court in its own time was equivalent in authority to the court at the time of Moses, despite the obvious difference in stature and the unparalleled direct contact with God enjoyed by Moses. Hence it was as preposterous to disagree with contemporary authority as it would have been to disagree with that of Moses. In even more extreme form, perhaps R. Akiba intended to contend that those who challenged rabbinic courts deserved the punishments recounted in the Bible of those who dared to challenge Moses (e.g., Korah, Numbers 16). In a similar vein, the concern that festivals be celebrated by Jews in the Diaspora at the same time as Jews in the land of Israel was behind the rabbinic account of authorities in Israel terminating intercalation in Babylonia after the end of the Bar Kochba revolt.13 Even Babylonian Jews, according to the story, did not support their local leaders.14 They were unwilling to observe the “festivals of R. Hananiah the nephew of R. Joshua,” instead of the “festivals of the Lord (Lev 23:2).” The latter, they agreed, were only set by the leaders in the land of Israel. Any deviation from that calendar might put them in the same category as those who broke with the Deuteronomic principle of worshipping the unique God of the Bible at one temple, at the place God had chosen (i.e., Jerusalem, as understood by Jews). It might place Babylonian Jews on the same footing as those who had established the military colony and sanctuary at Leontopolis in Egypt.15 Setting up one’s own altar, in competition with the Jerusalem temple, was the most serious of all challenges to Jewish unity (according to a rabbinic tradition attributed

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to R. Nehemiah). It was to be avoided at all costs, both by the temple authorities and by ordinary Jews (t. H ̣ ag. 3.19).16 I suggest that the motive behind these rabbinic accounts is a continuation of policy that goes back to temple times. A claimant to a definitive role in setting the lives of Jews was expected to act against deviant calendars, especially when the date of Yom Kippur was at stake. As such, these rabbinic stories provide a context for the account in 1QpHab concerning the attack by the Wicked Priest on the Teacher of Righteousness on the day of rest. According to the rabbis, certain challenges concerning the calendar—such as the debate over when to begin the “morrow of the Sabbath,” when the counting of the Omer began (Lev 23:15)—could be countered by demonstrative behavior by those who accepted the “correct” opinion.17 But such demonstrative actions apparently did not suffice when the issue was the date of Yom Kippur. In the case of the Teacher of Righteousness, he apparently celebrated Yom Kippur on a different date from the Wicked Priest. This not only provided the latter with an opportunity to attack the former but also was the cause of the attack.18

Deviant Purity Regulations The Second Temple era was a time when many Jews took purity regulations seriously.19 Accordingly, it is not surprising that this was an area of life in which those who wished to raise the quotient of holiness in their lives were especially stringent. How were the temple authorities to relate to those who were much more stringent than what was required according to the interpretation favored at the temple? Was stringency always to be lauded and sought, or was there a breaking point beyond which stringency became deviance and was not to be tolerated?20 Josephus’s account of the Essenes in A.J. 18.18–22 contains a passage that I have analyzed elsewhere.21 Crucial to my argument is the contention that eirgomenoi in A.J. 18.19 is to be understood as passive. Essenes were excluded (not excluded themselves) from the temple because of a difference over purity rules. I understand this exclusion in light of rabbinic traditions about Akavyah ben Mehalalel, who was excluded from the temple because he

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did not accept the majority rulings on various matters (m. ‘Ed. 5.6). There is a parallel tradition concerning Elisha ben Avuya, banned from the temple because of deviant practice, in Ruth Rab. on Ruth 3:13. This policy of excluding certain people from the temple was enforced by the temple police. One example of its enforcement is the story of Paul in Acts 21:27–36, esp. 21:30.22 What might the Essenes have done to merit this punishment? What were the different purity rules by which they lived? Without endorsing the tendency to identify the Essenes with the Qumran community,23 I believe that we can take a hint from the evidence in Qumran sources that indicates that the community at Qumran sacrificed its own red heifers and practiced the rituals of purification from corpse uncleanness by much more stringent rules than those in force at the temple. This was apparently not restricted to the realm of theoretical dispute, but carried out in practice.24 This hint from Qumran can be reinforced further by the rabbinic tradition attributed to R. Nehemiah25 that identifies burning one’s own red heifers (i.e., other than as done under temple auspices) as one of the causes of schism to be avoided. Purification from corpse uncleanness was one of the few categories of purification from an involuntary (“natural”) source that could only be carried out at the temple. Corpse uncleanness, as is well-known, was also the most serious form of that type of impurity, regularly acquired by individuals as part of everyday life. Purification from corpse uncleanness was a regular part of preparation for pilgrimage (Acts 21:26–27).26 To challenge the temple on that point was unacceptable. This, in my view, explains the actions taken against the Essenes. This was a point on which “bloody mindedness” against those who differed—even (perhaps especially) if their dissent was in favor of a more stringent view—was unavoidable. Hence Essenes were excluded from the temple.

S e t t in g t h e Te x t o f t h e To r a h Very early in the history of Qumran scholarship Moshe Greenberg suggested understanding the evidence for the history of the biblical text emerging from the new sources as proof that the temple authorities published the text tradition of the Torah we know as the masoretic version.27

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This was to be an edition that met the standards of being an accurate text, ēkribōmena, as opposed to vulgate versions in circulation.28 Greenberg’s suggestion has been the basis of the important and detailed scholarly contributions of Emmanuel Tov.29 Setting a standard text of a key source, the guide to the life of a nation, is an act full of meaning. One must remember that, according to Josephus (A.J. 20.264), among Jews the sole source for prestige and authority is knowledge of the law and skill and accuracy in interpreting it (akribeia). Setting the text of the Torah is a claim to authority by the institution that takes the step. Furthermore, it inevitably implies that those who establish the text are also its authorized interpreters.30 It may be no accident that the same Greek word, akribeia, describes the nature of the text and the claim to be its best (sole authorized) interpreters. This was a far-reaching action, perhaps more ambitious than either of the two points considered above. How does one control interpretation? It is not quite the same as deciding who may or may not enter the temple or when holidays should be celebrated. This intention is further frustrated by the inevitable tension between old interpreters and new ones.31 If the text is published and circulated (rather than being kept as the exclusive preserve of a group of priests), the entry of new interpreters is virtually unavoidable. This consequence is particularly inevitable in an era of expanding literacy. Yet if interpretation of the Torah is a source of power, are the old interpreters willing to share power with the new ones? It is no accident that the Torah comments on the wish of Moses that all God’s people be prophets (effectively a willingness to share divine revelation, the source of power at the time, with other prophets) with the remark that Moses was the most humble of all men (Num 11:29; 12:3). Thus a fixed text of the law and a claim to be its authorized interpreters do not go unchallenged, but generate counterclaims. Contrary to initial expectation, the text of the Torah can thus prove divisive.32

T h e C o n v e r s e : Te m p l e P o li c y a n d th e Se ct s In light of the discussion above I would like to inquire about the converse: To what extent could sectarian groups with their own agendas force

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temple authorities who had a different view on these matters to follow the sectarian agenda?33 This issue is important because rabbinic texts, in particular, have a number of accounts of how high priests were obligated to follow legal practice with which these high priests disagreed. Thus on the Day of Atonement the high priest was sworn to offer the incense within the Holy of Holies as he had been taught by the elders of the court (m. Yoma 1.5). High priests offering the red heifer were defiled, so they had no choice but to perform the sacrifice in the status of a tebul yom. When the mob stoned the high priest with their citrons on Sukkot (m. Sukkah 4.8), was it because he showed disdain for their beloved ritual of water libation (intended to encourage a rainy winter)?34 How believable are these claims? These claims have long been regarded with suspicion, as a self-serving revision of history on the part of the rabbinic heirs of the Pharisees, who recorded the way they believed the temple ought to have been run, rather than the way it was run in reality. Indeed, this perspective is fundamental to the revised definition of normative Judaism, offered by Smith.35 And yet, with the higher assessment of rabbinic testimony concerning temple times and practice in the wake of the discovery of legal material from Qumran, these questions deserve a second look.36 I would argue that the new evidence reinforces the old conclusion. 4QMMT teaches us that those outside the circle of power could petition, cajole, and try to convince by all means possible.37 But they could not coerce. The rabbis could tell miracle stories of the divine punishment that befell a high priest who dared to offer the incense as he believed proper, but a miracle story in a context of this sort is conceding that on the practical level little could be done to force a high priest to offer the incense as the heirs of the Pharisees believed he should. Similarly, the rabbis could place a confession in the mouth of a high priest challenged to explain why he did not follow the ruling he believed correct: we high priests have no choice but to follow the directions of the sages, because our flock will not tolerate us if we deviate from these rulings. This story may have the advantage of apparent confirmation by Josephus (A.J. 18.17), who tells that the Sadducees accomplish practically nothing when in office because the masses force them to follow the opinions of the Pharisees. Nevertheless, uncontestable confessions in the mouth of an opponent that support the opinion of the narrator of the confession story remain suspicious.

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In sum, the temple authorities may have been reluctant to challenge sectarian groups on all points. Demonstrative behavior may have sufficed for some issues. Only the most crucial and sensitive points merited decisive action. The odds that circumstances were often reversed and that a sectarian group forced its opinion on the temple strike me as quite low.

Im p l i c a t io n s f o r t h e H is t o r ic a l J e sus If, as Sanders has argued most convincingly, the most certain fact concerning Jesus is that he was executed by crucifixion, we need to ask, What process brought Jesus to the cross? What might Jesus have done that brought about this result? What was his crime, and by whose standards was Jesus convicted: Jewish, Roman, or some combination of both?38 After centuries in which the Jews were accused of responsibility for this outcome, this question remains sensitive. In an era in which many scholars reject the understanding of Jesus in millenarian terms, this question is even more urgent. A purely Roman explanation of the death of Jesus seems unlikely. Perhaps if his had been a mass movement, this outcome would make more sense, but under the circumstances some sort of Jewish involvement seems most plausible.39 Obviously, this is also the content and accusation of the account in the Gospels. What might Jesus have done to so offend the Jews? My analysis suggests that one must look for a challenge to the temple authorities, one so serious that it impelled action on the premise (correct in most instances, but wrong in this case) that removing the leader would cause the demise of the movement and terminate the threat it posed. From a temple perspective, while every preacher with a following could not be silenced, what might Jesus have done to make him merit special treatment? For that reason I continue to understand Jesus in millenarian terms and to focus on the threat to the existing temple of a millenarian vision of a new temple of the end of days. As I have suggested elsewhere, Jesus may have also contributed to the outcome by upping the ante, preaching this message and acting on its contents in Jerusalem at festival times. At any other time and place he might have been treated with disdainful neglect.40 If Schwartz is correct, the Sadducees played a special role in the trial of Jesus and the subsequent

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persecution of his followers.41 If one accepts the usual view of the Sadducees as a small priestly group centered around the Jerusalem temple,42 then the stakes in Jesus’ preaching and action would have been even higher for the Sadducees, and the impetus to take steps to eliminate the threat would have been even greater. This strikes me as the most plausible scenario that might have led from the beginning of Jesus’ career, as a disciple of John the Baptist, to the end of his ordinary life, on the cross. As is so often the case, we face a series of unintended consequences.43 The execution of John the Baptist helped impel the career of Jesus, which then took several independent twists and turns. According to the Gospels John rebuked the Pharisees and Sadducees as part of his preaching of the imminent eschaton, but his relationship with the religious leadership (as opposed to Herod Antipas) seems to have been good. At least one Jerusalem priest, Josephus, described him as a law-abiding man who conformed to the standards of the era. The millenarian scenario spun out by Jesus was apparently more threatening to the establishment, so they took action. Numerous unintended consequences played their part in the moves from the decision to execute Jesus to the emergence of Christianity as the dominant religion of the Roman world. This attempt by the temple authorities to set some limits on the actions of a particular ancient Jew did not turn out as expected.44

Notes 1. E. P. Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief 63 b.c.e.–66 c.e. (London/Philadelphia: SCM/Trinity Press International, 1992), 45–170. As in so many other matters concerning the Second Temple era, the central role of a fruitful insight by Morton Smith should be noted. Redefining the nature of normative Judaism, away from the manner in which it was understood by G. F. Moore and others, Smith commented, “Down to the fall of the Temple, the normative Judaism of Palestine is that compromise of which the three principal elements are the Pentateuch, the Temple, and the amme ha-aretz, the ordinary Jews who were not members of any sect.” See Morton Smith, “The Dead Sea Sect in Relation to Ancient Judaism,” NTS 7 (1960–1961): 356. At the outset of the discussion in Judaism, 48, Sanders sets the stage by citing this comment from Smith. In light of this scholarly attention devoted to the temple I find it hard to accept the contention of Francis Schmidt, How the

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Temple Thinks (trans. J. Edward Crowley; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 2001), 35, that the temple was like Poe’s purloined letter, hard to find and often overlooked because it was out there in open sight. 2. An outstanding example of such an agenda would be 4QMMT. 3. Throughout this paper I rely heavily on rabbinic evidence to set the context for discussion of other sources. The scholarly debates that still remain unsettled concerning the historical reliability of that evidence do not matter much for my purposes. Whether describing the way things were or the way the rabbis believed they ought to have been, these rabbinic sources help fix the cultural context that allows better understanding of Qumran texts and Josephus. Even pure and undiluted imagination of the way things ought to have been has a basis in the cultural context. 4. m. Sot ̣ah 9.9. 5. Note especially the tradition attributed to R. Yohanan b. Torta in y. Yoma 1.1.38c. 6. N. J. McEleney, “Orthodoxy in Judaism of the First Christian Century,” JSS 4 (1973): 19–42. 7. See David Aune, “Orthodoxy in Judaism of the First Christian Century: A Response to N. J. McEleney,” JSS 7 (1976): 1–10; Lester L. Grabbe, “Orthodoxy in First Century Judaism: What Are the Issues?” JSJ 8 (1977): 149–53. See also McEleney’s reply to his critics: N. J. McEleney, “Orthodoxy in Judaism of the First Christian Century,” JSS 9 (1978): 83–88. 8. See Walter Bauer, Orthodoxy and Heresy in Early Christianity (trans. Robert A. Kraft and Gerhard Krodel; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1971). For an important extension of Bauer’s arguments to ancient Jewish and Christian sources, see Shaye Cohen, “A Virgin Defiled: Some Rabbinic and Christian Views of the Origins of Heresy,” Union Seminary Quarterly Review 36, no. 1 (1980): 1–11. 9. The phrase goes back to Martin Goodman, Mission and Conversion: Proselytizing in the Religious History of the Roman Empire (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994), 171–72, commenting on the insistence on refusing compromise concerning the status of all those involved in rites of purification from corpse uncleanness. If all had agreed to adhere to a higher standard of purity, the dissent that fragmented Jewish society might have been avoided. Yet those in charge supposedly insisted that all involved in the ritual be at a much lower level of purity in order to emphasize their conviction that this lower level of purity sufficed. These issues known imperfectly at best a generation ago are now known much better, thanks to the publication of 4QMMT. On the attempts of scholars of a prior generation to understand these sources, see Victor Eppstein, “When and How the Sadducees Were Excommunicated,” JBL 85 (1966): 213–24. On the very problematic nature of the lower standard of purity concerning the offering of the red heifer that provoked controversy, see Menahem Kister, “Studies in 4QMiqsat Ma‘Aśe Ha-Torah and Related Texts: Law, Theology, Language and Calendar,” Tarbiz 68 (1998): 325–35.

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10. Note the explicit awareness of the need for self-imposed limitation acknowledged in the rabbinic statement, repeated a number of times in rabbinic sources, that one does not promulgate decrees with which the masses are unable to comply. See for example, b. Bek. 79b. 11. For purposes of this essay I do not focus on the revision of the role of the Sanhedrin and the diminution of its importance, as proposed by Sanders, Judaism, 472–81. I also do not take up the additional arguments in that direction advanced by James S. McLaren, Power and Politics in Palestine: The Jews and the Governing of Their Land, 100 bc–ad 70 (Sheffield: JSOT, 1991). Nevertheless, I should note that these conclusions, if accepted, would cohere well with the relatively modest role I suggest for the temple in running Jewish life. 12. At one time I accepted the conclusions against which I argue in this paragraph. See the detailed explanation of why I have changed my mind in Albert I. Baumgarten, “ ‘But Touch the Law and the Sect Will Split’: Legal Dispute as the Cause of Sectarian Schism,” RRJ 5 (2002): 301–15. 13. When Pope Gregory XIII instituted his reform of the Christian calendar in 1582, he expressed the hope that this reform would enable all Christians to celebrate their festivals at the same time. This wish was unfulfilled. Non-Catholic churches (Protestant and Orthodox) only adopted the new reckoning slowly, in a process that took centuries and is still incomplete. These churches preferred to disagree with the sun than agree with the pope. See Tycho Brahe’s letter to H. Brucaeus, written in 1584, in which he complained that those who rejected the Gregorian calendar did so plus odio pontificorum quam veritatis amore (more because of hatred of the popes than love of truth). This letter was published by F. Kaltenbrunner, Die Polemik über die Gregorianische Kalendarreform (Sitzungsberichte der Akademie der Wissenschaften; Wien, 1877), 584. To modify Tycho Brahe’s comment to suit the actions of R. Gamaliel II, of the story in m. Roš Haš. 2.8–9, R. Gamaliel II insisted that R. Joshua disagree with the moon as a demonstration of his loyalty to the authority of R. Gamaliel II. 14. See b. Ber. 63a and y. Sanh. 1.2.19a. 15. I follow here a suggestion of R. Yankelevitch, “The Temple of Onias: Law and Reality,” in Jews and Judaism in the Second Temple, Mishna and Talmud Period: Studies in Honor of Shmuel Safrai (ed. I. Gafni et al.; Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi, 1993), 107–15, here 114. On the wider implications of the unique status of the Jerusalem temple for Jews, see Gideon Bohak, “Theopolis: A Single-Temple Policy and Its Singular Ramifications,” JJS 50 (1999): 3–16. 16. See Saul Lieberman, Hellenism in Jewish Palestine (2nd ed.; New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1962), 390. 17. See m. Bik. 1.1. 18. On the other side of the divide, the community at Qumran was acutely aware of the fact that they celebrated Yom Kippur on a different date from other

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Jews. At the time of the famine during the reign of Herod, they explained their apparent prosperity (and that other Jews were joining their ranks at the time— perhaps, we would say, only to get something to eat) by the fact that since they had fasted at the “right” time, they had something to eat, while those who had fasted at the “wrong” time were now starving. Out of power, without means to enforce their opinion, those at Qumran could only protest and argue from success that their position was correct. See further Albert I. Baumgarten, The Flourishing of Jewish Sects in the Maccabean Era: An Interpretation (SupJSJ 55; Leiden: Brill, 1997), 64–65. 19. See the text from y. Yoma, cited in n. 5. For a modern discussion of this issue see Sanders, Judaism, 213–30, esp. 229–30. 20. There are few forms of pious behavior that cannot become perceived as deviant if taken to an extreme. On the one hand, virtue is admired. On the other hand, virtue can be seen as excessive and thus as a criticism of the less virtuous, which evokes a backlash. See, for example, the following comment by George Orwell, from A Collection of Essays (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1954), 182–83: The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection, that one is sometimes willing to commit sins for the sake of loyalty, that one does not push asceticism to the point where it makes friendly intercourse impossible, and that one is prepared in the end to be defeated and broken up by life, which is the inevitable price of fastening one’s love upon other human individuals. No doubt alcohol, tobacco, and so forth, are things a saint must avoid, but sainthood is also a thing human beings must avoid. . . . Many people genuinely do not wish to be saints, and it is probable that some who achieve or aspire to sainthood have never felt much temptation to be human beings. For a discussion of this point in more conventional scholarly terms, see, for example, James A. Francis, Subversive Virtue: Asceticism and Authority in the SecondCentury Pagan World (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995). 21. See Albert I. Baumgarten, “Josephus on Essene Sacrifice,” JJS 45 (1994): 169–83. 22. Paul was identified as a person who should not be allowed into the temple by Diaspora Jews on pilgrimage for the holidays. For a discussion of how the temple police might have identified other people to be excluded, see Albert I. Baumgarten, “He Knew that He Knew that He Knew that He Was an Essene,” JJS 48 (1997): 53–61. My interpretation of these passages follows a suggestion first made by Gedalyahu Alon, “On the Halakhot of the Early Sages,” in Jews, Judaism, and the Classical World: Studies in Jewish History in the Times of the Second Temple and the Talmud (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1977), 138–45. Alon’s interpretation has become widely accepted. See Y. Sussmann, “Research on the History of the Halacha and the Scrolls of the Judean Desert,” Tarbiz 59 (1989): 11–76, here 66, n. 211.

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23. Given the implausibility of the position adopted by the temple authorities, it is preposterous to assume that only one group objected to their rules and that only one sect took the step of offering their own red heifers according to what they believed to be the proper standards. See the reference to the discussion of this issue by Kister in n. 9. Thus any agreement between Qumran and the Essenes in rejecting red heifers offered by the temple and preferring their own, prepared in the way they believed proper, does not require the identification of the two groups. For my views on the connection between Qumran and the Essenes, see Albert I. Baumgarten, “Who Cares and Why Does It Matter? Qumran and the Essenes Once Again,” DSD 11 (2004): 174–90. 24. See E. Eshel, “4Q414 Fragment 2: Purification of a Corpse-Contaminated Person,” in Legal Texts and Legal Issues: Proceedings of the Second Meeting of the International Organization for Qumran Studies (Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah 23; eds. Moshe Bernstein et al.; Leiden: Brill, 1997), 3–10. 25. See pp. 91–92 and n. 16. 26. In Acts 21:23 the men purified include four who are under a vow. The purification described in 21:26–27 is not that associated with the end of a vow, but from corpse uncleanness, as is made clear by the fact that Paul went through the purification as well (he had not been under a vow) and that this purification involves a seven-day waiting period. Paul intended to pay the expenses of the men ending their time as Nazirites. This was considered a worthy act of piety, but the offerings associated with the end of a Nazirite vow would be completed after the purification from corpse uncleanness. 27. Moshe Greenberg, “The Stabilization of the Text of the Hebrew Bible, Reviewed in the Light of the Biblical Materials from the Judean Desert,” JAOS 76 (1956): 157–67. 28. See Lieberman, Hellenism in Jewish Palestine, 20–27. 29. Emmanuel Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992). 30. On the overlap between setting the text and a claim to be its authorized interpreter, see further Jonathan Z. Smith, “Sacred Persistence: Toward a Redescription of Canon,” in Imagining Religion: From Babylon to Jonestown (Chicago Studies in the History of Judaism; Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1982), 36–52, here 48. 31. One example of that dynamic is the tension, often posited, between priests and Pharisees. See Moshe D. Herr, “Continuum in the Chain of Torah Transmission,” Zion 44 (1979): 43–56. 32. Compare the different arguments, from alternate vantage points of Günter Stemberger, “Was There a ‘Mainstream Judaism’ in the Late Second Temple Period?” RRJ 4 (2001): 189–208, here, 203, and Albert I. Baumgarten, “Literacy and the Polemics Surrounding Biblical Interpretation in the Second Temple Period,” in

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Studies in Ancient Midrash (ed. James Kugel; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001), 27–42. 33. According to one possible way of understanding the evidence, the abolishing of the “knockers” in the temple by Yohanan the High Priest, and their replacement by rings that opened and closed as the means for restraining sacrificial animals, may be connected with lobbying for this outcome by works such as the Temple Scroll. See 11QTS 34 and m. Ma‘aś. Š. 5.15. And yet it is equally possible that the Temple Scroll was not prior to this reform but reflected its reality. In that case, sectarian pressure would have had less to do with the institution of this change. Moreover, the purpose of the reform was to avoid practice that seemed too much like what was done in pagan temples (the problem of how to restrain sacrificial animals was common to all cults that offered animal sacrifice). In the environment of the years after the successful revolt against the Seleucids, would sectarians have been the only ones who wanted to distinguish demonstratively between worship in Jerusalem and that at pagan temples? On these points, see further Lieberman, Hellenism in Jewish Palestine, 140–41. Yigael Yadin, The Temple Scroll (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1983), 230–31, 338, sees the connection between the rings and the Temple Scroll as the Temple Scroll lobbying for the reform. He takes this view because as he understands the work, the Temple Scroll was usually objecting to current practice, rather than reflecting it. Thus, if the Temple Scroll has rings as the means of restraining animals for sacrifice, this is because such rings were not (yet) in use. Yadin’s consistently polemical reading of the Temple Scroll should be contrasted with the more irenic understanding (and alternate dating) proposed by Martin Hengel, James H. Charlesworth, and Doron Mendels, “The Polemical Character of ‘On Kingship’ in the Temple Scroll: An Attempt at Dating 11QTemple,” JJS 37 (1986): 28–38. 34. In Josephus’s account of what is apparently the same incident, the ritual aspect is missing. Stoning the high priest with citrons was an act of political protest against a hated ruler (A.J. 13.372). 35. See n. 1. 36. See, for example, Joseph Baumgarten, “A New Qumran Substitute for the Divine Name and Mishnah Sukkah,” JQR 83 (1992): 1–5. For another example of this tendency, see Eyal Regev, “The Traditions about the Authority of the Pharisees and Sadducees in the Temple during the Second Temple and Early Roman Periods,” Jerusalem and Eretz-Israel 1 (2003): 5–46. 37. Note especially the variety of arguments offered in section C of 4QMMT. 38. I consider the most perceptive analysis of the accounts of Jesus’ trial to be by Elias Bickerman, “Utilitas Crucis,” in Studies in Jewish and Christian History (3 vols.; Leiden: Brill, 1986), 3:82–138. 39. Compare the account of the Samaritan millenarian expedition to recover the lost vessels of the Samaritan temple. The leaders of that movement and many

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of their followers were killed by order of Pontius Pilate. See Josephus, A.J. 18.85– 87, and the analysis of this incident by Marilyn F. Collins, “The Hidden Vessels in Samaritan Tradition,” JSJ 3 (1972): 97–116. 40. See Albert I. Baumgarten, “Introduction,” in Apocalyptic Time (ed. Albert I. Baumgarten; Leiden: Brill, 2000), xii–xv. 41. Daniel R. Schwartz, Agrippa I: The Last King of Judea (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1990), 119–24. 42. Compare Martin Goodman’s essay in this volume (chapter 8). 43. See Robert K. Merton, “The Unanticipated Consequences of Purposive Social Action,” ASR 1 (1936): 894–904. Unintended consequences play a major role in biological explanation, the intellectual realm from which we derive many of the models used in historical explanation. See further Jared M. Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fate of Human Societies (New York: W. W. Norton, 1997), 106. 44. Although my emphasis is slightly different, my debt in this brief summary explanation of the life and career of Jesus to E. P. Sanders, The Historical Figure of Jesus (London: Allen Lane Penguin, 1993), should be obvious.

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SIX

Whose “Outer Limits”? Historiography for an Age of Destruction

Cynthia M. Baker

For those who seek to know something about the common experience and cultural practices of the voiceless majority of people in antiquity— who generated little or no written evidence on their own behalf—it sometimes comes as a surprise to realize that scholars researching a culture’s elites can also find themselves in the same challenging position of sifting through scant and problematic evidence. While it is a commonplace that the masses leave few written records, and that few textual sources are concerned with representing the practices and pursuits of the common folk, it is often assumed that high-profile elites are well accounted for in written remains. If the latter’s own records do not survive the ravages of time and conquest, then claims made about those elite individuals and groups in other ancient sources can, with caution, be used to construct somewhat reliable historical accounts of them. This is precisely the challenge faced, and the strategy pursued, by those who attempt to describe ideological practices of the temple hierarchy in first-century Jerusalem and who endeavor to determine the extent of temple complicity or involvement in actions taken against fellow Jews like Jesus of Nazareth. In using this strategy, however, to describe what Albert Baumgarten has termed the “setting of outer limits” of temple tolerance in first-century Palestine, one inevitably comes up against significant outer limits of other sorts.1 This essay treats of two intimately related concerns: First, it offers cautionary reflections on the perennially vexing issue of the limits of our evi104

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dence regarding first-century Palestinian Jewish groups and the methods by which we interpret that evidence—in other words, what can we know, what can we not know, and what does our evidence give evidence for? Second, it argues that the scholarly academy does not and cannot constitute the outer limits of our community of responsibility as historians or historiographers— that is, those whose historical accounts take shape in and help give shape to our present political landscapes. Ultimately, a healthy respect for and a clear articulation of the real limits of our evidence enable a practice of historiography that is not only more intellectually sound but also more ethically and politically responsible.

T h e “ O u t e r L i m it s ” o f O u r E v i d e n ce a n d Met h od s As noted by several scholars in this collection, one of E. P. Sanders’s most far-reaching contributions to the study of Jewish and Christian antiquity has been his careful and detailed examination of what he terms “common Judaism.”2 The concept of a common or normal Judaism was developed in part as a corrective to the excesses and obfuscations of earlier historiographies of ancient Judaism, which retrojected flattened, monolithic readings of later rabbinic traditions back several centuries onto caricatures of Jews derived from similar readings of the Gospels. The resulting normative Judaism served well as a foil for the twentieth century’s emerging “historical Jesus”—a Jesus whose remarkably modern, non-Jewish, and Protestant sensibilities Sanders has likewise challenged.3 While insisting that this “ ‘common’ Judaism was what the priests and the people agreed on,”4 Sanders has generally been careful not to conflate or confuse actions and ideologies of a priestly temple administration with the desires and practices of “the vast majority of Jews in the Land of Israel.”5 Such care is certainly warranted, as it is unlikely that the elite administrators of the Jerusalem temple shared the common concerns and perspectives of the ordinary run of priests, much less those of the masses of nonpriestly Jews. In fact, to the extent that these elites epitomized a sense of supreme guardianship of law, scripture, and temple, they had more in common with sectarian groups of the time than with a putative Jewish majority.

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In his fine textbook on the period, From the Maccabees to the Mishnah, Shaye Cohen analyzes the “targets of sectarian polemics [which] were primarily three: law, temple, and scripture.”6 Under law Cohen includes such things as festivals, their calendars, and purity; under scripture he includes canon formation and authorized interpreters and interpretation; and under temple, of course, he includes all things pertaining to the institution, its priesthood, and rituals.7 It is notable that these targets of sectarian activism are exactly the elements cited by Baumgarten as loci of priestly activism in formulating and enforcing ideological and spatial boundaries. But evidence for this priestly activism is itself drawn, not coincidentally, from sectarian literature: the Dead Sea Scrolls, the New Testament, the Mishnah, and an essay on Jewish schools of thought (within an apologia for the rebellion against Rome) by Josephus, who elsewhere professes himself both a Pharisee and a priest.8 Acceptance of such sectarian accounts as evidence for priestly practices in the temple would necessarily lead to one of two possible surmises: either there was an existing primitive orthodoxy or orthopraxy enforced, somehow, by temple functionaries through controlled access to the temple grounds, and from which certain movements or groups deviated and dissented; or the situation was as fluid as the variety of views found in our evidence suggests, and the elite temple functionaries, by and large, were engaged in precisely the same ongoing enterprises of attempting to create meaning, boundaries, and definitions of “self ”—through defining and delimiting what constitutes “others”—as were the so-called sectarians themselves. Even if the first of these surmises were affirmed, there would still be no cause to assume that such a nascent orthodoxy represented a widespread Jewish consensus—any more than the stranglehold of Orthodox rabbinism on family law in the modern state of Israel represents a Jewish mainstream consensus. The temple was not remotely democratic, nor did it have the slightest mechanism for registering, much less representing, the will of the majority. (Compliance, in the absence of viable alternative options, is another question altogether.) Regardless, it is anachronistic and inappropriate to speak of a Jewish orthodoxy or orthopraxy in this period—notwithstanding widespread engagements and concerns encompassed by the concept of “common Judaism.”9 Thus, if sectarian accounts are considered to provide sound evidence for temple administrative practice, then we are left with the second

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surmise—namely, that temple functionaries were doing much of what other schools of thought were doing, in a dialogic or dialectical fashion, at the same time and in similar ways. If such was the case, then what persuades us, as historians, to present the ideological positions imputed to one limited segment of the population (Pharisees or Sadducees, for example) as “deviation,” with all that that implies, while presenting those imputed to another small segment (some temple functionaries, for example) as representative of majority or common practice and belief? Although the second of these two surmises is at least as likely as the first, the evidence upon which both are based is insufficient to support either. Accounts by a sect, group, or school of thought must be read, first and foremost (if not exclusively), as representing, in some limited fashion, the self-renderings of that group. Historians must remain entirely suspicious of what such groups tell us about the others with whom, or over and against whom, they construct themselves. Notwithstanding our great desire to know and be able to say something about the ideological practices of people and groups in ancient Palestine from whom we have no specific written accounts, we are compelled to recognize that existing sources largely limit us to knowledge about the self-representational practices of the groups from which those sources come—and only very little and problematic knowledge, at that. Hence, these sources can tell us a great deal about early proto-Christian, rabbinic, Qumranite, and possibly Pharisaic or Essenic self-conception and self-fashioning, but they ultimately tell us very little about the others with whom the authors place themselves in juxtaposition. A good case in point is presented by arguments regarding enforced exclusion and the closing of the gates of the Jerusalem temple in response to diverse purity practices. Josephus tells us that the Essenes “send what they have dedicated to God into the Temple, they do not offer sacrifices because they have more pure lustrations of their own; on which account they are excluded from the common court of the Temple.”10 Whose “outer limits” does Josephus purport to represent here—those of the temple functionaries or those of the Essenes? In the Covenant of Damascus, we read that the members of the New Covenant are to “bar the door” and not enter the temple “in vain” because of the suspect or violated condition of the temple itself—not that they will be barred from entering by the temple guards (CD VI). Although it is

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possible to read this passage as representing a legacy of “sour grapes” (i.e., “you cannot exclude us because we have already removed ourselves”), that is a forced and unnecessary interpretation. Josephus’s account of the Essenes intimates a similar self-conception and practice on the part of those whom he (at a second remove) purports to describe: that is, such Essenes would not risk their greater purity by entering into the common court of the temple with the masses, whose comprehension and practice of purity could hardly be trusted by an Essene. It is thus far more plausible that Josephus’s Essenes are excluded by their own sensibilities in this regard than that they are all somehow picked out from amid the masses and refused entry by the temple guards. If eirgomenoi (exclusion) in his account is read as a passive rather than a reflexive construction, then it need only convey, again, Josephus’s impression that Essenes are excluded by their own purity practices, not by agents of the temple—who appear nowhere in his account. Even greater caution is called for in using early rabbinic texts for reconstructing temple practice. In the case of rabbinic traditions, the habitual retrojection of emerging rabbinic halakah back into the past and rabbinic “recollections” of, for example, scores of rabbinic-style batei midrash in Second Temple Jerusalem (y. Meg. 3:1) force us strongly to suspect that the “temple ban,” enacted through a closing of the temple gates and imagined in m. ‘Ed. 5:6 (and its parallel in Ruth Rabbah), is also just such a retrojection. Therefore we are most likely presented here with rabbinic excommunication practice, writ large, as it were, onto the long-since-destroyed temple gates.11 So, too, the account of Paul’s suspected public “defiling of the temple”—Luke’s rhetorically impressive counterpoint to “Jesus’ cleansing of the temple” (Acts 21:27–36 and Luke 19:45–46; 23:18, 45, respectively): Jesus runs the Jewish money-handlers out; Paul is accused of bringing “unclean” Gentiles in; both raise a ruckus in the temple; both are carried to the authorities with cries of “Away with this man!” While in the Gospel story the “curtain in the temple is rent” open at the moment of Jesus’ salvific sacrifice, in the Paul story the “hardened heart” of Judaism slams shut in the form of the temple gates behind Paul and his message of Christ’s salvation. Again, have we evidence here of temple policy and priestly collusion, or have we merely a Gospel writer’s symbolic renderings of the outer limits and limitations of a Judaism unwilling to open its heart voluntarily to universal brotherhood and the savior of all humankind?12

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The concerns raised here are hardly confined to the specific case discussed above; indeed, similar examples abound for all focal points of dispute within and around a common Judaism of the period. Thus, such cautions as I have invoked should always serve as the explicitly articulated framework— or limits—within which our historical reconstructions are carried out. To ignore these cautions would be to reach well beyond the limits of our evidence and to imply greater confidence in our claims than is merited. We cannot know that temple functionaries “could establish what Jews should not do, and . . . often took steps to set such limits” through closures, expulsions, and executions—any more than we can know that “collapse into chaos” would be the outcome of their failure to do so.13 We cannot know, and, indeed, have every cause to doubt, that temple elites represented—in practice or ideology—the Jewish masses. We cannot know that temple activism is the context that accounts for the persecution and death of Jesus and members of the early Jesus movement. Much less may we conflate temple elites (as depicted in polemical sources) with the masses of Jews, such that our scholarly investigations unwisely come to echo John’s sectarian Gospel in posing the question “What might Jesus have done to so offend the Jews?”14 What we can know with far greater confidence is that, at times, groups or movements seeking to establish their own legitimacy and identity found it rhetorically useful, depending on the circumstances, to present their practices or positions as identical or at odds with those of a putative temple regime. At other times, these same rhetorical strategies enlisted the imagined Jewish masses to similar ends. But insofar as there was, in antiquity, a broad set of shared concerns or a common Judaism, we have no evidence that it was of the sort attributed to those (whether we call them “sectarians” or “governing elites”) with the inclination or power to build high walls and staff checkpoints; enforce closures, exclusions, and expulsions; and seek to destroy those whose opinions or practices differed from their own.

T h e “ O u t e r L i m it s ” o f O u r C o mm un i t y of Resp on si b i l i t y Resonances between the subjects of our historical investigations and enterprises unfolding in the state of Israel today are obvious. For example, we consider evidence for whether or not elite Jewish officeholders attempted

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to set outer limits on dissidence and dissent, on legitimacy of interpretation or identity, using the Temple Mount—its walls and gates—as a means of making public statements about inclusion and exclusion and of enforcing authorized practices. We debate these historical possibilities in a time when a man who sought the prime ministership of Israel—and subsequently won it—used the Temple Mount for his own dramatic, militant act of defying common practice and, while claiming a Jewish mandate, triggered the expected rioting and deadly violence that ensued (rather like that imagined in the Luke–Acts stories cited above!).15 Similarly, we formulate and state our propositions regarding ancient Jewish walls and gates at a time when the regime headed by that prime minister is constructing a monumental, gated “security fence” enclosing walled Jewish settlements, to mark and enforce its own outer limits of inclusion and exclusion. While we explore ancient traditions about purity and red heifers, a little red cow who was the culmination of a Jewish–Gentile fundamentalist alliance among cattlemen, churches, and the so-called Temple Mount Faithful (baruch ha-shem!) sprouted white hairs on her tail, thereby disqualifying her from playing her intended role in a twenty-first-century apocalyptic drama.16 And as we weigh questions of centralized authority and claims regarding correct biblical interpretation, the Bible has once again become an unequivocal land deed and national constitution in the minds of many—who now find themselves with the means, both scholarly and military, to enforce their version of history. What can it mean to set our “disinterested” academic work of historiography into a political context this way? Quite simply, I intend to highlight the obvious: that the writing of history occurs in the thick of societies awash in political currents and the ebb and flow of myriad ideological tides. This was so in the age of Josephus, Luke, Qumran, and the Mishnah; it is no less so now. Consciousness of these dynamics, past and present, carries with it an imperative to weigh our own and others’ words, judging all historiographic formulations in light of both the political and ideological frameworks from which they spring and the political and ideological work for which they become available once they are cast into the wider world. Morally sensitive New Testament scholars, mindful of their positions in a post-Holocaust world, are among those most familiar with this imperative. Their efforts are instructive.17

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How might such concerns appropriately inform the work of historians of ancient Judaism and Christianity, in general—and, more specifically, what are the peculiar responsibilities of those who study ancient “SyriaPalestina”? Historiography about Israel/Palestine, temple and text, enforced limits and exclusions, and about peoples, places, and the relationship between the two, bears an undeniable moral burden at the present time. Although there is no simple formula to follow in meeting these challenges, I would argue that, at the least, the genuine limitations imposed by our sources call for a disavowal of any claims to ample evidence for the legitimacy of assertions of authority by putative representatives of a Jewish mainstream or vast majority of the period. Such claims are both methodologically unsound and ethically problematic, and they stand in stark contrast to historiography that highlights the partiality, the fundamental variety in practice and identity, and the tenuousness of claims to authority that our sources represent. Disregard for the nature of these sources can lead to a practice of history writing that lends itself more readily to master narratives of religious or political fundamentalism. By contrast, explicit regard for the character of our evidence perhaps holds some potential to subvert such narratives. Although I entertain few illusions about the real power, or lack thereof, of academic historiography (little stands or falls, lives or dies by our words—as Martin Goodman’s apt comparison between professors and Sadducees reminds us),18 honesty demands that historians acknowledge our work’s potential for support or contestation of current regimes and their exercise of power. Not for a moment do I wish to suggest that we manipulate our evidence or construe our findings in such a way as to serve one ideological stance or another. The point, rather, is that our work already and always stands within a thick matrix of ideological practices with ethically charged implications. Although we cannot be conscious of every such practice, nor aware of all the implications, we can acknowledge their existence and be far more articulate about their relationship to our work. More to the point, I wish to suggest that doing responsible historical scholarship in this field—scholarship that both recognizes and emphasizes the outer limits of our evidence and the wide variety of perspectives, practices, and authority claims suggested by that evidence—is, in itself, an ethical

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act in a world in which religio-political fundamentalisms, with their monolithic historiographies, fuel so much harm. Historiography for an age of destruction—whether that destruction is our ancient historical subject or our current historical context (or both)—takes place within a much larger human community than the intimate circle of fellow academics in which we often (and pleasurably) find ourselves. Respect for the breadth and diversity of that human community, and for the limits of our historical and current knowledge, remains the best grounding for good historiography. It might be, as well, among our best strategies for resisting yet another age of destruction.

Notes 1. See Albert Baumgarten’s essay in this volume, “Setting the Outer Limits: Temple Policy in the Centuries Prior to the Destruction” (chapter 5). 2. E. P. Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief 63 b.c.e.–66 c.e. (London/ Philadelphia: SCM/Trinity Press International, 1992), part 2. 3. See E. P. Sanders, “Jesus, Ancient Judaism, and Modern Christianity: The Quest Continues,” in Jesus, Judaism, and Christian Anti-Judaism: Reading the New Testament after the Holocaust (ed. Paula Fredriksen and Adele Reinhartz; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2002), 31–55. 4. Sanders, Judaism, 47. 5. Baumgarten, “Setting,” p. 88. 6. Shaye Cohen, From the Maccabees to the Mishnah (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1987), 128. 7. See Cohen, Maccabees to the Mishnah, 129, 128f., and 131–32, respectively. 8. On the question of Josephus’s Pharisaic identification, see Steve Mason, “Was Josephus a Pharisee? A Reexamination of Life 10–12,” JJS 40 (1989): 31–45. The terms “sect” and “sectarian” as commonly used in studies of this period are imprecise and prejudicial. I employ them here in order to illustrate some of the problems in their usage. By highlighting parallels in self-representational practices among groups like the earliest rabbis (as found in the Mishnah), the temple administrators (as depicted by scholars like Baumgarten), and those traditionally labeled “sects” or “sectarians” (Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, Qumranites, protoChristians), I hope to add to the growing critical reflection on the nature of all these groups in the interest of developing better tools for their study. 9. Many scholars have addressed this question, but once again Shaye Cohen provides one of the clearer and more succinct arguments for avoidance of not only

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the term but also the general concept of orthodoxy in discussions of Judaism of this period. See Cohen, Maccabees to the Mishnah, 134–37. 10. A.J. 18.19; emphases are mine. 11. Similarly, we are led to question the use of rabbinic materials for substantiating claims about temple enforcement of calendars and standardized texts. 12. Sanders takes on the question of “Gentile impurity” and temple access in Judaism, 72–76, concluding that the evidence regarding this issue is “mixed,” at best, and that the temple priesthood would hardly have shared the conception of Gentile impurity apparently held by some of the common folk. 13. Quoted phrases are from Baumgarten, “Setting,” pp. 89–90. 14. Baumgarten, “Setting,” p. 96. 15. On September 28, 2000, then-candidate Ariel Sharon made a public show of force at the site. Palestinian response to the provocative gesture is considered by many to be the genesis of what came to be known as the Second Intifada. 16. See http://www.templeinstitute.org. 17. See, for example, Fredriksen and Reinhartz, eds., Jesus, Judaism. 18. See Goodman’s discussion of doctrine in chapter 8 (pp. 46–48).

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SEVEN

All Israel Have a Portion in the World to Come Israel J. Yuval

T h e M is h n a h All Israel have a portion in the World to Come, for it is written: “Your people are all righteous; they shall inherit the land for ever, the branch of my planting, the work of my hands, that I may be glorified” (Isa 60:21). The following have no portion in the World to Come: He who denies Resurrection as a biblical doctrine, he who maintains that the Torah was not divinely revealed, and an apikoros. Rabbi Akiba added: One who reads external books. Also one who whispers [a charm] over a wound. . . . Abba Saul said: Also one who pronounces the Divine Name as it is spelled.1 The above statement, made at the beginning of chapter Heleq of tractate Sanhedrin, is somewhat perplexing. The affirmation that “All Israel have a portion in the World to Come” seemingly contradicts the basic premise of the rabbinic concept of reward and punishment, as well as those biblical concepts that assign critical significance to strict observance of God’s commandments. If all Israel have a portion in the world to come, what then is the importance of the Torah? What is the point in observing the minutest details of the halakah if, at the end of time, when the dead shall arise and be judged by God, all will have a portion in the world to come?2 114

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This far-reaching assertion was among the catalysts for the theory expounded by Ed Sanders, explaining the crucial importance of the covenant between Israel and God from the rabbinic point of view in terms of the concept of reward and punishment. In his classic book Paul and Palestinian Judaism, Sanders writes,3 Every individual Israelite who indicates his intention to remain in the covenant by repenting, observing the Day of Atonement and the like, will be forgiven for all his transgressions. The passages on repenting and atoning in order to return to God . . . presuppose the covenantal relationship between God and his members of Israel. . . . The Israelite in the covenant will be punished for transgressions—by suffering, by death and even after death if necessary—but he is saved by remaining in the covenant given by God. . . . This describes God’s behaviour within the covenant, not how one is saved.4 This analysis is characteristic of Sanders’s approach, which describes the soteriology of rabbinic Judaism as covenantal nomism, according to which the status of the Israelite is determined by his commitment to the covenant. This commitment obliges him to keep God’s commandments, whose observance is then rewarded; by contrast, transgression brings punishment followed by the hope for atonement. Nevertheless, even transgression cannot annul the Israelite’s commitment to the covenant nor his hope for salvation. According to Sanders, this view was not a late invention of the Sages, but was accepted among the Pharisees even before the destruction of the temple.5 Here I wish to examine this Mishnah and its accompanying talmudic discussion from a different perspective. It is obvious that the Mishnah consists of at least two, if not three, layers.6 The all-encompassing statement assuring every Israelite a portion in the world to come belongs to the later layer, which attempts to formulate a new definition of Jewish identity to cope with the challenge posed by early Christianity.7 I therefore intend to follow here the line of my previous studies, in which I see the polemic with Christianity as a central factor in the molding of Jewish self-identity in classic rabbinic literature. This perception of Christianity as a leitmotif in rabbinic literature in no way confutes the significance or validity of other factors.

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It is clear that the environment of the Sages was not exclusively Christian and included, among others, Samaritans, Gnostics, pagans, Hellenists, and Stoics. It is thus only natural to assume that talmudic literature reflects the constant friction among many and varied factors. My focus on Christianity stems from my consciousness of the fact that the threat posed by Christianity greatly overshadowed that posed by any other religious sect. The text of our Mishnah includes three late additions, marked by italics in the citation above. The first addition (“All Israel . . .”) does not appear in all the manuscripts and must thus be seen as a later addition.8 This is also evident from a literary point of view: the list of those who have no portion in the world to come includes some who are not included in “Israel,” such as Balaam or the generation that perished in the flood. The inclusion of non-Jews in the list of exceptions to the rule indicates that the rule itself, “All Israel . . . ,” is not original and was added later on. The sentence is based on a midrash of Isa 60:21. The Jewish exegete interprets the words μlw[l (“forever”) and ≈rah yrçw (“shall inherit the land”) in an eschatological sense.9 As previously noted by David Flusser, this midrash should be read as a parallel to Matt 5:5: “Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the land,” where inheritance of the land is likewise given an eschatological meaning.10 But the above two exegeses refer to different verses. Jesus interprets Ps 37:11 (“But the meek shall inherit the land”), and his conclusion is similar to interpretations from the Dead Sea Scrolls, which predict the inheritance of the land by the chosen people, that is, members of the sect.11 Our Mishnah, by contrast, interprets Isa 60:21, in particular the comparison between ˚m[ (“your people”) and μyqydx (“righteous”), as giving a carte blanche to any Israelite, thereby creating a distinction not between the righteous man and the sinner, but between the Israelite and the Gentile. This is a new self-definition. The second addition consists of the phrase “as a biblical doctrine,” which appears immediately after “He who denies Resurrection.” This addition only appears in the Babylonian versions of the Mishnah, and served as the basis for an extensive discussion in the Babylonian Talmud, which we shall examine later. The third addition consists of the three additional categories, specified by Rabbi Akiba and Abba Saul, of those who have no portion in the world to come.

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Reading the Mishnah without these three additions, the earlier, authentic, original version comes to light, appearing well within the context of the previous chapters in the tractate: “The following have no portion in the World to Come: He who denies Resurrection, he who maintains that the Torah was not divinely revealed, and an Apikoros [lit. Epicurus, i.e., the philosopher or skeptic].” Our chapter thus forms a natural sequel to the discussion about those who are sentenced to death by the Court (“The following are sentenced to death”), even using a similar style: “The following have no portion. . . .” What we expect here is a list of particularly severe sins and, indeed, the group in the early version is exactly that: “He who denies Resurrection, he who maintains that the Torah was not divinely revealed, and the Apikoros.” These three sins relate to tenets of faith and are thus likely candidates to serve as criteria for disqualification from a portion in the world to come. They reflect an age-old internal and external polemic: internally with the Sadducees, who deny the resurrection of the dead; externally with pagans who deny the authenticity of the Torah and the unity of God. The second list, containing three relatively mild transgressions, is inherently different. This group is a late addition, appended to an anonymous Mishnah that states, “Rabbi Akiba added: One who reads external books, also one who whispers [a charm] over a wound.” Immediately thereafter, Abba Saul adds the sixth transgression: “Also one who pronounces the Divine Name as it is spelled.” In face of this new troika of sins, one cannot help wondering why all Israel, including the worst sinners, are privileged to enjoy the world to come, whilst mere browsers in external books, charm whisperers, and magicians are doomed. What made Rabbi Akiba and Abba Saul brand as God’s most dangerous enemies these poor and innocent folk who were doing little more than trying to relieve pain by means of a harmless charm? Or, if we accept Sanders’s conclusion, why should the repentant whisperer of charms fare worse than the repentant murderer? My claim, based upon an interpretation suggested by Travers Herford, is that this second, additional group of three sins alludes to Jewish Christians.12 Their exclusion from those who have a portion in the world to come is an attempt to brand them as a heretical group. These three sins may hence be seen as a reference to Jewish Christians.

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The first category—reading of “external” books—may be explained as reading books other than the canonical Bible—that is, the New Testament. Another possibility is that this refers to the Apocrypha. But while in the Jerusalem Talmud references to “external” books were interpreted as referring to the book of Ben-Sirah or to (the somewhat obscure) Ben-La’anah, in the Babylonian Talmud they are taken to refer to “books of the minim [lit., sectarians],” a term generally used for Christians.13 As we shall see, the polemic with the Christians is in fact more apparent in the Babylonian discussion. The second category—“one who whispers a charm”—refers to a characteristic commonly attributed to the early Christians in Talmudic literature. Jesus himself was considered a magician with healing powers.14 The Sages used this to justify his crucifixion: “On the eve of Passover, Jesus was hanged. For forty days before the execution took place, a herald went forth and cried: ‘He is going forth to be stoned because he has practiced sorcery.’ ”15 His followers and disciples were similarly viewed as healers by charms.16 The Jerusalem Talmud tells of Rabbi Joshua ben Levi’s grandson, who was cured by a Christian healer using the name of Christ: “A certain person uttered the name of Jesus Pandera and he was healed.”17 A similar story is told of Rabbi Eliezer ben Dama:18 They brought: “No man should have any dealings with the Minim, nor is it permitted to be healed by them, even [in order to save] temporal life.” It once happened that Rabbi Ishmael’s nephew, Ben Dama, was bitten by a serpent. Jacob of Kefar Sekaniah came to heal him, but Rabbi Ishmael did not allow him to do so, whereupon Ben Dama said, “Rabbi Ishmael, my brother, leave him be so that he may heal me; and I can even cite a verse from the Torah that it is permitted.” But he did not manage to complete his saying when his soul departed and he died, whereupon Rabbi Ishmael exclaimed, “Happy are you, Ben Dama, that your body was pure and your soul departed in purity; nor have you transgressed the words of your colleagues, who said, ‘He who breaks through a fence, a serpent shall bite him’ (Eccles 10:8).” The parallel version in the Yerushalmi explicitly states that the Jacob mentioned in this story used Christ’s name when healing: “Jacob, a native of Kefar Sama, came in the name of Jesus Pandera to heal him.”19

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Thirdly, “one who pronounces the Divine Name as it is spelled” is also a euphemism for Jesus in talmudic literature. According to a Jewish version of Jesus’ biography entitled Toldoth Yeshu, he did in fact work miracles through use of the Divine Name, which he stole from the temple: “There was a stone [even shetiyah] in the Temple upon which God’s Name was written, and anyone who knew the Name was able to do all he wished. Jesus came and copied the Name onto a piece of parchment. He tore open the flesh on his thigh, placed the parchment in the gash, and restored the torn flesh to its place.”20 This tradition is clearly connected with the beraita cited in the name of Rabbi Eliezer concerning ben Stada (or ben Pandera), stating that “he brought forth witchcraft from Egypt by means of scratches upon his flesh.” According to the Babylonian Talmud, Ben Stada is none other than Jesus.21 The assumption that the addition to the Mishnah was directed against Jewish Christians implies that the other addition, at the beginning of the Mishnah—“All Israel have a portion in the World to Come”—was also inserted in the context of polemic with Christianity.22 Indeed, this statement sounds very much like a Jewish counterpart to the well-known Christian maxim, extra Ecclesiam nulla salus or, as phrased by Cyprian of Carthage in the first half of the third century, salus extra ecclesiam non est (“there is no salvation outside of the church”).23 The source for this idea lies in Paul’s soteriology, which sees belief in Jesus as an essential condition for salvation. Only believers will be saved, while those who do not believe in Jesus are doomed to ruin even if they are righteous in all other ways. Paul’s soteriology is thus intended exclusively for Israel spiritualiter (“Spiritual Israel”), that is, those who believe in Jesus.24 At least this was how Paul’s followers understood his ideas. Paul himself seems to have perceived the status of the Jews in a somewhat more complex and not altogether consistent way.25 His famous statement in Rom 11:26, “and so all Israel will be saved,” uses rhetoric similar to the statement in our Mishnah: “all Israel have a portion in the World to Come.” Thus, this addition appears to be an adoption of a parallel concept to the one expounded by Paul.26 The Mishnah distinguishes between “Israel” and those who are not “Israel.” The former are automatically worthy of salvation, exactly as was promised the believers in Jesus. However, our Mishnah obviously refers to Israel carnaliter (“carnal Israel”), that is, the biological

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descendants of those present at Sinai. In the face of the threat posed by the all-encompassing Christian promise of salvation to all believers, our Mishnah suggests an alternative, rival conception. Its adoption of the Pauline formula does not stem from agreement, but specifically from competition for the hearts of the believers. This is not religious concord but harsh and bitter rivalry. But is it not possible that Paul was reacting to the opinion expressed in our Mishnah? This claim is easily answered. Paul’s views as regarding the inheritors of the earth are novel, not inherited. They essentially contradict not only the views of the Pharisees, who believed that only the righteous shall be worthy of a place in the world to come, but also that propagated by Jesus himself, whereby the meek shall inherit the earth—which is, nevertheless, an ethical and personal criterion. Paul replaced the personal criterion with a general one that included all believers in Jesus, that is, the new Israel. The addition to the Mishnah in Heleq is thus an attempt to pose an alternative soteriology that may be understood historically only as part of a dialogue with the new Pauline criterion, to which it responds: Indeed, all Israel shall inherit the earth; however, this refers to Israel carnaliter, and not Israel spiritualiter.27

T h e B a b y lo n i a n Ta l m u d i c D i s c u s s i on Let us now turn to the third addition to the Mishnah—the words “as a biblical doctrine”—and the ensuing discussion in the Babylonian Talmud. The discussion begins by asking why those who do not believe in the resurrection of the dead are barred from the world to come: “And why such [severity]? A tanna taught: Since he denies the Resurrection of the Dead, therefore he shall not partake in that Resurrection, for all the measures [of punishment and reward] taken by the Holy One blessed be He are based on measure for measure.” The question raised here is entirely justified: nowhere does the Torah mention any obligation to believe in resurrection, and whatever efforts were made by the Sages to unearth hints of it in the Scriptures do not suffice to elevate it to a sufficiently important religious tenet so as to disqualify Israelites who deny it from their “natural right” to a portion

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in the world to come. The Talmud’s answer is a technical one: “measure for measure.” If someone does not believe in something, that person shall not gain from it. A surprisingly similar argument is invoked by Paul in 1 Cor 15:12–19: “Now if Christ is preached as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?” Paul confronts people who are willing to believe that Christ rose from the dead, but who refuse to believe that the dead in general will rise at the end of time. The singular occurrence involving Christ does not suffice for them to infer the eschatological occurrence—that is, they “deny the Resurrection of the Dead.” To this Paul replies: “But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain, and your faith is in vain!” (1 Cor 15:13–14). Denial of the resurrection of the dead leads, according to Paul, to denial of Christ’s resurrection, and hence to denying his being the son of God. It is at this point that Paul adds: “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile, and you are still in your sins” (1 Cor 15:17). Paul argues that disbelief in Christ’s resurrection results in the loss of salvation, for only one who believes in Christ shall be saved. His argument begins with those who deny the resurrection of the dead and ends by proclaiming that they shall not be saved—an argument perfectly parallel to the Tannaitic passage with which this talmudic discussion begins. There is, however, a difference between the two sources: Paul’s argument is based on firm inner logic: belief in Christ assures salvation, but one cannot believe in Christ without believing in the resurrection of the dead.28 Thus, Paul presents belief in the resurrection of the dead and in salvation of the soul as a package deal. By contrast, the talmudic discussion, which uses the reasoning of measure for measure, is purely technical: Paul: Denial of Resurrection of the Dead “ Denial of Christ’s resurrection “ Loss of salvation Talmud: Denial of Resurrection of the Dead “ Loss of salvation The assumption that the additions to the Mishnah were inserted with Christianity in mind seems just as germane to this Tannaitic source, at the beginning of the talmudic discussion following the Mishnah. If so, the meaning of

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this technical line of reason becomes clear: it is an adoption of the Pauline argument but devoid of its Christian component, that is, belief in the resurrection and divinity of Christ. This relationship between the talmudic discussion of resurrection and Paul’s view sheds light on the continuation of the discussion. The question, “From whence is Resurrection derived from the Torah?” is raised repeatedly, a long list of Sages citing a wide variety of verses that may be read as alluding to the resurrection of the dead. The number of proofs brought is astounding: twenty distinct proofs in all! In no other sugya in the Talmud is such a conglomeration of proofs invoked for any issue. The fact that this is a central tenet of religion that could disqualify a Jew from his portion in the world to come may explain why so many Sages felt it necessary to add proofs to the list. Some of the answers include plausible proofs. For example, “Rabbi Simlai said: From whence do we learn Resurrection from the Torah? From the verse, ‘And I have also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan’ [Exod 6:4]. It does not say ‘[to give] you’ but ‘to give them’; hence, Resurrection is proved from the Torah.” This exegesis uses a similar method to that used by Jesus in his debate with the Sadducees, who rejected belief in the resurrection of the dead. After answering the questions raised by the Sadducees, Jesus adds a proof from the Scriptures: “Have you not read what was said to you by God: ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’ [Exod 3:6]? He is not God of the dead, but of the living. And when the crowd heard it, they were astonished at his teaching” (Matt 22:23–33, esp. 31–33). These sermons are good examples of the Pharisees’ efforts to find allusions to the resurrection of the dead in the Scriptures, in order to refute the Sadducees. The reaction of “the crowd” illustrates that much importance was attached to the communicability of the sermon to its audience. However, some of the proofs invoked in the talmudic discussion are very weak and cannot be seen as decisive. For example: “Rabbi Meir said: From whence do we infer Resurrection from the Torah? From the verse, ‘Then shall Moses and the children of Israel sing this song unto the Lord’ [Exod 15:1]; it is not written ‘sang’ but ‘shall sing.’ Hence Resurrection is taught in the Torah” (b. Sanh. 91b). Alternatively: “Rabbi Joshua ben Levi said: From whence is Resurrection derived from the Torah? From the verse,

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‘Blessed are those who dwell in thy house, ever singing thy praise! Selah’ [Ps 84:5]. It does not say, ‘they ever sang thy praise’ but ‘ever singing.’ Thus Resurrection is taught in the Torah” (b. Sanh. 91b). Most bizarre of all is the exegesis quoted in the name of Rabban Gamaliel during his debate with the minim, that is, Jewish Christians, based on the verse, “And the Lord said to Moses: Behold, you are about to sleep with your fathers; and rise. . . .” The citation deliberately breaks off the quote in mid-phrase and omits the conclusion: “then this people [will rise] and play the harlot” (Deut 31:16). Small wonder that this failed to convince the other party!29 From the weakness of the arguments in some of the exegeses, we may safely conjecture that they were not intended for external apologetics but as internal rhetoric. What purpose could this serve? A possible answer is suggested in the commentary on the Talmud attributed to Rashi on the phrase in the Mishnah “He who maintains that Resurrection is not a biblical doctrine.” Pseudo-Rashi’s style here is particularly vehement: One who does not accept the midrashim appearing in the gemara below: [beginning] ‘From whence do we know that Resurrection of the Dead is from the Torah?’—even if he accepts and believes that the dead shall be resurrected, but denies that it is alluded in Scripture—such a one is a heretic, for he uproots the belief that the Resurrection of the Dead is biblical. What do we care about his beliefs? From whence does he know that it is so? Therefore, he is considered a downright heretic.30 According to this approach, the denial specified in the Mishnah is actually of the exegeses themselves! This maneuver is surprising, as it shifts the subject of denial from the resurrection to the midrashic proofs showing that the principle of resurrection was alluded to in the Torah, thereby shifting the stress to the words “a biblical doctrine.” Whether a person believes in the resurrection of the dead or not is entirely irrelevant if this belief is independent of the exegetical proof anchoring it in Scripture! Who fits this definition? What religious group believes in the resurrection of the dead quite independent of the biblical exegeses of the Sages?

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The obvious answer is: the Christians.31 There is thus little doubt that the commentary attributed to Rashi was written with Christianity in mind. Pseudo-Rashi’s opinion is shared, in my view, by the redactor of the Talmudic discussion. He painstakingly collected every shred of exegesis, thus presenting a broad selection of thoroughly Jewish exegeses, which could only convince Jewish scholars. They were not intended to convince heretics but to create an internal Jewish discourse, different from the Christian one. And indeed, when Jesus gave his exegesis about the resurrection of the dead to the Sadducees, he spoke as one of the Pharisees, as we saw above. Conversely, post-Pauline Christianity no longer sought to base its beliefs on the Holy Scriptures, but on a “true story,” the resurrection of Jesus, inferring an eschatological event from a past incident.32 This gave Christians a considerable advantage in their religious propaganda, as the Jews had to be satisfied with finding the sources for their beliefs in the Holy Scriptures. This explains the development of such a profusion of strange and obviously far-fetched exegeses, which could only be acceptable to Jewish scholars who were well acquainted with the techniques of biblical exegesis. This is the spirit behind the words of Rabbi Simlai, according to whom it would have been possible to prove the resurrection of the dead from every verse in the Torah, but we cannot as “we are not competent enough in exegesis.”33 This new rhetoric of weak proofs is intended to redefine the image of one who denies the resurrection of the dead so as to include not only those who do not believe in the resurrection itself, but also those who deny its scriptural basis. This new definition, based on the phrase in our Mishnah “as a biblical doctrine,” excludes Christians from those who have a portion in the world to come, as they believe in the resurrection of the dead but do not see biblical exegesis as a legitimate source for this belief. The aforementioned cases illustrate the challenge posed to the Sages by Christian soteriology. This chapter in Sanhedrin contains further examples that could have been adduced.34 These cases show an indirect and subdued Jewish response, which does not explicitly reveal the identity of the Christian adversary. I now wish to go one step further and consider the possibility that the systematic avoidance of mentioning Christianity in talmudic literature reflects a conscious decision on the part of the Sages to disguise the deep process of acculturation forced on it by its sister religion. It is true

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that such an assumption has a certain methodological weakness, being intrinsically immune to refutation. One cannot refute the existence of something that was never admitted to have been there. Already two thousand years prior to Karl Popper, the Talmud decreed that irrefutable testimony is not acceptable in court.35 I nevertheless wish to suggest such an interpretation of a tale that appears further on in the Babylonian Talmud, also in chapter Heleq, an interpretation that can only be evaluated according to its plausibility. I would like to suggest that this tale has both an overt and a covert meaning; the covert is not apparent in the story itself but comes to light through comparison with parallel Christian literature.

At the Mouth of the Cave The following story appears in chapter Heleq (b. Sanhedrin 98a):36 Rabbi Joshua ben Levi met Elijah standing at the entrance to Rabbi Simeon bar Yohai’s cave.37 He asked him: “Have I a portion in the world to come?” He [Elijah] replied: “If this Master desires it.” Rabbi Joshua ben Levi said: I saw two, but heard the voice of a third. He then asked him: “When will the Messiah come?” “Go and ask him yourself,” was [Elijah’s] reply. “Where is he sitting?” “At the entrance to the great city [i.e., Rome].” “And by what sign may I recognize him?” “He is sitting among the poor lepers: all of them untie [their bandages] all at once, and rebandage them all at once, whereas he unties and rebandages each separately, saying to himself, ‘Should I be called, I must not be delayed.’” So [Rabbi Joshua ben Levi] went to him and greeted him, saying, “Peace upon you, Master and Teacher.” “Peace upon you, O son of Levi,” he replied. “When will you come, O Master?” asked he. “Today,” he answered. On his returning to Elijah, the latter enquired, “What did he say to you?” “Peace upon you, O son of Levi,” he answered. Thereupon [Elijah] observed, “He assured you and your father [a portion in] the World to Come.” “He spoke falsely to me,” he rejoined, “stating that he would come today, but he has not.” [Elijah] answered him, “This is what he said to you, ‘Today, if you will hearken to His voice’ [Ps 95:7].”38

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This story consists of three dialogues involving Rabbi Joshua ben Levi: the first with Elijah, the second with the Messiah, and the third again with Elijah. In the first dialogue, Rabbi Joshua asks Elijah two questions: one regarding his own personal salvation and the other about the salvation of the nation. Elijah answers neither one; albeit he replies to the former with a vague and enigmatic statement that does not contain any promise: “If this Master desires it.” Who is “this Master”? That, too, is unclear. Is it Rabbi Simeon bar Yohai, who is buried in the cave? Or perhaps the Master of the Universe? From Rabbi Joshua ben Levi’s comment—“I saw two, but heard the voice of a third”—it would seem that the third voice was that of God.39 Elijah does not respond to the second question, either, but instead sends Rabbi Joshua to seek the Messiah in Rome. The dialogues occur in two locales: the first and third at the entrance to the cave of Rabbi Simeon bar Yohai and the second at the entrance to Rome. The location of the Messiah at the gates of Rome fits in well with other stories linking the destruction of the temple to the birth of the Messiah. But what is Elijah doing at the entrance to Bar Yohai’s cave? Exactly which cave is it—the one he was buried in or the one where he spent twelve years in hiding? We know that Bar Yohai and his son “dwelt in a cave for twelve years. Elijah came and stood at the mouth of the cave, and said: ‘Who will tell Bar Yohai that the emperor is dead and that his decree has been annulled?’ They came out.”40 On the other hand, the term “cave” in the Talmud often refers to a tomb, so there may be a double meaning in which it is seen simultaneously as a hiding place and a tomb. If so, Elijah is standing at the entrance to the tomb of Bar Yohai, who was both a rebel against Roman sovereignty and a religious zealot, and that is where the conversation with Rabbi Joshua ben Levi takes place.41 The second conversation is with the Messiah, who is described as despised and rejected, one of the lepers at the gates of Rome, possibly one of the exiles from Jerusalem. Thus the national redemption will be his own personal redemption as well, releasing him from poverty and disease. But the redemption is not for him to bring, nor does it have a predetermined date, as it depends exclusively on whether Israel follows God’s commandments. By his pronouncement, the Messiah frees himself of all responsibility, transferring it to Israel, who can, potentially, bring about its own redemption and that of the Messiah himself. Thus, in a sense, the tale renders waiting for the Messiah meaningless.42

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The Messiah gives a laconic and unclear answer that misleads Rabbi Joshua to believe that he will come “today.” This belief is immediately shattered, causing Rabbi Joshua to accuse the Messiah of lying. Elijah suggests a correct way to understand the Messiah’s answer. According to Elijah’s explanation, the correct messianic doctrine brings us back to the starting point: Rabbi Joshua’s question as to whether he will have a portion in the world to come. The Messiah has answered this question, but Rabbi Joshua fails to understand the answer, so Elijah explains to him that he and his father are worthy of the world to come. Thus both personal and national redemption depend on the deeds of human beings and on the observance of God’s commandments. Up to this point, I have explained the story within its own context alone. There is seemingly no reason to question this way of understanding it. I would like, nevertheless, to propose an alternative, intertextual explanation that attempts to relate this story to an external literary corpus. I wish to suggest the covert presence of another text in the background. While this is clearly speculation, I believe it to be plausible both historically and literally. Is it correct? I would like to invoke Freud’s famous warning at the beginning of his Moses and Monotheism: “Not even the most tempting probability is a protection against error; even if all the parts of a problem seem to fit together like the pieces of a jig-saw puzzle, one must reflect that what is probable is not necessarily the truth, and that the truth is not always probable.”43 With this caution in mind, we may allow ourselves to go on a daring literary voyage. My conjecture is that the story about Rabbi Joshua ben Levi was fashioned as a kind of parallel story to a famous Christian text. This is all the more probable in light of Rabbi Joshua ben Levi’s persona in talmudic literature, namely, that he is described in a number of cases as having close connections with Christians.44 But before presenting the Christian text, I would like to return briefly to the punch line of the Jewish story: the explanation of the Messiah’s use of the word “today.” This is the only thing said by the Messiah to Rabbi Joshua ben Levi, and Rabbi Joshua failed to comprehend it. Elijah suggests the correct explanation. The word “today” is highly charged. It has a clear eschatological meaning, if one considers the dies illa of Zeph 1:15 or Mal 3:19. Also worthy of mention in this context is the famous prayer Untane toqef qedushat ha-yom, which depicts the final day of judgment. The word “today” is all the more

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charged when uttered by the Messiah. It is not only a statement of time but also the specification of an eschatological event. Elijah presents the word in the apparently new context of Ps 95:7: “Today, if you will hear his voice.” This association is surprising, considering that Psalm 95 contains no messianic references whatsoever. Its first part is an invocation to praise God, while in the second part the poet appeals to his audience not to harden their hearts as did their forefathers in Meribah, who were consequently punished by wandering in the desert and not arriving at their final destination, the land of Israel. The verse linking the two halves of the psalm is “Today, if you will hear his voice”—that is, if they fulfill the condition, they will not fare as their forefathers did. Hence, Elijah’s explanation connecting the Messiah’s enigmatic saying, “Today,” to Psalm 95 is arbitrary, inasmuch as that verse from the psalms has nothing to do with the Messiah. If this is so, what is it that led the Jewish exegete to associate messianic content with Psalm 95? I would claim that he borrowed the idea from a Christian midrash in Hebrews 3–4. The Christian midrash opens with the claim that Jesus is greater than Moses, as Moses is a “servant,” while Jesus is a “son.” This distinction explains the difference between those redeemed by Moses—that is, the generation who were redeemed from slavery in Egypt, the generation who were born in the desert, who did “not enter into his rest” (that is, were not saved)—and those who will be redeemed by Jesus, thereby winning eschatological rest.45 The verse “Today, if you will hear his voice” receives a distinct eschatological meaning in the Epistle to the Hebrews. Christians live in an eschatological era they designate as “today,” and they are expected to believe in Jesus and not to harden their hearts, as did their forefathers in Meribah. In this way, the “rest” mentioned at the end of the psalm receives an eschatological meaning. It is a spiritual rest on a sabbatical day. Juxtaposition of Elijah’s messianic explanation of Psalm 95 with the midrash in the Epistle to the Hebrews reveals that the one is the mirror image of the other. While the author of the Hebrews preaches belief in Jesus (“if you will hear his voice”—the voice of Jesus), the Messiah, according to Elijah, preaches hearkening and obedience “today” to God’s voice—that is, observance of God’s commandments as a condition for the arrival of the Messiah.46 This also explains who the third entity was, whose “voice”

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Rabbi Joshua ben Levi heard when conversing with Elijah: it was the voice of God. Rabbi Joshua ben Levi misinterpreted the Messiah’s words and was misled into believing that the Messiah would arrive “today,” only to conclude that he was a liar when he did not turn up. His words were only understood in the correct light once explained by the Messiah’s harbinger, Elijah. The belief that the Messiah would arrive “today” was common among early Christians, and they were indeed disillusioned. Hence, Elijah’s explanation criticizes the expectations of those who believe in Jesus and in his second and impending arrival “today.” According to Elijah, the arrival of the Messiah depends on the observance of God’s commandments and on following God’s words, not on belief in the divinity of the Messiah. Thus Rabbi Joshua’s story is a disguised polemic with the Christian exegesis in the Epistle to the Hebrews and with the Christian expectation of a second, imminent revelation of Jesus. It may be more than a coincidence that the protagonist of the story is named Joshua.47 The relation between the two exegeses is, in my opinion, one of absolute dependence of the Jewish exegesis on the Christian one, and not vice versa. It is the Christian exegesis that lends Psalm 95 an eschatological meaning, and the Jewish commentator uses this context to reinterpret the Messiah’s words “today.”

A ll u s iv e P o le m i c s A series of internal maneuvers in the Mishnah and the Babylonian Talmud around the subjects of the Messiah and the resurrection of the dead may be understood more clearly in the context of polemics with postPauline theology. It is important to emphasize that these explanations are only speculations and that the Christian context is not overtly stated in the texts themselves. The interpretations suggested here rely on a broad historical assumption, according to which the creators of the Mishnah and both Talmuds were highly aware of the threat and the challenge posed by Christianity, but deliberately avoided admitting it. Their polemic with Christianity is thus a covert one and does not identify the rival party. It appears as early as the second century c.e. and seeks to redefine the differences between the

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followers of Jesus and Jewish scholars. Unlike Christian literature, talmudic literature does not engage in overt polemics. It prefers allusive polemics, which, rather than refuting the rival claim, suggest an internal alternative. The Sages were faced with a great deal of creative Christian thinking and tended, therefore, to model their exegeses as direct arguments with the Christian ones, without stating so explicitly. This rivalry did not originate in the fourth century, as many scholars tend to think, but at the very birth of Christianity. From the moment people began to base a new theology on the Bible, the Sages were compelled to respond to the challenge. One of the means of response was to redefine Jewish religious identity versus Paul’s soteriology. The Jewish messianic concept is therefore the result not of internal Jewish evolution alone, but of a continuous dialogue with Christian eschatology. At times it uses elements from it, and at other times rejects them, but it is constantly involved in a complex and vivid dialogue with it.

Notes 1. See m. Sanh. 10.1. This essay is based upon biweekly study encounters held during 2001 with my colleagues in the Center for Advanced Studies in Jerusalem, including Ora Limor, Jeremy Cohen, Alexander Patschovsky, Steven Wasserstrom, Harvey Hayyim Haimes, Ram Ben-Shalom, Meira Polliack, Michah Peri, and other scholars who participated occasionally. Many of the ideas brought here were born then, during the course of collegial discussion or in the heat of argument. My thanks to all. 2. Albeit one finds in the Bible certain echoes of the covenant being kept with Israel irrespective of its behavior. Thus, for example, we read in Lev 26:44: “Yet for all that, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not spurn them, neither will I abhor them so as to destroy them utterly and revoke my covenant with them; for I am the Lord their God.” But this refers to the deliverance of the nation as a whole, not to pardon granted in advance to all of the sinners of Israel. A promise of collective deliverance is found in the writings of the Judean Desert sect, according to which view the Sons of Light will be saved at the End of Days—referring to the members of the sect themselves. In 4 Ezra there is also articulated a selective approach to salvation, according to which only the righteous shall be saved. Our Mishnah extends salvation to the entire people of Israel, based on a homily on the verse “Your people are entirely righteous” (Isa 60:21). According to George Foot Moore, Judaism in the First Centuries of the Christian Era: The Age of Tannaim

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(3 vols.; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1927–1930), 2:94–95, the approach of this Mishnah is a natural extension of the biblical idea of election or chosenness and is extremely close to the Pauline view of salvation, in that both of them are based upon divine grace. But Paul substituted for the national salvation promised to all Israel an individual salvation promised to whoever joins the new faith. According to Moore, the Mishnah anticipated Paul. My own opinion is different, as will be explained in this essay. 3. On the state of research regarding Paul’s attitude to Torah according to Sanders and following him, see Frank Thielman, From Plight to Solution: A Jewish Framework to Understanding Paul’s View of the Law in Galatians and Roman (Leiden: Brill, 1989). 4. E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison of Patterns of Religion (Philadelphia/London: Fortress/SCM, 1977), 182. 5. Ibid., 426. 6. The fact that our Mishnah has two different levels was noticed by E. E. Urbach, The Sages: Their Concepts and Beliefs (trans. I. Abrahams; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979), 991, n. 11. 7. Hermann L. Strack and Paul Billerbeck, Kommentar zum Neuen Testament aus Talmud und Midrasch (Munich: Beck, 1848–1922; repr., 1986–1994), 4/2:1052. They devote a detailed discussion to this Mishnah without mentioning the possibility proposed here. 8. This addition is also absent in t. Sanh. 13, in which there is brought a list of those who do not have a portion in the world to come without the assurance of general salvation promised to all Israel. This addition is likewise absent in the text of the Mishnah brought by Rambam; according to R. Shlomo Luria, “it is not part of this Mishnah but is simply aggadah.” See Urbach, The Sages, 991, n. 11. However, the homily adjacent to it indicates that it is in fact an addition from a classic rabbinic source. 9. Compare m. Qidd. 1.10: “Whoever performs one mitzvah receives benefit, his life is lengthened and he inherits the land.” In t. Qidd. 1.12 the reading is “and he is given to inherit (˜ylyjnm rather than ljwn) the land.” Saul Lieberman, Tosefta KiFeshutah (13 vols.; New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1955–1988), Kiddushin, 927, saw this reading as preferable because of its connection to long life alluded to in Deut 8:16. However, the reading of the Mishnah ≈rah ta ljwnw (“and he will inherit the land”), is supported by Isa 60:21 (upon which the Mishnah in Sanhedrin is also based) or by Isa 57:13 (“But he who takes refuge in me shall possess the land”), according to J. N. Epstein, Mavo le-nusach ha-Mishnah (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1948; in Hebrew), 1133. According to Flusser, the inheritance of the land spoken of in the Mishnah refers to the portion in the world to come and is parallel to Matt 5:5. See David Flusser, Yahadut be-mekorot ha-Nazrut (Tel Aviv: Sifriyat po alim, 739, 1979; in Hebrew), 216, nn. 23 and 24.

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10. Flusser, Yahadut, 210–25. Biblical citations in this chapter, other than those quoted from secondary sources, are my translation. 11. Ibid., 217. 12. R. T. Herford, Christianity in Talmud and Midrash (London: Williams & Norgate, 1903), 65. In light of this, Herford (pp. 70–71, 99–103, 192–94) states that the four laymen enumerated further on in the Mishnah as not receiving a portion in the world to come—that is, Balaam, Doeg, Ahithophel, and Gehazi—are also pseudo-biblical figures with prototypical characteristics alluding to Jesus (Balaam), Judas Iscariot (Doeg), Peter (Ahithophel), and Paul (Gehazi). An eclectic formula of ideological deviants “who separated themselves away from the ways of the community” and do not have a portion in the world to come is also presented in Seder Olam Rabbah. Chaim Milikowsky has quite properly pointed out that the redactor of this section made use of stereotypic impressions, making it difficult to ascertain clearly the identity of the sinners mentioned there. See Chaim Milikowsky, “Gehenna and ‘Sinners of Israel’ in the Light of Seder Olam,” Tarbiz 55 (1985): 311–43. 13. b. Sanh. 100b. 14. See Morton Smith, Jesus the Magician (New York: Harper & Row, 1978). 15. b. Sanh. 43a (excised by the censors in the printed editions). 16. According to Matt 9:34 and 12:24, the Pharisees saw in Jesus’ miracles a sign of his connection to the Prince of Demons; thus Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, ch. 69. 17. y. Šabb. 14.4 (14d). 18. b. ‘Abod. Zar. 27b and parallels. Concerning this story see Daniel Schwartz, “What Did He Have to Say? ‘And You Should Live Therein,’ ” in Sanctity of Life and Martyrdom: Studies in Memory of Amir Yekutiel (ed. Isaiah M. Gafni and Aviezer Ravitzky; Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center for Jewish History, 1992), 73–83. It is also related of Rabbi Abahu that he was healed by a heretic (b. ‘Abod. Zar. 28b). Concerning these incidents of healing by Jewish-Christians, see Herford, Christianity, 103–11. 19. y. Šabb. 14.4 (14d) and in parallels. 20. Samuel Kraus, Das Leben Jesu nach jüdischen Quellen (Berlin: S. Calvary, 1902), 40 and his discussion there; also p. 189. 21. b. Šabb. 104b. For the identification with Jesus, see in loco: “Rav Hisda said: the husband was Satada; the one who had intercourse with her was Pandira. [No! Rather,] the husband was Papus ben Judah, and Satada was his mother. [No!] His mother was Mary Magdalene, from the gate of the Nasi. Rather, as they said in Pumpedita, this one has turned aside [sata da] from her husband.” 22. Compare m. Mak. 3.16: “Rabbi Hanannia ben Akashya said: The Holy One blessed be He wished to give merit to Israel; therefore he increased for them Torah and commandments.” According to Marmorstein, these things were said in the context of a covert polemic with Paul. See A. Marmorstein, “Judaism and

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Christianity in the Middle of the Third Century,” HUCA 10 (1935): 250–51 = Wolfgang Schrage, Das Verhältnis des Thomas-Evangeliums zur synoptischen Tradition und zu den koptischen Evangelien-Übersetzungen (BZNW 29; Berlin: Töplemann, 1964), 209–10. 23. Cyprian, Epistle ad Pomponium, de Virginibus, §4. Augustine set down a similar maxim: “Salus extra ecclesiam non est” (Baptism, Bk. 4, ch. 17, §242). Even earlier, Origen wrote, “Outside of this house, that is, outside of the Church, no one is saved; for, if anyone should go out of it, he is guilty of his own death” (In Jesu Nave homiliae xxvi, 3:5). The roots of the axiom go even further back to Ignatius of Antioch, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, and others. See Hans Küng, The Church (trans. Ray and Rosaleen Ockenden; London: Burns & Oates, 1967; repr., 1981), 313. 24. It is difficult to date the time of this addition properly, although its style creates the impression that it is Tannaitic. In any event, one needs to reject the claim by Urbach, The Sages, 269–70, that “we do not find any signs of struggle with the Pauline ideas, and certainly not with the influence of his views, prior to the end of the tannaitic period and the beginning of the amoraitic period: that is, until Christianity took shape from an ideological perspective in the spirit of Pauline doctrine.” Urbach himself, several pages earlier (pp. 263–64), interprets as anti-Pauline the words of the tanna Rabbi Eleazar ha-Moda’i in m. ’Abot 3.11: “One who profanes the holy things and despises the appointed times or who reveals [heretical] faces in Torah or violates the covenant of Abraham our Father . . . does not have a portion in the World to Come.” According to Urbach, “one who reveals [heretical] faces in Torah” refers to one who attempts to abnegate the practical mitzvot by means of extreme allegorization of the Torah, and thereby leads to the negation of the festivals, displays contempt for the temple, and even nullifies the covenant of circumcision. The exclusion of the followers of Paul from those who have a portion in the world to come in the Mishnah in ’Abot corresponds to the interpretation proposed here with regard to the Mishnah in Sanhedrin and strengthens the argument that the addition “All Israel” is Tannaitic. The polemic in Mishnah Sanhedrin is thus two-pronged: the three additions of Rabbi Akiba and Abba Saul relate to Jewish Christians, while the later addition at the beginning of the Mishnah, “All Israel,” challenges the Pauline doctrine of salvation. In Midrash Tanhuma, Vayeshev §4, the view is brought in the name of Rabbi Berekhiah that blaming Adam for bringing death to the world was on the level of a “libel” brought against him by God, whereas in truth death is fixed within the natural order of the world. This daring homily may also be seen as directed against the Pauline view of Original Sin. For more on the Tannaitic polemics with Paul, see Urbach, The Sages, 376–80, 583, 602; Marmorstein, “Judaism and Christianity” (see n. 22 above); Schwartz, “What Did He Have to Say?”; and Israel J. Yuval, Two Nations in Your Womb (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 2000), 31. 25. J. Gager, Reinventing Paul (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 140–43.

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26. The accepted interpretation of Paul sees his view on the resurrection of the dead and the world to come as a reaction to the ideas brought in the Mishnah. See on this W. D. Davies, Paul and Rabbinic Judaism: Some Rabbinic Elements in Pauline Theology (London: SPCK, 1948; repr., 1998), 83–84. 27. The Mishnah in Heleq is not the only Tannaitic source to discuss the destiny of human beings in the afterlife. There is a well-known early beraita attributed to the School of Shammai: “Beit Shammai said: There are three groups on the Day of Judgment: one of the completely righteous, one of the completely wicked, and one of those in between. The completely righteous are written and inscribed immediately for eternal life. The completely wicked are written and sealed immediately for Gehinnom. The intermediate ones go down to Gehinnom and fly about and ascend again” (b. Roš Haš. 16b–17a). From this ancient beraita emerged the later Mishnah in Heleq, in which a striking change took place with the declarative introduction stating the all-encompassing status of “all of Israel.” Instead of the “righteous” of the earlier beraita it is now stated that “all Israel” have a portion in the world to come. The transition from the “righteous” to “Israel” may be clearly seen in the verse brought in Heleq to justify this expansion: “And all your people are righteous”—that is, Israel = the righteous. In the sequel to this beraita two more additions are brought, one dealing with the status of the sinners of Israel and the sinners of the nations of the world and their identical punishment: they descend to Gehinnom and are judged there for twelve months, and “after twelve months their bodies are destroyed and their souls are consumed and a wind comes and scatters them beneath the soles of the feet of the righteous.” According to Marmorstein (see n. 22), the sinners of Israel are Jewish Christians; see also the discussion of their identity by Milikowsky, “Gehenna.” The second addition discusses the status of “the heretics and the denouncers and the apikorsim who deny Torah and deny the resurrection of the dead and who separated themselves from the ways of the community and who imposed their fear upon the land of the living and who sinned and caused the many to sin, such as Jeroboam son of Nabat and his friends, who descended into Gehinnom and are judged there for generation upon generation.” This group is similar to the first three types of heretics mentioned in Heleq. The heretics mentioned in the beraita, who deny the Torah and the resurrection of the dead, are perhaps the Sadducees (who denied the teaching of the Pharisees), while those who separate themselves from the ways of the community may be the Essenes. In t. Sanh. 13.2 as well, the view is expressed that there are wicked ones within Israel who do not have a portion in the world to come: “Rabbi Eliezer said: All the nations do not have a portion in the World to Come. . . . ‘The wicked shall return to Sheol’—this refers to the wicked of Israel.” Against that Rabbi Joshua says that there are righteous among the nations who have a portion in the world to come. See, t. Sanh. 13, §1: “The minors, sons of the wicked ones of the world, do not have a portion in the World to Come—thus Rabban Gamaliel. Rabbi Joshua says, they do have a portion in the World to Come.”

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28. Similarly in 1 Peter 1:5: “through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time,” and also in Rom 6:23. Matters are formulated thus by Dale C. Allison, “The Eschatology of Jesus,” in The Origins of Apocalypticism in Judaism and Christianity (ed. John J. Collins; vol. 1 of The Encyclopedia of Apocalypticism; New York: Continuum, 1998), 267–302, here 284: “The early church argued for the resurrection and speculated on its nature by reference to Jesus’ resurrection, not to Scripture” (emphasis added). 29. A parallel homily is given there by Rabbi Joshua ben Levi in his polemic with “the Romans.” On the polemic of Rabban Gamaliel with the heretics concerning the resurrection of the dead, see Herford, Christianity, 231–34. On further polemics with heretics regarding this issue, see Herford, Christianity, 278–82. 30. Rashi at b. Sanh. 90a, s.v. ha-omer ein Tehiyat ha-Metim min ha-Torah. 31. This conclusion was reached also by Herford, Christianity, 231–34. 32. “What I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures” (1 Cor 15:3–4). This was evidently the difference between Luke 20:37, in which Jesus, like the Pharisees, bases his faith in the resurrection of the dead upon the interpretation of scriptural texts, and Luke 24:46, in which the function of the scriptural verses is to prophesy the resurrection of Jesus himself. 33. Midrash Tannaim to Deut 32:2. 34. Paul confronts the questions raised against him by people who doubted the resurrection of the dead: “But some one will ask, ‘How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?’ ” This question is based upon the assumption that it is impossible for the bodies of the dead to be renewed, as they have already decayed. To this Paul answers, “What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And what you sow is not the body which is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain” (1 Cor 15:35–37). Paul goes on to explain in detail the differences among various types of plants, concluding that the seed contains latent within itself the final qualities of the plant or being that will grow from it. Since the “genetic” qualities of Adam were bodily, as he was created from dust, so too human beings created in this world have bodies. The “second Adam,” Jesus, is the son of God and therefore his “genetic” qualities are spiritual, and those to be resurrected at the end of time shall be re-created also according to these qualities. Paul therefore arrives at the conclusion that resurrection is spiritual, not bodily. Concerning Paul’s parable, see Caroline W. Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 3–8, and the extensive bibliography there. This dialogue is reminiscent of what is related further on in the discussion in the Babylonian Talmud (Sanh. 90b): “Queen Cleopatra asked Rabbi Meir. She said: We know that the dead shall come back to life, as is written ‘And they shall spring from the city like the grass of the earth’ [Ps 72:16]. But when they stand up, shall they stand naked or in their clothing? He said to her: We may learn this by analogy from

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wheat. Just as wheat, which is buried naked, emerges wearing several garments, the righteous, who are buried in their clothing, all the more so!” Unlike the previous conversation, the point of departure of both these sources is that the interlocutor is prepared to believe in the resurrection but finds it difficult to understand how it will take place in practice. The Christian believes in spiritual resurrection, while the Jew believes in bodily resurrection. The raising of the question per se, as well as the parable of the wheat, is common to both sources. In this case, too, Paul’s move is more complex and sophisticated, while the Jewish source is satisfied to use the coming up of the wheat in order to prove that bodily resurrection of the dead is possible. 35. b. Sanh. 41a. 36. A parallel to this story appears in y. Ta‘an. 1.1 (64a). Jonah Fraenkel has put forward a literary analysis of this story in relation to others in the Babylonian Talmud concerning Rabbi Joshua ben Levi; see J. Fraenkel, “The Image of Rabbi Joshua Ben Levi in the Stories of the Babylonian Talmud,” in Sippur ha-Aggadah: Ahdut shel tokhen ve-tzurah (J. Fraenkel; Tel Aviv: Ha-Kibbutz ha-me’uh ̣ad, 2001; in Hebrew), 284–94. In his opinion, the purpose of the story is to present Rabbi Joshua ben Levi as one who did not claim credit for himself. Rather than being concerned about himself and his portion in the world to come, he asked the Messiah about the redemption of the public as a whole. Chaim Schwartzbaum sees this story as a “folk legend.” See Chaim Schwartzbaum, “Elijah the Prophet and Rabbi Joshua Ben Levi,” in Shorashim ve-Nofim: Mivhar ketavim be-Heker ha-Folklor (ed. Eli Yassif; Beer Sheva: Ben-Guryon University, 1993; in Hebrew), 40. He gathers a series of legends in which Elijah and Rabbi Joshua ben Levi meet. 37. According to some of the manuscripts, the encounter took place at the entrance to the Garden of Eden. See Fraenkel, “Image of Rabbi Joshua Ben Levi,” n. 48. 38. Thus the printed version; in the manuscripts the order of dialogue in the final paragraph is reversed. Rabbi Joshua ben Levi first speaks about the words of the Messiah “today” and thereafter about his words concerning “the son of Levi.” See ibid., n. 40. 39. Fraenkel (ibid., n. 36) thinks that “this master” is the Messiah, for at the end of the story he is indeed revealed as the one who suggests to Rabbi Joshua ben Levi that he has a portion in the World to Come. However, it is difficult to assume that the Messiah would join Elijah and Rabbi Simon bar Yohai and refer to himself as “this master.” Moreover, this enigmatic sentence makes Rabbi Joshua ben Levi’s entry into the World to Come dependent upon the will of “this master,” and not merely a matter of his knowledge. It does not seem right that Rabbi Joshua ben Levi’s admission into the World to Come should be dependent upon the will of the Messiah. 40. b. Šabb. 33b. 41. See Yehudah Liebes, “ ‘The Messiah of the Zohar,’ ha-Ra’ayon he-Meshihi be-Yisrael,” in The Messianic Idea in Jewish Thought: A Study Conference in Honour of the Eightieth Birthday of Gershom Scholem (ed. S. Re’em; Israel Academy of Sciences

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and Humanities; Jerusalem, 1982; in Hebrew), 87–236. In this revolutionary essay, Liebes identifies Rabbi Simon bar Yohai in the Sefer ha-Zohar as a figure whose activity is a kind of preparation for the Messiah and is intended to bring about redemption: “The messianic figure [in the Zohar], namely, Rabbi Simon bar Yohai, certainly cannot be considered the Messiah; he is only the harbinger of his coming and he sustains the world until then” (91). “Rabbi Simon bar Yohai is not only a redeemer, but he is himself redeemed—and it is in that very manner that the Zohar portrays the Messiah” (205). The choice of bar Yohai, specifically, as a messianic figure is attributed by Liebes to the manner in which this figure is depicted in the talmudic sources. Bar Yohai is a zealous rebel against Roman rule, uttering outspoken statements against the nations of the world. He hides in a cave together with his son for a period of twelve years, separated from his wife. He is considered a person of unique spiritual qualities, a righteous man raised above the people. “That which is described in rabbinic literature as a possibility and as within the ability of Rabbi Simon bar Yohai is developed further in Sefer ha-Zohar and breaks through into actuality by means of the premessianic acts of the Idra Rabbah. At this gathering Rabbi Simon bar Yohai realizes this potentiality and becomes a concrete messianic figure, and the Idra becomes a messianic event and a messianic work” (92). As Liebes notes, the messianic figure of Rabbi Simon bar Yohai already influenced the early apocalyptic literature and led to the creation of a special literary genre called Nistarot de-Rashbi (“The Hidden Things of Rashbi”) or Tefillot Rashbi (“the Prayers of Rashbi”). 42. This framing story was known also to the author of Sefer Zarubavel, but there the tendency was the opposite: not neutralization of the messianic anticipation, but rather the creation of a plot that allows the secret of his coming to be revealed and to develop by means of a vision. 43. Sigmund Freud, Moses and Monotheism (trans. Katherine Jones; New York: Knopf, 1939), 17. 44. b. Ber. 7a (according to MS. Munich): “That heretic who was in the neighborhood of Rabbi Joshua ben Levi caused him much anguish through Scriptures,” etc. That is, he would polemicize with him concerning the interpretation of the Bible. 45. An eschatological homily of this verse appears in t. Sanh. 13.10 concerning the generation of the wilderness, who have no portion in the world to come because of God’s oath “lest they come to my resting place” (Ps 95:11). 46. Strack and Billerbeck, Kommentar, record the parallel between the Epistle to the Hebrews and the homily of Elijah in b. Sanh. 98b with regard to interpretation of the texts in Psalm 95, without any further note. Flusser, Yahadut, 306, also notes the similarity between these two homilies, but he saw this as proof of the Jewish source of the homily in Hebrews. Flusser refers there to y. Ta‘an. ch. 1 (64a): “Rav Ahha said in the name of Rabbi Tanhum son of Rabbi Hiyya: Were Israel to do repentance for even one day, immediately the son of David would come. What is the reason? ‘Today, if you listen to his voice’ [Ps 95:7]. Rabbi Levi said: If Israel were

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to observe one Sabbath properly, immediately the son of David would come. What is the reason? ‘Moses said: ‘Eat it today, for today is a Sabbath to the Lord’ [Exod 16:25]—one day. And it says, ‘In returning and rest you shall be saved’ [Isa 30:15]. With repentance and [Sabbath] rest shall you be redeemed.” The two homilies draw a connection between “today” and Sabbath rest, pointing out their joint eschatological significance. 47. Compare Elhanan Reiner, “From Joshua to Jesus—the Transformation of a Biblical Story to a Local Myth: A Chapter in the Religious Life of the Galilean Jew,” in Sharing the Sacred: Religious Contacts and Conflicts in the Holy Land, First Fifteenth Centuries c.e. (ed. A. Kofsky and Guy G. Stroumsa; Jerusalem: Yad Ishak Ben-Zvi, 1998), 223–71.

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EIGHT

The Place of the Sadducees in First-Century Judaism Martin Goodman

Traditional scholarship has long portrayed the Sadducees in firstcentury Judea as wealthy aristocrats, primarily of priestly origins, whose lifestyle was more secular and hellenized than that of other Jews.1 We are told that their political stance was more in sympathy with the Romans than that of other Jews,2 but that their theology was more conservative.3 Their strong links to the priesthood, and especially the high priests,4 are said to have given them authority in first-century Jerusalem,5 and to explain their disappearance from the historical record after the destruction of the Jerusalem temple in 70 c.e.6 Such is the standard picture. In the course of his classic studies of late Second Temple Judaism, Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah and Judaism: Practice and Belief, Ed Sanders questioned various parts of this picture.7 Despite his skepticism, the picture has remained up to now more or less intact, with only occasional hints of dissent to be found in the secondary literature.8 In this essay I will further the task of demolition and suggest that every aspect of the traditional view requires reevaluation and, in many cases, rejection. The evidence about the Sadducees is not particularly extensive if, as I suggest, one takes a minimalist approach and uses only the evidence that is definitely applicable to them.9 Beyond the references in the Gospels and Acts, the only Greek references of any value are those in the writings of Josephus, since all later Christian commentators seem to have derived their 139

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material either from him or from the New Testament.10 Apart from these Greek texts, references in early (i.e., Tannaitic) rabbinic texts to tsadukim can be used with some confidence in those passages where tsadukim and perushim are found in dispute with each other.11 It is possible in theory that stories about arguments between tsadukim and perushim in the Hebrew texts might not be related to stories in the Greek texts that refer to arguments between pharisaioi and saddoukaioi, but such a coincidence of names seems exceptionally unlikely: Josephus specifically described the nature of Sadducee doctrine as “in opposition to the Pharisees” (A.J. 13.293). Beyond such texts it is unsafe to go (although scholars often do).12 References in rabbinic texts to individual Sadducees may be misleading: since later rabbis used the term tsaduki as a generic term for heretics, including Karaites, it is all too probable that the manuscripts of Tannaitic texts, copied by later scribes, may have been corrupted by this later usage. References to other groups that had something in common with some Sadducees, such as the Baetusin (“Boethusians”) referred to in some early rabbinic writings, cannot responsibly be used as evidence for the Sadducees themselves.13 The most valid conclusion to be drawn from the remarkable discovery that the sectarian author of the Qumran text 4QMMT agreed in some aspects of halakah with the tsadukim as portrayed in the Tannaitic texts is not, as some have suggested, that the Qumran sectarians were a type of Sadducee but that Jews with greatly different religious orientations could nonetheless agree on specific aspects of halakah.14 In any case, as I have argued elsewhere,15 in the study of Jewish groups from the late Second Temple period it seems to me good practice, and intellectually justifiable, to follow the general principle that it is wrong to conflate evidence about groups that are prima facie distinct, except in those cases where the reasons to conflate are overwhelming.

The Name of the Sadducees It is almost certain that the name saddoukaios in Greek was a selfdesignation of which an individual could be proud, since Josephus portrayed himself as having thoroughly investigated at the age of sixteen the hairesis of Sadducees (Vita 10–11).16 The meaning of the name has been much debated,

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with opinion divided between those, including some early Christian writers, who view it as derived from tsaddik (“righteous”) and those who connect it to Zadok, the high priest at the time of David and Solomon.17 Neither derivation is without philological problems, and both would fit into the rhetoric of Second Temple Jews; the attractions of describing yourself as “righteous” are obvious, and the “sons of Zadok” were ascribed a special role by the Dead Sea sectarians, so Zadok was evidently a name to conjure with.18 But in fact the name Sadducee may well have been ambiguous and allusive already in its original use. Both the Dead Sea sect and the rabbis were accustomed to referring to important individuals and groups by allusive description rather than by name: for instance, the “Wicked Priest” and the “Seekers of Smooth Things” in the Dead Sea scrolls, and the rabbinic references to Simon bar Kosiba, leader of the revolt of 132–135 c.e., as either Bar Kochba or Bar Koziba.19 But in any case, the original derivation of their name may say little about the nature of the Sadducees by the first century c.e.

E a r l y H is t o r y The same argument applies to the early history of the Sadducees: whatever they were like in the second and first centuries b.c.e., it is entirely possible that they may have changed entirely by the first century c.e. A comparison with the changing membership, ideology, and structure of political parties that retain the same name over centuries should make the point.20 Reference to Sadducees is in fact first made in the early Hasmonean period, and many have therefore surmised that this is when they originated.21 This is possible, but by no means necessary, since our ignorance of the third century b.c.e. is profound for the good reason that the ignorance of our prime source for the period, Josephus, seems also to have been profound.22 One can imagine good reasons why Sadducees might have emerged in the traumatic events of the Maccabean crisis in the second century b.c.e., but any hypothesis should allow for the possibility that they had in fact existed as a group for much longer. Certainly there is no firm warrant to try to understand the Sadducees of the first century c.e. in the light of the Maccabean crisis;23 this is not a link made by any ancient source.

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S o c ia l S t a t u s More of a problem is why Sadducees are so often characterized as wealthy aristocrats.24 Two texts are responsible. First, Josephus stated in A.J. 18.17 that the Sadducees’ doctrine came to only few men, but that these are prōtoi tois axiomasi. The standard translation of this phrase is “first in rank,” and there are indeed many examples of axiomata with the meaning “rank” in Josephus’s writings,25 but elsewhere in Josephus’s corpus axioma can also mean “prestige” or “reputation,”26 and in the context of A.J. 18.17 the axiomata (reputation) of the Sadducees could be for their doctrines, or even their practice of arguing with their teachers, which has just been described by Josephus, rather than their social standing. Secondly, in A.J. 13.298 Josephus stated that, in the political struggles of the Hasmonean period, the Sadducees persuaded the euporoi, who are here contrasted to the demotikon and plēthos, or populace. The term euporoi must here mean “wealthy,” or at least “well off,” but the fact that Sadducees “persuaded” the wealthy does not amount to stating that the Sadducees in the first century c.e. were themselves rich, just that their philosophy was more likely to prove acceptable to the wealthy than the masses. In his descriptions of the Jewish philosophies in B.J., A.J., and Vita,27 Josephus makes no suggestion that any of the philosophies was restricted to any particular social group. He describes the doctrine of the Sadducees as available for any Jew of any class to adopt (as, according to Vita 10, he himself had briefly done). It is quite true that we never read of a Sadducee who is poor, but an argument from silence should not be attempted in this case: hardly any individual Sadducees of any kind are identified in the surviving evidence, and in those rare cases when ancient authors identified specific individuals in their writings for any reason, they tended to be rich.

P r i e s t ly O r i g in s More of a puzzle is why Sadducees should be thought to have priestly origins.28 Even if the name of the group was derived from the name of the High Priest Zadok, the adoption of a priestly name need not imply descent

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within the priestly caste. As it happens, neither Josephus nor the rabbinic sources suggest any link at all between Sadducees and the priesthood. This silence is very unlikely to be without significance, since Josephus was himself a priest29 (and insisted in Contra Apionem that priests are the expert teachers of the law)30 and the early rabbis had a great deal to say about the importance of priests, not just as officiants in the temple but also as recipients of tithes. As for the further assumption that most high priests were Sadducees, the evidence could in fact suggest the contrary. Josephus specifically stated, when narrating the trial of James the brother of Jesus, that Ananus b. Ananus, the high priest responsible for the trial and execution, was a Sadducee and therefore “more savage than all the Jews in matters concerning trials” (A.J. 20.199). One interpretation of this statement might be that the condemnation of James the brother of Jesus and some others was so odd that it needed explaining to Gentile readers by pointing out that Ananus’s behavior came about only because high priests, being Sadducees, followed a particularly harsh interpretation of the law,31 but it is hard to see why this particular type of apologetic was needed here if it was normal for high priests to be Sadducees, nor why the particular case of James was illuminated for Gentile, non-Christian readers by the addition of this detailed information. It seems to me, rather, that such a statement presupposes that the Sadducean affiliations of a high priest could not be taken for granted. Since Josephus also stated that prayers and sacrifices were carried out in accordance with the teachings of the Pharisees (A.J. 18.15), life must have been uncomfortable for those high priests who were Sadducees, since they were required to carry out their duties in a way that they themselves believed invalid. Indeed, Josephus implies precisely that: “whenever they come to office, they agree, albeit unwillingly and under compulsion, with what the Pharisees say, because otherwise they would become intolerable to the masses” (A.J. 18.17). The origins of the widespread belief that high priests and their entourages were generally Sadducees lies in unwarranted generalization from two texts in the New Testament, both to be found in Acts and, according to the commentary of Boismard and Lamouille, probably a doublet. The Synoptic Gospels make reference to Sadducees in various contexts but never suggest that they were priests or that the high priest was a Sadducee,

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while the Gospel of John remarkably includes no mention of Sadducees at all, so the alleged high priestly origins of the Sadducees thus rest entirely on two passages in Acts (Acts 4:1–7 and 5:17). Leaving to one side questions about the reliability of Acts as a historical source, closer examination of these passages suggests that they cannot take such a weight. Here is the text of the first passage, Acts 4:1–7: 1. And as they spoke to the people, the priests and the captain of the Temple, and the Sadducees, came upon them [Peter and John], 2. being grieved that they taught the people, and preached in Jesus the resurrection from the dead. 3. And they laid hands on them, and put them in guard to the next day, for it was already evening. 4. But many of those who heard the word believed, and the number of men was about five thousand. 5. It happened next day that their rulers and elders and scribes 6. and Annas the High Priest and Caiaphas and John and Alexander, and as many as were from the high-priestly family, were gathered together to Jerusalem. 7. And when they had set them in the middle, they asked, “By what power, or by what name, have you done this?”32 The passage differentiates in verse 1 between the priests, the captain of the temple, and the Sadducees: on the face of it, the Sadducees are portrayed therefore as separate from “the priests.” Nothing suggests that the priests, or the captain of the temple, or the rulers, elders, and scribes (v. 5), or Annas, Caiaphas, and their relations (v. 6) were Sadducees. The objections to Peter and John voiced by all these participants was not to the notion of resurrection from the dead (preaching resurrection hardly deserved arrest—Pharisees preached resurrection, after all), but to preaching that resurrection came through Jesus (vv. 2 and 7). It appears that in this drama Sadducees were just one group alongside the priests. Here is the second passage, Acts 5:17–18, dealing with a later arrest of Peter and John: 17. Then the High Priest rose up, and all who were with him—which is the hairesis of the Sadducees (or [Lake and Cadbury] “the local school

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of the Sadducees”)—were filled with indignation, 18. and laid their hands on the apostles, and put them into the common prison. This passage much more directly identifies those with the high priest as Sadducees and is undoubtedly the key text from which the standard view of the Sadducees as related to the high priest derives, but what it says does not in fact imply anything so general. All it suggests is that those who accompanied the high priest on this occasion were Sadducees. It states neither that the high priest himself was a Sadducee, nor that his entourage was made up of Sadducees on other occasions.

C u l t u r a l a n d P o li t ic a l S t a n c e It is hard to see why anyone should ever have suggested that Sadducees were particularly imbued with Greek culture,33 except as a by-product of their alleged social origins. The notion that richer Jews were more likely to adopt elements of fashionable Greek culture is plausible enough, but it has been seen that you did not have to be rich to be a Sadducee. A similar reason lies behind the common assumption that Sadducees would be naturally inclined to support Roman rule and to be supported by Romans,34 since the Romans preferred to control provincial societies through wealthy local elites.35 It is, however, certain that being a Sadducee was not reckoned to rule out opposition to Rome, since the commanderin-chief of the Judean rebels from October 66 c.e., the former High Priest Ananus b. Ananus (B.J. 4.319–21), was known to be a Sadducee (A.J. 20.199), a fact that evidently did not undermine his authority. There is slightly more justification in the portrayal of Sadducees as more secular than other Jews, since Josephus asserted repeatedly that one of their distinctive characteristics was the belief that humans have control over their own destinies (B.J. 2.164–66; A.J. 13.173). In one passage (B.J. 2.164) he attributes to the Sadducees the almost Epicurean notion that “they place God outside doing or seeing anything bad,” with the implication that God does not intervene in human affairs. Josephus seems to have had the same thing in mind when he states that the Sadducees

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“totally do away with fate,” saying that persons have complete free will, since elsewhere in his writings he described in very similar terms (but in this case with explicit disapproval) the doctrines of the Epicureans, “who exclude pronoia from life and do not believe that God governs affairs” (A.J. 10.278). It is easy to see how such a philosophy could lead to behavior that might to the outsider look like atheism (as happened to Epicureans): if the gods do not intervene in human life, for practical purposes their existence is irrelevant. However, the case of the Sadducees is different, since according to Josephus’s own testimony (as well as that of others), they had strong views on how God should be worshipped and on all aspects of the keeping of the Torah (see below). It is evident that their theology was in some respects inconsistent, but this should not altogether surprise: the claim of the Pharisees as described by Josephus in A.J. 18.13, that everything is brought about by fate but nonetheless humans have free will, is also inconsistent, although in his version of Pharisaic philosophy in A.J. 13.172, Josephus attributes to the Pharisees the more tenable doctrine that “Some things, but not all, are the work of fate” (my emphasis).

Doctrine Josephus described Sadducaism as one of the philosophies any religious Jew might espouse. Modern scholars routinely describe that philosophy as “conservative,”36 even though the strong views of the Sadducees on the unimportance of fate might already seem to throw such a characterization into doubt. In fact, it is wholly inappropriate, since the Sadducees took particular care to deny the validity of ancestral traditions. According to Josephus (A.J. 13.297), the Sadducees differed from the Pharisees in their insistence on relying on the written laws alone and their refusal to follow traditions handed down through the generations. The issue dividing the parties was not that Sadducees did not accept Pharisaic tradition, which would be obvious, but that they said that there was no need to keep “those laws from the transmission of the fathers,” that is, any ancestral customs.37

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As Ed Sanders has argued, despite their claim to rely only on the written laws, Sadducees must in practice have developed traditions about how to interpret them, since all written legal texts need interpretations if they are to be useful.38 Records of some of their interpretative traditions were indeed preserved in the early rabbinic writings for polemical purposes, such as the Sadducee method for counting the omer (m. Menah ̣. 10:3) or for carrying out the red heifer ritual (m. Parah 3:7). The difference between Pharisees and Sadducees thus lay less in what the groups actually did than in what they said they were doing. Sadducees had strong views on purity and Sabbath laws just as Pharisees did (m. Yad. 4:6; m. ‘Erub. 6:1). To the author of the Gospel of Matthew, Sadducees were essentially just another group of Jewish leaders alongside Pharisees (Matt 3:7), distinguished only by their rejection of the notion of resurrection (Matt 22:23–33). The notion of resurrection seems to have been the crucial issue also for the author of Acts 23:7–8, which states that “the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, neither angel nor spirit”: disbelief in angels is not ascribed to the Sadducees by any other source, and the wording of Acts (“the Pharisees confess both,” not “all three”) suggests that “neither angel nor spirit” refers to types of resurrection, not separate doctrines to be added to resurrection.39 The Pharisees were willing to justify their interpretations of biblical laws by pointing to what Jews in practice did (and, it was assumed, always had done).40 By contrast, the Sadducees refused to accept the validity of any ancestral custom that could not be explicitly justified from a biblical text. In so doing, they rejected customs that may have been universally accepted over centuries. Far from being conservatives (as the Pharisees were), Sadducees were radical biblical fundamentalists. It is difficult to be a pure fundamentalist. When Sadducees refused to express belief in resurrection (Acts 23:7–8) and rejected the nonbiblical custom of the ‘erub (m. ‘Erub. 6:2), they could point to the fact that these concepts do not appear in Scripture, but when it came to knotty issues of purity law, the claim to be biblically based may often have been little more than an assertion. It is easy to see why a philosophy that claimed authority from the text alone encouraged disputes between its practitioners (B.J. 2.166; A.J. 18.16), and why there were so few Jews prepared to devote themselves to the constant questioning of the text required by their austere approach (A.J.

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18.17). To be a Sadducee, you would have to be an intellectual: perhaps this explains why they were “first in honors” (A.J.18.17).

I n flu e n c e It is not hard to imagine the probable attitude of ordinary Jews to radical biblical fundamentalists, who rejected wholesale much in Judaism they held dear. Josephus is explicit: the Sadducees achieved nothing when in office, because otherwise the masses would not tolerate them (A.J.18.17). This must, of course, be an exaggeration—the one Sadducee explicitly attested by Josephus as a holder of political authority was the high priest Ananus b. Ananus (A.J. 20.199), who became commander-in-chief of the rebels in October 66 c.e. (B.J. 2.563). He certainly achieved a great deal politically (B.J. 4.319–21), but not (so far as can be seen from Josephus’s narrative) in the imposition of Sadducaic law and ritual. Certainly, the notion that Sadducees ran the temple41 is explicitly contradicted by Josephus’s statement that “with regard to prayer and sacrifices” ordinary Jews followed the teachings not of the Sadducees but of the Pharisees (A.J. 18.15). This evidence suggests that Sadducees might be admired as intellectuals but their advice would not necessarily be followed.

S a d d u c e e s a f t e r 70 C . E . The textbooks assert that the Sadducees disappeared after 70 c.e.,42 basing their assertion on the belief that the Sadducees were high priests (and hence had no role once the temple was destroyed) or, more simply, on an alleged lack of evidence for Sadducees after that date, but this argument is not strong, as I have discussed in more detail elsewhere.43 It is not in fact the case that references to Sadducaism as a living philosophy ended after 70 c.e. Most notably, Josephus himself wrote about Sadducaism as a type of contemporary Judaism—he wrote in the present tense—as late as the Vita, published in or after 93 c.e. Later sources are indeed more or less silent, but no deduction about the state of Sadducees can be safely based on their silence. If rabbinic literature has little to say

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about Sadducees, this need not imply their nonexistence, just the solipsistic interest of the rabbinic texts in what is required for one to be a pious adult male rabbinic Jew:44 instead of differentiating other types of Judaism, the rabbis lumped together all those they considered deviant, labeling them as minim, “heretics.”45 It is not at all unlikely that on occasion the minut attacked was that of Sadducees (particularly when minim are said to deny resurrection).46 The apparent silence about Sadducees in Greek Jewish literature after Josephus is equally easy to explain, since no such literature was preserved—not because it was not written, but because the Christians who preserved earlier Greek Jewish writings lost interest in Jewish literature once they were creating their own.47 If, as I have argued above, it was not necessary to be a priest to be a Sadducee, Sadducees had no need of the temple to continue to hold their philosophy. They did not even need each other: theirs was an individualist creed, and they did not need to create a group around them as the Essenes did—indeed, they were positively unpleasant to each other (B.J. 2.166), so creating a group must have been quite difficult at any time. When at the end of the first millennium c.e., the rabbis were confronted by Karaites, who claimed to go back to biblical fundamentals and rejected rabbinic Judaism, the rabbis sometimes characterized them as Sadducees, a label some of the Karaites seem to have in part willingly accepted.48 In terms of genealogical connection, the medieval rabbis were wrong, but in terms of ideology, they were right. The lack of a temple is no hindrance to adoption of Sadducaism. It would still be quite possible today for a pious Jew to become a Sadducee.

Notes 1. For one among many basic discussions, see Emil Schürer, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ (3 vols. in 4 parts; rev. and ed. Geza Vermes et al.; Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1973–87), 2:404–14. 2. See the views summarized by A. C. Sundberg, “Sadducees,” in IDB, 4:162. 3. Gerhard Kittel, TDNT, 7:49. 4. Schürer, History of the Jewish People, 2: 413–14. 5. ODCC, 1439.

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6. Lawrence H. Schiffman, From Text to Tradition: A History of Second Temple and Rabbinic Judaism (Hoboken, N.J.: Ktav, 1991), 119. 7. E. P. Sanders, Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah: Five Studies (London/ Philadelphia: SCM/Trinity Press International, 1990), 100–102, 107–8; E. P. Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief 63 b.c.e.–66 c.e. (London/Philadelphia: SCM/Trinity Press International, 1992), 317–40. 8. Here I want to point out two studies of particular importance: J. Le Moyne, Les Sadducéens (Paris: Études Bibliques, 1972), and G. G. Porton, “Sadducees,” in ABD, 5:892–95. 9. For a justification of this minimalist approach, see Martin Goodman, “Josephus and Variety in First-Century Judaism,” Proceedings of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, vol. 7, no. 6 (2000): 201–13. 10. The main passages by Josephus are B.J. 2.164–66; A.J. 13.173, 297–98; 18.16–17; 20.199; Vita 10–11. See E. Main, “Les Sadducéens vus par Flavius Josèphe,” RB 97, no. 2 (1990): 161–206, who notes that Josephus’s depiction of the Sadducees should be treated with some caution because he generally discussed them in relation to the Pharisees, with whom he aligned himself. Josephus’s extended discussion of the haireseis in B.J. 2.119–66 constitutes a peculiar excursus in the context of his history of the Jewish war, and it is not unlikely that he originally composed the passage for a different purpose, but I find it hard to imagine that so learned a Jew could have taken over from a non-Jewish author a description of contemporary Judaism he himself knew to be false, particularly since in three places in the Antiquities (A.J. 13.173, 298; 18.11) Josephus referred his readers back to the specific passage in B.J. where the haireseis were described. 11. E.g., m. Yad. 4.6–7. See J. Lightstone, “Sadducees versus Pharisees: The Tannaitic Sources,” in Christianity, Judaism and Other Greco-Roman Cults: Studies for Morton Smith at Sixty, vol. 3 (ed. Jacob Neusner; Leiden: Brill, 1975), 206–17. 12. The most common extrapolation is from the word “Manasseh” in Pesher Nahum from Qumran; see especially David Flusser, “Pharisees, Sadducees and Essenes in Pesher Nahum,” in Essays in Jewish History and Philology in Memory of Gedalyahu Alon (ed. M. Dorman et al.; Tel Aviv: Hankibbutz haMe’uchod, 1970), 133–68, here 159. 13. See Lester L. Grabbe, Judaic Religion in the Second Temple Period (London: Routledge, 2000), 199. 14. See especially Y. Sussmann, “The History of Halacha and the Dead Sea Scrolls: Preliminary Observations on Miqsat Ma‘ase Ha-Torah (4QMMT),” Tarbiz 59 (1989): 11–76. 15. See Goodman, “Josephus and Variety.” 16. The trustworthiness of this claim cannot be precisely ascertained; see Tessa Rajak, Josephus: The Historian and His Society (2nd ed.; London: Duckworth, 2002), 34–39.

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17. For discussion of the etymology of the name, see Le Moyne, Les Sadducéens, 157–63. 18. On “sons of Zadok” at Qumran, see, e.g., Geza Vermes, “The Leadership of the Qumran Community: Sons of Zadok-Priests-Congregation,” in GeschichteTradition-Reflexion: Festschrift für Martin Hengel zum 70. Geburtstag, vol. 1 (ed. H. Cancik et al.; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1996), 1:375–84. 19. On the real name of Bar Kochba, see Schürer, History of the Jewish People, 1:543. 20. This point was made by Arnaldo Momigliano in his Grinfield Lectures in Oxford on the Septuagint in the late 1970s. 21. Albert I. Baumgarten, The Flourishing of Jewish Sects in the Maccabean Era: An Interpretation (SupJSJ 55; Leiden: Brill, 1997). 22. See in general Fergus Millar, “The Background to the Maccabean Revolution,” JJS 29 (1978): 1–21. 23. So Grabbe, Judaic Religion, 82. 24. Schürer, History of the Jewish People, 2:404. 25. E.g., B.J. 7.416, 439. 26. E.g., A.J. 1.221 (about Abraam); A.J. 2.193 (about Joseph). 27. See the passages listed in n. 10. 28. See the careful discussion in Le Moyne, Les Sadducéens. 29. Vita 1–2. 30. C. Ap. 2.193–94. 31. On the trial of James, see R. J. Bauckham, “For What Offence Was James Put to Death?” in James the Just and Christian Origins (ed. Bruce Chilton and Craig A. Evans; Leiden: Brill, 1999), 199–232. 32. All biblical translations in this chapter are by the author. 33. See, e.g., M. Mansoor, “Sadducees,” in EncJud, 14:622. 34. On Sadducees as the ruling class, see Schürer, History of the Jewish People, 2:404. 35. Goodman, Ruling Class of Judaea. 36. Schürer, History of the Jewish People, 2:411; Kittel, TNDT, 7:49; Mansoor, “Sadducees,” 621. 37. Martin Goodman, “A Note on Josephus, the Pharisees and Ancestral Tradition,” JJS 50 (1999): 17–20. 38. Sanders, Judaism, 333–36. 39. On the Gospel depictions, see, for example, A. J. Saldarini, Pharisees, Scribes and Sadducees in Palestinian Society (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1989), 144–73. On Acts, see David Daube, “On Acts 23: Sadducees and Angels,” JBL 109 (1990): 493–97; E. Main, “Les Sadducéens et la résurrection des morts: Comparison entre Mc 12, 18–27 et Lc 20, 27–38,” RB 103 (1996): 411–32. 40. See Goodman, “A Note on Josephus.”

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41. See, e.g., Mansoor, “Sadducees,” 620. 42. Schiffman, From Text to Tradition, 119. 43. Martin Goodman, “Sadducees and Essenes after 70 c.e.,” in Crossing the Boundaries: Festschrift for Michael Goulder (ed. Stanley E. Porter, Paul Joyce, and David E. Orton; Leiden: Brill, 1994), 347–56. 44. See Sacha Stern, Jewish Identity in Early Rabbinic Writings (Leiden: Brill, 1994). 45. Martin Goodman, “The Function of Minim in Early Rabbinic Judaism,” in Geschichte-Tradition-Reflexion, 1:501–10. 46. Goodman, “Function of Minim,” 504–5. 47. Goodman, “Sadducees and Essenes,” 355. 48. L. Nemoy, “Karaites,” in EncJud, 10:765.

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NINE

Sanders’s “Common Judaism” and the Common Judaism of Material Culture Eric M. Meyers

E. P. Sanders’s work on Second Temple Judaism over the past decades, in the eyes of a one-time critic of Sanders, constitutes a frontal attack on the overly “theological caricature of Judaism in the time of Jesus” that characterized German scholarship from the end of the nineteenth century all the way down to Martin Hengel.1 Even Jacob Neusner has come to observe in Sanders’s work one of the “good” voices in Christian scholarship that succeeds in bringing the Judaism of the time of Jesus closer to reality than any of Sanders’s peers. Though Neusner and Sanders disagree on a great many issues regarding rabbinic studies and methodologies for extracting from rabbinic literature the underlying milieu of the early Pharisees, Neusner’s recent singling out of Sanders’s work for praise is noteworthy.2 Among Sanders’s many contributions to the field of early Judaism is his designation “common Judaism,” which has strongly influenced the way scholars talk about the variety within Judaism in the Early Roman period in Palestine. In fact, it has forced contemporary scholars to seek out what underlay all the major parties and the populace as a whole at the turn of the Common Era.3 In Sanders’s own words, “common Judaism is what the priests and people agreed upon.”4 Even Diaspora Jews agreed on the main features of Second Temple Judaism, except that they were unable to observe temple worship in the way that Palestinians did. By paying the half-shekel tax for the temple, however, Diaspora Jews recognized its centrality to Jewish 153

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religious practice. For Sanders, common Judaism embraced Holy Scripture, houses of worship where individuals in Palestine and the Diaspora could gather together to learn and read Torah, and the centrality of the temple. As for the physical expression of common Judaism, he says that it was expressed in the temple, synagogue, and home.5 Sanders’s ability to extract from the ancient literature the ideational as well as the material aspects of Judaism places him in a special category of scholars: those able to discern in both realms important features of ancient Jewish practices and beliefs. In addition, by emphasizing commonalities Sanders has broken down the widespread impression—the opposite of the German emphasis on theological unity—that late Second Temple Judaism is riven with sectarian diversity, the impression gained perhaps from Josephus in Jewish Antiquities (18.11–24).6 In his Contra Apionem (2.179–81), on the other hand, Josephus, addressing a Gentile audience and defending Jewish practice and belief, places a surprising emphasis on unity and commonality: To this cause above all we owe our admirable harmony. Unity and identity of religious belief, perfect uniformity in habits and customs, produce a very beautiful concord in human character. Among us alone will be heard no contradictory statements about God, such as are common among other nations, not only on the lips of ordinary individuals under the impulse of some passing mood, but even boldly propounded by philosophers; some putting forward crushing arguments against the very existence of God, others depriving Him of His providential care for mankind. Among us alone will be seen no difference in the conduct of our lives. With us all act alike, all profess the same doctrine about God, one that is in harmony with our Law and affirms that all things are under His eye.7 Here it is fair to say that Josephus, while no doubt exaggerating, indicates that the various sectarian groupings or schools described in Jewish Antiquities did not disturb the essential religious and communal unity of the Jewish people, a supposition carried much further by Sanders when he lays bare what was common to the various parties or schools and the populace as a whole.

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I will now examine a number of individual Jewish practices and customs that reinforce the case for the existence of common Judaism in ancient Palestine and that are attested in the archaeological record. I will examine the following customs and practices: Jewish burial, the use of stone vessels, dietary laws, ritual baths, and the adoption of aniconic coinage and other art forms in the latter Second Temple period. I will also briefly discuss various regional differences that illustrate shifting attitudes toward Hellenism but do not necessarily weaken the case for common Judaism when properly understood.

J e w is h B u r i a l It is a quotidian assumption about Jewish burial in the Early Roman period that different burial practices reflect different beliefs. Continuing alongside one another in the first century were the practices of primary and secondary burial. The latter practice of gathering up the desiccated remains of the dead and reburying them harks back to the beginnings of Israel in the Iron Age, when family reburial in subterranean chambers relocated the bones on benches or recesses beneath them.8 The reburial of the bones of the deceased gave rise to the biblical expression “he slept and was gathered to his fathers [or ancestors].”9 Along with the advance of Hellenism into Palestinian Jewish culture, the notion of a common burial or reburial in the family tomb ultimately gave way, and the idea of an individual identity in death arose.10 This was reflected in the adoption of the loculus, or niche grave, along with a coffin or sarcophagus, and also the ossuary, or bone receptacle. The container for the body or corpse was often inscribed with the names of the deceased, as were the ossuaries, emphasizing the “rising influence of Hellenistic cultural ideals that valorized the individual human being.”11 One might be inclined to see in either form of inhumation a specific accommodation to Hellenism that altered Jewish belief. However, although burial or reburial in a single receptacle preserved the identity of the deceased, it also became widely attested in circles we would be inclined to think were sectarian or Pharisaic. Indeed, a leading scholar of Jewish burial practice has identified ossuary burial with

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the Pharisees alone, who were situated among the lower classes.12 But the discovery of the ossuary and tomb of Caiaphas, the high priest who presided over the trial of Jesus, in a traditional tomb south of the Hinnom Valley and Abu Tor, proves conclusively that Sadducees as well as other Jews practiced ossilegium into ossuaries, thereby suggesting a very distinctive belief in postmortem existence in contradistinction to what Josephus avers in Book 18 of Jewish Antiquities, and more in keeping with his notion of common belief in Contra Apionem. Moreover, the use of ossuaries became so widespread that it leaves an echo in the New Testament in a passage assigned to Q 9:59–60: “But another said to him: Master, permit me first to go and bury my father. But he said to him: Follow me, and leave the dead to bury their own dead.”13 Byron McCane has successfully interpreted this passage in the social context of secondary burial, understanding the would-be disciple as asking for time to gather his father’s bones, and Jesus’ response is sharp and anti-family: “Let the other dead in the family tomb gather your father’s bones.”14 The point to emphasize here is that secondary burial, whether attested in an early Jewish-Christian, a Pharisaic, or a Sadducean context, appears to be widespread and not merely limited to Jerusalem, but like Q, is also attested in the towns and villages of Galilee.15 In addition to being a common feature of Judaism in the Early Roman period, burial or reburial into single receptacles, but especially secondary burial in ossuaries, may also be identified as a true ethnic marker or identifying feature of the Judaism of this era. However, any attempt to tie individual burials to a group-specific theology without epigraphical support is doomed to fail.

Jewish Foodways Though Sanders highlights the practice of dietary laws, it is not yet widely known that there has been some systematic examination of faunal remains at Jewish archaeological sites that has confirmed at the very least the Jewish aversion to pig. In anthropological studies, distinctive foodways have long been considered an appropriate database to establish ethnicity

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along with ceramic, architecture, and food-related technology.16 By focusing on what people ate, through careful analysis of all the faunal remains discovered at a dig, it now has become possible to establish ethnicity with a great deal of certainty: “What people eat, how they eat it, is an important aspect of the process of ethnicity. Most people are rather particular about what they eat, and foodways often rival ideology and religion in terms of cultural conservatism . . . food is one of the primary symbols manipulated by people seeking to maintain their cultural identity and group solidarity.”17 Larry McKee’s work in examining early American slave quarters drew important conclusions about the diet of African Americans at that time.18 In turning to Roman-Byzantine Palestine, the Sepphoris Regional Project’s faunalist, B. J. Grantham, found the Galilee to be an ideal region to establish patterns of diet for the three main groups of people who lived there before the Islamic period, namely, Jews, Romans, and Christians.19 Stuart Miller has pointed to a rabbinic text (b. B. Mes ̣i‘a 24b) that demonstrates how important location is in determining whether an animal has been slaughtered in the kosher manner or not: “In a discussion of the kashrut of a slaughtered animal that has been found, it is decided that the area of the find is determinative. That is, if the animal was found in a place known for its Jewish settlement, such as the area between Sepphoris and Tiberias, it is permitted for consumption.”20 An analysis of all the faunal remains in what the National Park Service has designated the Jewish Quarter at Sepphoris reveals a corpus of animal remains that is homogeneous and devoid of any evidence of statistical relevance for the consumption of pig.21 The main meats consumed during the entire Roman period were chicken, sheep, goat, and cow. A radical change occurred in the Byzantine era, the fourth century, and later, when regular pork consumption is documented and when Christians moved into the Jewish Quarter after it was destroyed in the great earthquake of 363 c.e. Grantham, having found similar results at Qatsrein for the Byzantine period,22 has thus established definitively, in my view, the absence of pork as an important ethnic marker of common Judaism for the entire Roman period, where a Jewish presence can be established with confidence from additional sources, both literary and archaeological. To put it another way, Jewish dietary practices may be inferred from the faunal record when other archaeological finds point to a clear Jewish

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presence and when the evidence is consistent with the detailed literary discussions of the kashrut system. It should be emphasized, however, that the database for Grantham’s work is limited and must be subjected to further scrutiny before being accepted completely. Justin Lev-Tov, for example, has noted that pig bones have been attested at numerous Jewish sites in Hellenistic and Roman Palestine, albeit in very low percentages, normally fewer than 3.8 percent.23 The main implications of this statistic are twofold: either some Jews at these sites did not observe the dietary laws, or there were non-Jews living at those sites who ate pork and other nonkosher items such as hyrax, camel, catfish, etc., all of which have been attested. Since very low consumption or nonconsumption of pork predates the classical periods in the Levant and extends beyond Jewish or Israelite areas of settlement,24 it may well be that in some regions, local dietary traditions come into play that have nothing to do with Jewish or Israelite ethnicity. The ban on pork within later Islamic tradition is a reflection of the complexity of this matter. Still, the fact that the western acropolis at Sepphoris, also known as the Jewish Quarter, may be identified in the Hellenistic and Roman periods as Jewish from epigraphical and historical sources, iconographical support on Roman-period decorated lamps, and miqva’ot from both periods, makes the case for the association of the absence of pork with Jewish practice very strong indeed.25

S t o n e Ve s s e l s The discovery of chalk vessels in controlled excavations during the 1980s and 1990s has led to some unexpected results at the level of interpretation. First noted in and around Jerusalem,26 the vessels include a wide assortment of shapes and types: bowls, craters, jars, dishes, drinking cups, basins, measuring cups, etc.27 In addition, many ossuaries, as mentioned above, were made of this soft limestone. It is generally regarded today that the use of these vessels is related to the purity laws reflected in the later rabbinic laws and exemplified in the Mishnah (’Ohal. 5.5; Kelim 10.1). Since stone vessels were not susceptible to impurity, their use became common in the late Hellenistic and Early Roman period, that is, the latter part of the first century b.c.e. and the first century c.e.

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It is noteworthy that all of the forms of stone vessels indicate that they were intended to hold liquids, and many, if not most of them, had lids to cover them as an additional means of avoiding contamination through spills. The attestation of these vessels was originally thought to be in Jerusalem and Judea. Greater attention to their importance, however, has resulted in their discovery in the Galilee, the Golan, the coastal plain, and every region of Eretz Israel. While some scholars have contended that they were used until the early second century,28 recently Miller has claimed that they could be in use till the third century.29 I have found hundreds of fragments at Sepphoris, though they still remain largely unpublished, and while they appear to be dated to the Early Roman period, as do the many fragments that have been found at Nabratein, which for many years had gone misidentified,30 the common assumption that stone vessels went out of use with the destruction of the Jerusalem temple in 70 c.e. seems to be undergoing a thorough reevaluation today. Similarly, their attestation as far north as Nabratein in Upper Galilee and close to the Rift Valley, as well as in the Golan and many other regions, underscores how widespread their usage was. Among those dissenting from the old consensus is Shimon Gibson, who sees in the widespread distribution of stone vessels evidence that between 50 and 70 c.e. Jewish society “regarded stone vessels solely as fashionable and accessible utilitarian receptacles that were not in any way dominated by one group holding specific beliefs of one sort or another.”31 While admitting that the stone industry began in association with Herod’s plans for rebuilding the temple, Gibson suggests that over time and only much later did their production assume a secular, more utilitarian function. Stuart Miller, who, as mentioned above, has already suggested moving the terminus ad quem for stone vessels to the third century c.e., dissents from the consensus in another respect as well. Why, he asks, would the stone industry fail at precisely the time when rabbinic preoccupation with ritual purity begins? He can understand its relevance to purity matters in Second Temple times when defilement would prevent individuals from participating in temple rituals. But in pointing to the growing importance of purity matters after 70, especially after the amoraic ruling that glass vessels no longer could be impure after the destruction of the temple, which meant that pre-70 glass had been regarded as capable of being impure, he points out that there is no such change in status in regard to stone vessels.32

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But in noting the variety of stone vessel types, Miller, like Gibson, suggests that some of them could have had a simple utilitarian usage and need not always have functioned as a Jewish ethnic marker, a caution to which we have drawn attention already. Some stone vessels, he argues, could have been regarded as halakically advantageous, but given the great variety of types it would be wrong to identify all of them as having Jewish, religious significance. However, when the context is clear and overwhelming, as is the case on the western acropolis at Sepphoris, I believe there is no reason to doubt that their use was consistent with Jewish practice and belief. The widespread distribution of stone vessels begs the question of why purity concerns became so important in the late Second Temple period and in the Tannaitic period. Was it the growing influence of the priesthood before 70 and a desire to emulate them? Was it the growing influence of the temple and its purity regulations over everyday life? Presumably, stone vessels’ nonporous character made them attractive to people concerned about ritual purity, especially in a time when the red heifer ceremony was required for purification from corpse defilement (see Numbers 19). Or was it the simple striving of common people in growing numbers who sought to add a measure of holiness to their daily life? There was, of course, the pragmatic reason: once a vessel had become unclean, it had to be taken out of use, especially ceramic vessels, which had to be broken. But this is only to reconfirm the outlook presupposed in the talmudic statement and applied to the Second Temple period, “purity burst forth in [all] Israel” (b. Šabb. 13a).33 The Mishnah lists three types of vessels, however, that were not susceptible to ritual uncleanness: stone vessels, cattle-dung vessels, and earthen vessels.34 An earthen vessel is one that had not been fired in an oven. So a chalk vessel is considered to be like an unfinished, unfired vessel, one not susceptible to ritual uncleanness. This category of vessels suggests that the practice of purity laws was widespread, as we know from archaeology. Stone vessels were especially important in relation to the purification of water on a festival or Sabbath. As Yitzhak Magen writes, “water kept in a stone vessel could be made ritually clean on a festival and on a Sabbath, while water kept in a pottery vessel could not be made clean, since the instant the water became unclean it imparted this uncleanness to the vessel as well, thus preventing the purification of the water it contained.”35

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The New Testament story of Jesus at the wedding in Cana of Galilee (John 2:1–12), where he transforms the water stored in six stone jars into wine (v. 6), no doubt points to the increasing emphasis on ritual purity at table fellowship among Jews in Galilee. The text reports that each jar held twenty or thirty gallons for “Jewish rites of purification,” clearly a reference to the lathe-turned qallal vessel associated with the upper classes. Here is a very early text that may be related to purity practice in Galilee, if not to a much broader socioeconomic context as well.36 The principle underlying the rule that any natural materials used as a vessel that had not been fired (stone, earth, cattle-dung—i.e., anything connected with the earth) cannot become unclean, seems to be that these materials are common if not ubiquitous and hence relatively inexpensive. Obviously, the lathe-turning production process made stone vessels more valuable than the original stone had been. Glass, which normally is considered like stone and considered clean by biblical law, is considered to become ritually unclean by rabbinic sources, as is metal.37 The removal of metal and glass vessels from the category of vessels that will neither contaminate nor become contaminated suggests that by the end of the Second Temple period, for whatever reasons, the observance of purity laws was spreading among the “common” people and among individuals from many different strata of society, some of priestly descent, such as those of Sepphoris, and some of a more rural background, such as those at Nabratein.38

Ritual Baths Recent discussions about the identification of ritual baths or miqva’ot in Jewish cities and towns in ancient Palestine have resulted in a surprising consensus regarding their chronological distribution. Their verbal designation, however, still evokes considerable discussion and varied opinions. Relying on a good deal of unpublished material, I will attempt to make a short summary of the main points of the debate and relate my conclusions to what I have already mentioned about the spread of purity laws. One of the main arguments for the nonidentification of plastered stepped pools as ritual baths is that they could function as bathing installations, and

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that many sites where positive identification of ritual baths has been made lacked evidence for bathtubs or similar bathing installations.39 However, as I have commented before,40 numerous bathing installations have been identified at Sepphoris by all the teams working there. More than twenty or so installations on the western acropolis at Sepphoris may be positively identified as ritual baths, beginning with the late Hellenistic period, circa 100 b.c.e., down to the Byzantine period, the majority dating to the Roman period, prior to 363 c.e. More than two hundred of these have been discovered in Jerusalem and Judea, and over a hundred more from the Galilee and the Golan from the same chronological span.41 Few have been found in the coastal plain and none in Samaria.42 In the vast majority of cases, stone vessels are associated with the stepped pools, a datum that in our estimate lends further credibility to their positive identification as miqva’ot. In estimating the size of all the stepped pools at Sepphoris, Galor has noted that all the ones designated for ritual purposes easily hold the minimum amount of pure water necessary for the purposes of immersion and purification.43 In at least three instances part of the transfer channel for moving water from a large aqueduct, cistern, or roof collector has been preserved. The large ritual baths with late Hellenistic dates are associated with a public building or large civic structure (Area 85.3); the ones from the Roman period are situated in domestic contexts, within a roofed context. With the exception of the miqva’ot in the villa with the Dionysos mosaic, each stepped pool was protected from above by its own roof, either vaulted or flat, no doubt to assure complete privacy and to prevent the water from becoming overgrown with algae. Katharina Galor has also concluded that the cisterns in and around the domestic areas were used exclusively for water consumption.44 In addition to these factors, there is a good deal of other data to support the identification of the stepped pools at Sepphoris as ritual baths. We know that the domestic area lacked any evidence of pig in the Roman era and contained stone vessels, ceramic incense shovels,45 lamps with Jewish symbols including the Torah Shrine and menorah,46 and some Jewish ostraca.47 Many of the stepped pools from other places in ancient Palestine that have been identified as ritual baths were located next to the temple, synagogues, or oil presses.48 In the Jerusalem area, pools prior to 70 c.e. provided a setting in

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which priests and pilgrims could immerse before entering the temple. Evidence for domestic ritual baths is not as great in the Jerusalem area, though a few examples exist in the Jewish quarter excavations. Others are found at Jericho in the Hellenistic palaces and at Susiya in the Byzantine houses.49 This comparative data supports a positive identification of the corpus from Sepphoris as ritual baths. With this evidence, together with the other aforementioned ethnic markers, there should be little doubt about the identification and widespread distribution of ritual baths before and long after the destruction of the temple in 70 c.e. Moreover, their attestation in different contexts also illustrates their use among the diverse social strata of society. All of the features of late Second Temple Judaism and early classical Judaism after 70 c.e. point to a continuum of practice that came to be associated with Judaism in various places. Though I have not focused on the Diaspora, many of these practices can be documented there as well, though not necessarily through archaeological data. What is incontrovertible about the combined data of literary and material evidence for ancient Palestine is that it attests to the observance of both purity laws and dietary laws, which were deeply rooted in the Torah, in the various regions where Jews lived. Insofar as observance in numerous outlying areas is attested as well, we cannot say that such practices were carried out only by elites. In examining the practical side of common Judaism I would like now to consider the effects of several other significant trends on Roman-period Judaism: the tendency to observe the Second Commandment in the practice of aniconic behaviors, the effects of regional trends on the forms of Jewish life, and the place and impact of Hellenization on Jewish life.

The Second Commandment The prohibition against figural art, although encouraged in the Second Commandment, was never rigorously enforced so long as such art was not considered idolatrous. Images such as those depictions of Yahweh and of Yahweh and his Asherah from Quntillat Ajrud from the period of the First Temple clearly call into question any assertion of a ban on figural art in Israelite society.50 The Persian-period coins of Yehud with their depictions

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of animals and deities indicate that a tolerant attitude toward images existed at the beginning of the Second Temple period. From the middle of the second century b.c.e., however, from the time of Simon onwards, let us say, the Hasmonean leadership apparently inaugurated a period of strict antiidolatrous behavior, reversing a rather long-standing practice of tolerance of figural art.51 Though there were clear exceptions to this, such as the use of the Tyrian shekel with its image of Melkart on one side and an eagle on the other,52 the paucity of figural art in this period is striking. Had the Hasmonean leaders maintained the strict principles enunciated by the early Maccabean leaders, there would be little irony here. But the fact that the Hasmoneans adopted a truly Hellenized lifestyle in almost every other respect must not obscure their rather strict adherence to the Second Commandment. Their coins bear no busts of humans or animals but rather universal symbols—a star surrounded by a wreath, an anchor—with paleoHebrew inscriptions.53 By the end of the Second Temple period, neither Herod nor his sons Antipas and Archelaus depicted their own images or the busts of Roman emperors, despite their accommodation to Roman rule, though Philip did. Kings Agrippa I and Agrippa II followed the more typical pattern of client kings and did include busts in their coinage.54 Lee Levine has interpreted the absence of figural art in this period to signify the central aspect of Hasmonean religious ideology, suggesting that the ban on images and idolatry achieved Deuteronomic zeal under their leadership, its effect lasting well after the destruction of the temple in 70 c.e.55 If Levine were to be correct, Hellenization during this period represented a veneer over a true assertion of Jewish identity. Hasmonean and Herodian excess and violation of moral laws, including murder, sexual promiscuity, and the like, though not unimportant violations, kept Judaism closer to its historic course. I have pointed out in another article, however, that the Hasmoneans were not as rigorous in installing a strict aniconic program in their kingdom as some would believe.56 And in suggesting that aniconic behavior facilitated the emergence of synagogue Judaism post-70 with its Torah-centered liturgy, Levine unintentionally attributes an extraordinary achievement and a significant policy to Hasmonean and Herodian leadership that may only reflect aspects of their shrewd politics and not the reality of common everyday practice.

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Where does such a pattern of aniconic behavior come from, and why does it persist? What I have learned from E. P. Sanders is that if such a pattern can be isolated, then we must attribute Hasmonean and Herodian sensitivity to pragmatic and practical politics. Good fences make good neighbors, and in successful leadership we may observe a respectful recognition of the deep beliefs of the people—we may even call them the people in the street. Observance of purity laws among broad sections of the populace goes well with a common Judaism that is uncomfortable to a degree with idolatry and, hence, images. As Judaism emerged from the chaos of the destruction in 70 c.e., however, a strong case can be made for its seeking out additional expressions of its identity in figural art: first on lamps, then on architectural fragments, and finally on mosaics in stone as Jews and Judaism became fully comfortable with their self-identity and their Hellenistic surroundings in the late Roman and Byzantine periods.57 In my opinion, Sanders’s theories about the beliefs of pre-70 common Judaism may account for the unusual circumstance of having strong leaders take special account of the religious sensibilities of the people.58

R e g i o n a li s m It is an undeniable reality of ancient Palestinian existence that the character of daily life varied from region to region. The greatest factor affecting such differences was urbanism. The construction of cities was understood from the onset of the Hellenistic period as a major, if not the major, vehicle for the conveyance of cultural values. The Roman administration of Palestine took this practice to the next level.59 Judea and Jerusalem, its capital, illustrate how important this policy was, as well as show its limitations. The roads that connected major centers and linked the metropolitan areas to the periphery proved all-important in creating a network for communication, trade, movement of people and the military, and linkage with the temple. During the first century, for example, Roman oversight of Jerusalem was largely administered from the coastal plain and Caesarea.60 This allowed, in the main, the local Jewish population to practice their own religion and temple rites without external interference.

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The Galilee and Golan, however, were virtually devoid of urban centers, save for Sepphoris and Tiberias, which, while exerting a strong regional influence, allowed the nearby areas a degree of independence from pagan culture, which more or less surrounded them at the exterior: Akko-Ptolemais to the west, Tyre to the northwest, Kadasa to the north, Caesarea Philippi-Baneas to the northeast, Gerasa and Hippos-Susita to the east, and Beth-SheanSchythopolis to the southeast, to name the major urban areas. The Galilean interior and the Golan were able to maintain their Jewish character in a more thorough manner than in the south.61 In other words, Galilee, undoubtedly the focal area of Jesus’ ministry, was where common Judaism was most potent, although traveling to Jerusalem and the temple was not a matter to be taken lightly because of distance. The absence of a strong and visible Gentile presence in Galilee, as opposed to Judea and Samaria, was its major distinguishing feature, and it was this more than anything else that has allowed us to reconstruct the Jewish milieu of Jesus.62 The degree to which border areas of Galilee or the Golan participated in the more eclectic culture of the Gentile cities is very much related to the issue of Hellenism, to which I now turn.

Hellenism In drawing attention to the border situation of ancient Palestine, I am suggesting that the issue of Hellenization was most acute when Jews were in direct contact with or in close proximity to Gentile populations. Like Mark Chancey and Lee Levine, I concur with the definition of “Hellenism” as the presence of Greek culture, while “Greco-Roman” means adding the influence of Roman culture to the mix.63 In recent scholarship there has been a tendency to misinterpret evidence for Hellenism or Greco-Roman culture as representing paganism or Gentile religious practice.64 I have pointed out elsewhere how congenial Hellenism was to local, indigenous cultures such as Jewish culture.65 Indeed, Judaism seems to have flourished in the context of the ever-increasing reach of Greco-Roman civilization. Assessing the degree of Jewish accommodation to Hellenism, therefore, may or may not assist the scholar in evaluating the Jewishness of a particular person or place. So, for example, Judea is far more Hellenized than

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the Galilee in the first century c.e.—that is, more Greek language attested, greater visibility of Greek or Roman civic architecture, in short, more acculturation. So long as the adoption of certain external features, beliefs associated with afterlife, or certain customs “did not threaten the fundamentals of Judaism . . . , the Jews . . . were recognizing the legitimacy and desirability, if not the necessity, of incorporating foreign practices into their society.”66 An overemphasis on the importance of Hellenistic influence, especially the nature of Greek language fluency and bilingualism, has led to many misunderstandings about the nature of Jesus’ ministry and the spread of early Christianity.67 But if we take the activity of Rabbi Judah the Prince in Sepphoris and the redaction of the Mishnah there to be representative of Palestinian Jewish culture in the early third century c.e., it is “clear that rabbinic leadership saw no conflict between Greco-Roman culture of the day and their own. Judging from Sepphoris and Beth She’arim, most of the leadership viewed that culture and its art, including mythological scenes, as a means of participating in a larger cultural identity.”68 Judaism at the turn of the Common Era and in the rabbinic era thus saw in Hellenism an opportunity to enhance and enrich their own traditions. By the end of the Hellenistic period a pattern for expressing common Judaism had been clearly established, and it continued on into late antiquity. That a common Judaism emerged with such clarity in the late Hellenistic era and with such explicit biblical moorings made its practice in everyday life all the more compelling.

Some Final Observations In this essay I have chosen to emphasize aspects of Jewish practice rather than those of Jewish belief. I have done so because of my lifelong research interest in archaeology and the material world of ancient Judaism. In his work, however, Sanders has tried to describe both practice and belief, and I would be remiss in not attempting to extrapolate from my own comments ways in which those matters I have discussed inform Jewish belief also. Jewish burial practices at the turn of the era, for example, illustrate the Jewish preoccupation with the family and concern for proper care of the

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dead, even in death. In primary inhumation in a coffin and especially in secondary burial into an ossuary, increasing concern for the individual after death is reflected. The same concern is shown in the adoption of the loculus, arcosolium, and subterranean tomb chamber, which, while reflecting local architectural custom and practice, was clearly influenced by Hellenistic and Roman culture. Along with the death rituals that accompanied Jewish forms of inhumation and reburial, we may infer that there was much variety in Jewish beliefs in afterlife, but also great stability in the manner of disposition of human remains. About the location of these remains in respect to the city or town there was also strong agreement: human remains had to be situated outside the borders of town or city due to the belief in corpse impurity and the possibility of contamination by individuals. By the fourth century c.e. Christians in the East, at least, allowed for their burials to be readmitted to the center of public space. This change occurred alongside the rise of the cult of public martyrs.69 Should it be of any surprise, therefore, that there is so much emphasis on life after death and divine judgments in the Shemoneh Esreh (eighteen benedictions)?70 The observance of the dietary laws also testifies to the strong belief among Jews that consumption of food was a way to observe aspects of God’s Levitical command to be a holy people and also to separate themselves from their Gentile neighbors who consumed all manner of biblically forbidden foods. The absence of pig remains in well-established Jewish contexts from biblical times to the Roman period illustrates vividly such a practice. Because these notions derive from the Hebrew Bible, we may infer that in the case of observance of particular foodways biblical law was accepted widely in late Second Temple and Roman-period Palestinian Jewish circles. The observance of particular Jewish foodways correlates well with other Jewish observances that reflect the growing importance of purity regulations in everyday life. Sanders has discussed this particular side of Jewish daily life in great detail, and we have found this preoccupation of ancient Jews to be reflected in both ritual baths and some stone vessels. While we may not be able to extract from the archaeological record an absolutely clear picture of daily practice in respect to purity, the record has surely shown that both before and after 70 c.e. Jews were increasingly focused on matters of ritual purity irrespective of the temple. With the destruction

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of the temple, there was also increasing holiness attached to the emerging institution of the synagogue, as the surrounding culture became more and more Gentile and Christian over time. In my view the partial observance of the Second Commandment banning images in the late Second Temple period reflects the pragmatic power politics of the Hasmonean and the Herodian families. Beyond demonstrating belief that the visual representation of images of human beings, let alone deities, was in conflict with biblical law, leaders chose to placate conservative elements in the divided Jewish community. After 70 c.e., however, all of this changed, as Jews sought to express their feelings in a variety of forms of figural art, first on lamps mimicking the Romans, then on mosaics in stone, following the lead of the majority of Greco-Roman cultures. None of this data can help us truly understand the theological complexity that undergirds Jewish religion in the periods under discussion; for that we must consult the literary record. But what the evidence adduced above has demonstrated is that Jewish practice in key areas of daily life accords well with Sanders’s reconstruction of common Judaism, one that is biblically based and that is responsive to surrounding culture. Understanding these practices in their Greco-Roman context allows us to see how factors such as religious motivation, economics, cultural fashion and style, and the availability of raw materials affected aspects of Jewish daily life.

Notes 1. So Neusner wrote on October 16, 2002, in the National Jewish Post and Opinion. This characterization of the Tübingen school is vividly conveyed in the review article by Martin Hengel and Roland Deines, “E. P. Sanders’ ‘Common Judaism,’ Jesus, and the Pharisees: Review Article of Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah and Judaism: Practice and Belief by E. P. Sanders,” JTS 46 (1995): 1–70. In that review article, dependent greatly on Josephus (A.J. 13.298), the authors assume an enormous influence of the Pharisees on purity practices, concepts of afterlife, and the realia of Jewish material culture, especially ossuaries, stone vessels, and the like. According to Zangenberg, in his response to my essay, such a view has understood common Judaism as a kind of “applied Pharisaism.” See Jürgen Zangenberg, “Common Judaism and the Multidimensional Character of Material Culture” (chapter 10 in this volume).

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2. See Sanders’s treatment of this subject in E. P. Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief 63 b.c.e.–66 c.e. (London/Philadelphia: SCM/Trinity Press International, 1992), 413–51. 3. Ibid., 47. 4. Ibid. 5. Ibid., 48. 6. See Eric M. Meyers, “Jewish Culture in Greco-Roman Palestine,” in Cultures of the Jews: A New History (ed. David Biale; New York: Schocken Books, 2002), 135–80, here 152–53 and notes. 7. See Josephus, Contra Apionem (trans. H. St. J. Thackeray; LCL 1; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1961), 365. 8. Byron R. McCane, Roll Back the Stone: Death and Burial in the World of Jesus (Harrisburg, Pa.: Trinity Press International, 2003), 7–8. 9. Eric M. Meyers, Jewish Ossuaries: Reburial and Rebirth (Rome: Biblical Institute, 1971), 12–16. 10. McCane, Roll Back the Stone, 10, and Meyers, “Jewish Culture,” 156–57. 11. McCane, Roll Back the Stone, 11. 12. L. Y. Rahmani, A Catalogue of Jewish Ossuaries in the Collections of the State of Israel (Jerusalem: Israel Antiquities Authority, 1994), 53–55 and notes. 13. McCane, Roll Back the Stone, 73–77, and Meyers, “Jewish Culture,” 157. 14. McCane, Roll Back the Stone, 74. 15. Ibid., 79–87. Some scholars have attempted to relate the phenomenon of ossilegium to the stone building industry rather than purity issues or views of afterlife. The rabbis doubtless regarded stone vessels as an appropriate material to preserve the bones of the dead. The decline in stone ossuaries but not their disappearance apparently was a by-product of the decline of the industry itself after 70 c.e. On this point, see Stuart S. Miller, “Some Observations on Stone Vessel Finds and Ritual Purity in Light of Talmudic Sources,” in Zeichen aus Text und Stein: Studien auf dem Weg zu Einer Archäologie des Neuen Testaments (ed. S. Alkier and J. Zangenberg; Tübingen: Francke, 2003), 402–20. See also Steven Fine, “A Note on Ossuary Burial and the Resurrection of the Dead in First-Century Jerusalem,” JJS 51 (2000): 69–76. 16. B. J. Grantham, “A Zooarchaeological Model for the Study of Ethnic Complexity at Sepphoris” (Ph.D. diss., Northwestern University, 1996), 27–28. 17. Larry W. McKee, “Delineating Ethnicity from the Garbage of Early Virginians: Faunal Remains from Kingsmill Plantation Slave Quarter,” American Archaeology 6 (1987): 31–39, here 32. 18. Ibid., 37–38. 19. Grantham, “A Zooarchaeological Model,” 53, who uses Qatsrein in the Golan as a control site. 20. Stuart S. Miller, “Intercity Relations in Roman Palestine: The Case of Sepphoris and Tiberias,” AJSR 12 (1987): 1–24, here 9.

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21. Grantham, “A Zooarchaeological Model,” 127. 22. Ibid., 53–58 and notes. 23. See Justin Lev-Tov, “ ‘Upon What Meat Doth This Our Caesar Feed . . . ?’ A Dietary Perspective on Hellenistic and Roman Influence in Palestine,” in Alkier and Zangenberg, eds., Zeichen aus Text und Stein, 420–47. 24. Brian Hesse and Paula Wapnish, “Can Pig Remains Be Used for Ethnic Diagnosis in the Ancient Near East?” in The Archaeology of Israel: Constructing the Past, Interpreting the Present (ed. Neil Asher Silberman and David Small; JSOTSup 237; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1995), 238–70. 25. I am very grateful to Jürgen Zangenberg for his helpful remarks in response to my essay, especially in regard to the issue of foodways. Not only was he helpful at the Notre Dame conference on Sanders’s work, but he was also gracious enough to send me advance copies of papers he was publishing on this subject, the Lev-Tov paper, and several others. See also the articles in his edited book, Alkier and Zangenberg, eds., Zeichen aus Text und Stein. 26. See Jonathan L. Reed, Archaeology and the Galilean Jesus: A Re-Examination of the Evidence (Harrisburg, Pa.: Trinity Press International, 2000), 44–45 and n. 55. See also his most recent essay on the general topic of stone vessels and the New Testament, Jonathan L. Reed, “Stone Vessels and Gospel Texts: Purity and SocioEconomics in John 2,” in Alkier and Zangenberg, eds., Zeichen aus Text und Stein, 381–401. 27. Yitzhak Magen, “Purity Broke Out in Israel”: Stone Vessels in the Late Second Temple Period (Reuben and Edith Hecht Museum cat. 9; Haifa: University of Haifa, 1994). Magen’s most recent treatment of this subject is Yitzhak Magen, The Stone Vessel Industry in the Second Temple Period: Excavations at Hizma and the Jerusalem Temple Mount (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, Israel Antiquities Authority, Staff Officer of Archaeology–Civil Administration for Judea and Samaria, 2002). See also S. Gibson, “Stone Vessels of the Early Roman Period from Jerusalem and Palestine: A Reassessment,” in One Land, Many Cultures: Archaeological Studies in Honor of S. Loffreda, OFM (ed. G. C. Bottini et al.; SBF 41; Jerusalem: Franciscan Printing, 2003), 289–302. 28. Reed, Archaeology, 44. 29. Stuart Miller makes this claim in his recent article “Observations on Stone Vessel Finds,” though he cites as evidence a press release of the American Friends of the Hebrew University, “Evidence of Jewish Farm Life in Galilee Found,” September 18, 2002, about a stone artifact that is not yet published. 30. The fragments from Nabratein came to light in the course of preparing this essay for publication. When checking the stone fragment drawings against the objects themselves, I discovered they were stone chalk vessels and needed to be redrawn and presented in a different way. They have now been assigned to Jonathan L. Reed for final publication. Reed has published both corpora, from Sepphoris and

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Nabratein, in a preliminary way in Reed, “Stone Vessels and Gospel Texts.” While Reed’s focus in this article is on the socioeconomic differences in the various types of stone vessels (emphasizing that the large qallal jars signify an upper-class setting, as exemplified in the text in John 2), he subscribes to the traditional Early Roman dating that extends into the second century. 31. Gibson, “Stone Vessels,” esp. 302–4. The quote is from p. 304. 32. See Miller, “Observations on Stone Vessel Finds.” 33. Lee I. Levine, Jerusalem: Portrait of the City in the Second Temple Period (538 b.c.e.–70 c.e.) (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2002), 142. See also Magen, Stone Vessel Industry, 138–47. 34. Magen, “Purity Broke Out in Israel,” 19; m. Kelim 10.1; m. ’Ohal. 5.5; m. Parah 5.5; m. Yad. 1.2. 35. Magen, “Purity Broke Out in Israel,” 21. 36. So Reed, “Stone Vessels and Gospel Texts.” 37. For glass see t. Kelim 5.1; for metal see b. Šabb. 146, 16b; see also Magen, “Purity Broke Out in Israel,” 22. 38. For the discussion regarding the identification of “priests” at Sepphoris, see L. V. Rutgers, “Incense Shovels at Sepphoris?” in Galilee through the Centuries: Confluence of Cultures (ed. Eric M. Meyers; Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1999), 177–98, and Eric M. Meyers, “The Ceramic Incense Shovels from Sepphoris: Another View,” in “I Will Speak the Riddles of Ancient Times”: Archaeological Studies in Honor of Amihai Mazar on the Occasion of His Sixtieth Birthday (2 vols.; eds. Aren M. Maeir and Pierre de Miroschedji; Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2006), 2:865–78. 39. Contrast the view of H. Eshel, “A Note on the ‘Miqvaot’ at Sepphoris,” in Archaeology and the Galilee: Texts and Contexts in the Graeco-Roman and Byzantine Periods (eds. Douglas R. Edwards and C. Thomas McCollough; South Florida Studies in the History of Judaism 143; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997), 131–34, with that of Eric M. Meyers, “Aspects of Everyday Life in Roman Palestine with Special Reference to Private Domiciles and Ritual Baths,” in Jews in the Hellenistic and Roman Cities (ed. John R. Bartlett; New York: Routledge, 2002), 211–20. 40. Eric M. Meyers, “The Pools of Sepphoris: Ritual Baths or Bathtubs?” BAR 26 (2000): 46–48, 60–61; see, more recently, Meyers, “Aspects of Everyday Life.” 41. For much input in this discussion I am grateful to Katharina Galor of Brown University, who is preparing the final report on the ritual baths at Sepphoris. 42. See Reed, Archaeology, 45–46; esp. n. 57. Magen has noted the absence of stone vessels in Samaria and argued that this strengthened the case for their being ethnic markers. I am not certain what the significance of the absence of ritual baths in Samaria may be but the coincidence of the data is striking. 43. Katharina Galor, private communication. 44. Ibid. 45. See above n. 31 and Meyers, “The Ceramic Incense Shovels.”

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46. See E. C. Lapp, “Lamps,” in Sepphoris in Galilee: Crosscurrents of Culture (ed. Rebecca M. Nagy et al.; Raleigh: North Carolina Museum of Art, 1996), 221–22. 47. For the best example, see Nagy et al., eds., Sepphoris in Galilee, 170, and entry no. 16 by Y. Naveh. 48. Katharina Galor, unpublished manuscript on ritual baths at Sepphoris. 49. Ibid. 50. See Levine, Jerusalem, 142. 51. But see Eric M. Meyers, “Jewish Art and Architecture in Ancient Palestine (70–235 c.e.),” in The Cambridge History of Judaism, vol. 4: The Late RomanRabbinic Period (ed. Steven T. Katz; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 174–90. 52. See S. Fine, “Art and Identity in Latter Second Temple Judaea” (Rabbi Louis Feinberg Lecture; University of Cincinnati, May 10, 2001). 53. Levine, Jerusalem, 91–148. 54. M. Chancey and A. Porter, “The Archaeology of Roman Palestine,” NEA 64 (2001): 164–203, here p. 175. 55. Levine, Jerusalem, 142–43. 56. On this subject, see Eric M. Meyers, “Jewish Art in the Greco-Roman Period: Were the Hasmonean and Herodian Eras Aniconic?” in “Up to the Gates of Ekron”: Essays on the Archaeology and History of the Eastern Mediterranean in Honor of Seymour Gittin (ed. Sidnie White Crawford et al.; Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2007). Meyers, “Jewish Art and Architecture,” deals with the period after 70 c.e. to the beginning of the third century. “Jewish Art in the Greco-Roman Period” points to several anomalies in coinage, decorated frescoes with images from the Jewish Quarter excavations, and a number of references in Josephus to suggest that the situation in the late Hellenistic period and Herodian era was far more complicated. My hesitancy in accepting the commonly held belief that the Hasmoneans were aniconic was inspired by E. P. Sanders, who had doubted it all along. 57. See O. Irshai, “Confronting a Christian Empire: Jewish Culture in the World of Byzantium,” in Biale, ed., Cultures of the Jews, 181–222. 58. Sanders, Judaism, 241–42. 59. See Michael Avi-Yonah, The Holy Land, from the Persian to the Arab Conquest (536 b.c.–a.d. 640): A Historical Geography (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1977); esp. 212–21. 60. Sanders, Judaism, 30–43. 61. See Reed, Archaeology, and Douglas Edwards, “The Socio-Economic and Cultural Ethos in the First Century,” in The Galilee in Late Antiquity (ed. Lee I. Levine; New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1992), 53–74. 62. See Chancey, Myth of a Gentile Galilee, 120–66.

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63. Ibid., 7, and Lee I. Levine, Judaism and Hellenism in Antiquity: Conflict or Confluence? (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1998), 3–32. 64. See Chancey, Myth of a Gentile Galilee. 65. Eric M. Meyers, “The Challenge of Hellenism for Early Judaism and Christianity: Galilee in the First Three Centuries,” BA 55 (1992): 84–91, here p. 86. 66. Levine, Jerusalem, 146–47. 67. Eric M. Meyers, “Jesus and His World: Sepphoris and the Quest for the Historical Jesus,” in Studien zur Archäologie Palästinas/Israel: Festschrift für Volkmar Fritz zum 65 (ed. C. G. den Hertog et al.; Munster: Ugarit-Verlag, 2003), 185–97. 68. Meyers, “Jewish Culture,” 174. 69. McCane, Roll Back the Stone, 113. 70. See Sanders, Judaism, 298–309, but esp. 204–6.

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TEN

Common Judaism and the Multidimensional Character of Material Culture Jürgen Zangenberg

Interpretation is insidiously ubiquitous. There are always choices and judgements being made even in the most mundane and apparently empirical activities.1

There can be no doubt that Ed P. Sanders’s concept of common Judaism, defined as “what the priests and the people agreed upon,”2 has in many respects proven to be most valuable for the interpretation of the history and culture of Judaism in the Hellenistic and Roman periods. Based upon a stupendous mastery of literary sources and a careful methodology that balances out the relationship between a substratum of religious assumptions and practices common to all Jews and group-specific specializations of and deviations from that common base, the book has triggered a lively debate about the impact of sectarianism and the significance of religious diversity for modern conceptualizations of Second Temple Judaism. Although Sanders himself mostly deals with texts and pays less attention to remains of material culture, his concept is equally significant for anybody working with archaeological and artifactual evidence from ancient 175

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Jewish contexts, as—among many others—Eric M. Meyers has shown (see chapter 9). In the current chapter I will take up this thread and address a few implications of Sanders’s model that one might encounter when analyzing areas of apparent correspondence between elements of Jewish material culture and central convictions within common Jewish belief. The everincreasing flow of data that has become available since Judaism: Practice and Belief appeared, and a growing concern with methodological questions among scholars working in archaeology and textual studies adds welcome motivation. The broader question behind my inquiry is a fundamental, almost perennial one: How can texts and archaeology be brought into a methodologically sound dialogue? How can we say that a particular religious stance is “attested” or “reflected” in the archaeological record? What does such a correspondence mean?

D e c o n s t r u c t i n g t h e M y t h o f S e c t a r i a n Ma t er i a l Cul t ur e i n A n c i en t J u d a is m One of the most influential and critical reviews challenging Sanders’s common Judaism was written by Martin Hengel and Roland Deines from Tübingen.3 Hengel and Deines fervently reject the notion that there could ever have been Judaism apart from or outside of its different sects. They assert that nonsectarian, common Judaism is—in my words—an artificial chimera created at the scholar’s green desk. Instead, Hengel and Deines maintain, at least from the late second century b.c.e. onwards, Pharisaism was, in fact, the most influential variant of Palestinian Judaism, if not the commonly accepted form. Apart from closely following the New Testament, which presents the Pharisees as the ubiquitous adversaries of Jesus and the true representatives of Judaism, and Josephus (esp. A.J. 13.298), Hengel and Deines frequently use archaeology to substantiate their claim that it was the Pharisaic Judaism (the Pharisees’ concern for purity and reform of everyday life, and their particular concepts of afterlife and individual resurrection) that permeated common Jewish culture and belief. Pharisaism, therefore, was the most powerful impulse in the formation of Jewish material culture.4 For adherents of this school, miqva’ot, stone vessels, synagogues, and

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ossuaries are convincing material proof that common Judaism actually was a kind of popularized Pharisaism. Because many scholars inside and outside Germany follow this position, it is worthwhile to reconsider both its methodological implications and its material base. If Hengel and Deines were right, I could have stopped here and let archaeology simply repeat what we already know from the texts. It would, of course, be much too simplistic for me to deconstruct the Tübingen predilection for the somewhat pietistic Pharisees by pointing to a certain pietistic genius loci prevalent in this influential center of German theology. I could point out also that the German theological tradition, in general, tends to define religion through dogma, confessional traditions, and denominational affiliations rather than through its common low church practices (as Sanders seems to prefer). I will not address Hengel and Deines’s reading of textual sources, especially Josephus, and deal with how confidently they reconstruct the role and ideology of the Pharisees from the complex material we have available. What I want to focus on, rather, is the methodology that Hengel and Deines pursue when they combine texts and material culture as evidence to prove their point. In reclaiming ossuaries, stone vessels, synagogues, and miqva’ot for the Pharisees, Hengel and Deines follow a distinct path, proceeding in two steps: first they take different archaeological features as reflections of a common, unified theological agenda, and then they identify this agenda with a sectarian position that is reconstructed from textual sources. Neither of these steps is without problems. First, by lumping different elements of material culture together under a single, religiously defined agenda, Hengel and Deines are in danger not only of leveling off any possible differences among these features (e.g., in terms of ritual context or historical origin) that might be important for their interpretation, but also of reducing the significance of their base data solely to their religious connotations. Why should the religious component be the only conceptually relevant one for understanding the emergence, use of, and ideology behind ossuaries, stone vessels, synagogues, and miqva’ot? With Hengel and Deines’s approach, religious factors and implications are in danger of being isolated from other causes that also have to be taken into consideration—for example, growing economic possibilities and increasing demands from within Jewish society. Moreover, it is not self-evident that

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innovation and differentiation should only be taken as religiously motivated. As Ian Hodder and other proponents of interpretive archaeology have shown, archaeological artifacts are never univocal. They can be analyzed from different perspectives, and no single perspective should be taken as providing a general key to all aspects of an artifact. Archaeological artifacts are equivocal, polysemous, and multidimensional.5 The second problematic issue in Hengel and Deines’s methodology is their identification of the alleged religious agenda behind these items of material culture as Pharisaic. How can we prove that? How could we possibly distinguish between Pharisaic and non-Pharisaic means to secure ritual purity? Should every miqveh, every ossuary, and every stone vessel that cannot be directly related to priests but comes from a lay context be considered as Pharisaic or motivated by Pharisees? It is certainly true that Pharisees were especially interested in maintaining ritual purity, but they were not the only group. After all, it was the priests who were required to keep a special level of purity, and they, much more than the early Pharisaic laypeople, had the means to build synagogues and miqva’ot. It needs to be kept in mind that none of the early examples of ossuaries, stone vessels, synagogues, and miqva’ot is explicitly connected to Pharisees. Eric M. Meyers has repeatedly emphasized that neither ossilegium nor the use of stone ossuaries should be seen as exclusively Pharisaic. Bone collection in stone ossuaries did not depend on or indicate belief in individual resurrection but could be practiced by all Jews regardless of their stance on postmortal existence.6 It is especially noteworthy that names of many priests occur on ossuary inscriptions, but no known Pharisee. Further, Sanders has convincingly demonstrated that miqva’ot do not have to be exclusively linked with the Pharisees either. Miqva’ot are in fact a good example of a common Jewish halakah turned into stone.7 Chronological reasons should further caution us from treating these features as basically one single set of evidence. The oldest examples of miqva’ot, dating to about 100 b.c.e., were probably found in the late Hellenistic fortress on the western acropolis in Sepphoris and in the Hasmonean palaces of Jericho.8 None of these sites has prominent Pharisaic connections. Ossuaries and stone vessels originated much later, probably not before the last decades of the first century b.c.e. Synagogues seem to have been built first in Jewish Diaspora communities in Egypt (proseuchē).9 Prob-

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ably the earliest Palestinian synagogue was found in a late-second-century b.c.e. upper-class private context in the Hasmonean palaces at Jericho (at that time the Hasmoneans were all but pro-Pharisaic),10 and even the earliest public synagogues in settlements like Qiryat Sefer, Umm al-Umdan (Mode’in), Gamla, or Horvat ‘Etri (all late first century b.c.e.) need not exclusively be connected to the Pharisees.11 Contrary to Hengel and Deines, who assert that the Pharisees were “especially interested in introducing the institution of the synagogue as a place for worship and teaching,”12 Lee I. Levine comes much closer to what we can say today: “The Pharisees had little or nothing to do with the early synagogue, and there is not one shred of evidence pointing to such a connection. No references associate the early Pharisees . . . with the synagogue, nor is there anything in early synagogue liturgy that is particularly Pharisaic.”13 It is therefore highly doubtful that the synagogue originated as a Pharisaic institution or that it should even be considered a sign of the dominance of Pharisaism in late Second Temple Jewish Palestine or a sign of particular Pharisaic influence at the location where a synagogue has been found. While some synagogues might indeed have been under the influence of Pharisees, others certainly were not (the Theodotus inscription from Jerusalem mentions a priestly family as sponsor, not Pharisees). Therefore, the fact that synagogues functioned as places for worship and the study of customs and laws should not be taken as indicating that people generally studied the interpretation of these laws and customs according to Pharisaic principles or under Pharisaic guidance. It might very well have been the case that Pharisees played an important role in disseminating these features of material culture to the common people (because they could be used and interpreted according to their views), but I do not see convincing evidence that Pharisaism was the exclusive motivation for the “invention” of synagogues, miqva’ot, stone vessels, and ossuaries. I wholeheartedly agree with Meyers that the most conspicuous features of Palestinian Jewish material culture are much more characteristic of common Judaism than they are distinctly group-specific. To be sure, the same approach to material culture is prevalent outside of Hengel and Deines’s review article. Many scholars still try to detect and define ancient Jewish sectarian identity on the basis of material culture. These scholars assume that sectarian ideology self-evidently and directly

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plays out into the world of material remains, so that in turn one could identify the presence and assess the significance of certain Jewish groups just by reading back from archaeological data. The biggest problem with such an approach is that it usually transgresses a simple rule: archaeological data first need to be interpreted according to archaeological methods of comparison and contextualization before they may be correlated with information retrieved from texts. Whoever does not obey this rule is in danger of depriving material culture of its independent voice by using it as an illustration or a complement of literary data. It is by no means an a priori that both types of sources tell the same story, i.e., that texts and material culture neatly correspond and mutually interpret each other. The “illiterate” nature of material culture does not render archaeological sources mute, it only requires that we, text-trained readers, decipher a language that is different from our literary sources.14 Let me illustrate this with an example. One of the “hard facts” of Jewish archaeology of the Second Temple period was, and still is for many scholars, the assumption that the specifically Essene character of Khirbet Qumran can be demonstrated not only by the fact that the Essene scrolls were found so close to the site, but also by a correspondence between certain allegedly unique features of material culture (“isolation,” the “austere” character of the local pottery assemblage, and the form and alignment of the graves nearby) and the central tenets of Essene theology (austere and monastic way of life, apocalyptic dualism, individual resurrection).15 However, two of the alleged markers of sectarian identity in Qumran are now very controverted and deserve a closer look. First, from the work of Roland de Vaux down to quite recent articles (e.g., by Emile Puech), primary inhumations in north-south oriented shaft tombs, as they were first found next to the main settlement at Qumran, have been taken as typically Essene “Leitfossil.”16 These graves supposedly not only reflect the exclusive Essene identity of the inhabitants of the site itself, but can also be used to identify Essene presence at other locations. Far from it! Recent research in the region, especially Konstantinos Politis’s discoveries at Khirbet Qazone and renewed analyses of the cemetery at Qumran, has convincingly shown that this particular grave form is not specifically Essene. It is not even originally Jewish (just as chamber tombs are not a Jewish invention but were adapted by Jews). Likewise, shaft tombs per se are not indicative

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of a deliberate breakup of family structures in favor of an egalitarian community; they are not indicative of resurrection or individualism.17 The presence of women and children in the cemetery suggests that the Qumranites were neither “monastic” nor “celibate.”18 It seems that they simply adapted a widely used grave type for their own needs. If they, in fact, connected any particular sectarian practices or religious concepts with this grave form, it is impossible to tell from the archaeological record. Neither the graves nor their contents show any feature that we could call exclusively Essene. The contents and the use of individual shaft tombs seem to resemble individual kokhim in chamber tombs and imply no specific burial rites. Second, Jodi Magness has attempted to show that the apparent lack of certain vessel types and the predominance of repetitive and austere common pottery at Qumran should be interpreted as indicating a particular concern for purity, deliberately restricted contacts with the outside world, and a particular avoidance of luxury on the part of Qumran’s inhabitants. New research, however, especially a thorough comparison with pottery assemblages from the region and (for the first time) with material stratigraphically excavated and comprehensively documented, has demonstrated that Qumran was fully integrated into regional pottery production, economy, and trade. Qumran pottery comes from three locations: locally made ware, ware from Jericho, ware from Jerusalem. This is evidence against the theory of deliberate isolation by the Qumranites. Moreover, we have enough glass and a sufficient amount of imported pottery (Eastern Sigillata A and Nabatean ware) to show that there is nothing exclusively Essene about Qumran.19 It seems the discovery of an allegedly sectarian character of Qumran material culture is a result of incomplete data combined with overconfidence in textually based models of interpretation. The more evidence becomes available about Qumran, the more previously alleged Essene characteristics simply evaporate into a complex of regional Jewish material culture. Instead of defining Qumran material culture on the basis of religious criteria, we can now see that its peculiarities originate from requirements and conditions of the surrounding Dead Sea region (economy) into which Qumran was integrated. This, of course, does not mean that religion should be entirely eliminated from the methodological perspective. Religion was of course important for Qumran’s inhabitants. This

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is evident from the presence of ritual baths (even if not all stepped and plastered pools should be identified as miqva’ot) and stone vessels (if they can be taken as religious indicators—see below). But our material evidence gives us no tools with which we can identify members of any sect known to us from the available literature. What can be said with confidence is that Qumran was certainly inhabited by Jews, though possibly also by non-Jews. The result of my reassessment of the archaeological material is obvious. Hengel and Deines come to the conclusion that there was no such thing as common Judaism (as opposed to various sectarian affiliations) and that Jewish Palestinian material culture was heavily influenced by Pharisaism. However, a closer look at material culture results in just the opposite picture: sects are hardly visible in the material culture and seem to be much more a part of the literary world of ancient (and perhaps modern) authors and their interests. What we have instead is the complex, vibrant world of Palestinian Jewish material culture that seems to be quite well in line with Sanders’s concept of common Judaism and his reservations about Josephus’s emphasis on the Pharisees. In the late Second Temple period, group-specific labels are apparently irrelevant for describing material culture. The reason for this result is quite simple. Theological differences and debates were at that time not formative enough to leave a sufficient mark on material culture. Innovation is achieved only if religious motivations are transformed into cultural tendencies—tendencies that, on the other hand, can only develop when favorable economic and social conditions are met as well. What we can observe during the last 150 years of the period, especially during the Herodian era before the outbreak of the Jewish revolt, is the emergence of the first elements of an increasingly distinct common Palestinian Jewish material culture. This culture originated from the blending of indigenous impulses with Hellenistic forms of artistic expressions. So, contrary to the views expressed by Hengel and Deines, archaeology indeed vindicates Sanders’s model of common Judaism quite neatly.

Av o i d in g R e d u c t i o n i s m i n R e a d i n g Ma t e r i a l E vi d e n ce The preceding observations should make us cautious about combining textual and archaeological data. There certainly was a correspondence

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between belief and material culture, between religious practice and artifact. The only problem is to determine at what level and in what respect. If we accept that there was no sectarian material culture in Palestinian Judaism and thus loosen the tie between religiously shaped identity and corresponding elements of material culture, where should we stop disassociating them? If the correspondence between find and belief does not lie at the level of sectarian variation, can it at least be located at the level of common Judaism? How distinct is even common Jewish material culture? Here, too, the picture is more complex than one might think. Let me illustrate this point with an example. Hardly anybody would doubt that the avoidance of pork is an important marker of Jewish identity shared by all groups, including the Diaspora.20 Meyers—like many others— rightly sees this behavioral pattern reflected in the archaeological record by the absence of pig bones in many archaeological excavations in Palestine.21 So in turn many would deduct that the absence of pig bones does in fact indicate Jewish presence at a given site. New analysis of the material shows, however, that the picture on the ground is a bit more complicated, even if our actual database is still quite limited.22 First of all, pig bones are present at many Jewish sites in Hellenistic and Roman Palestine, although in relatively low percentages.23 This fact is not important because it might indicate that individual Jews did not observe kashrut or (as many would explain) that non-Jewish individuals were also present at these sites. The percentage of pig bones is important because it accords with the presence of other nonkosher animals (hyrax, camel, even catfish) in equally small numbers and therefore seems to be part of a wider dietary pattern. Pork consumption, after all, is only part of a more complex dietary behavior, and, if we are to avoid premature conclusions, it should not be interpreted in isolation. That caveat is corroborated by the fact that similar low ratios of pig bones chronologically predate Jewish presence in the Levant (starting from the Late Bronze Age on) and geographically reach out well beyond areas of predominately Jewish presence in Palestine.24 It seems that Jewish avoidance of pork is part of a wider Levantine habit, although the reasons for pork avoidance certainly were different in each of the cultures of the region. Others, like Greeks and Romans, did not abstain from pork. I am not denying that Jews kept away from pork out of a very special reason based on biblical commands. I only doubt that this peculiar

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ideological reason would be directly discernible on the ground during an excavation without further supporting evidence. I agree with Lev-Tov that the presence or absence of pig bones alone does not automatically provide evidence for determining the ethnic character of a given settlement. Rather, it provides an initial indication of the “local dietary traditions” of the Levant.25 Certainly, the presence of a small amount of pig bones does not contradict the judgment that Jews were present at a given site; it does, however, limit the heuristic value of pig bones for any archaeologist who tries to establish the ethnic and religious affiliation of a site he or she might be excavating. Pork consumption is a good example of the fact that some elements of common Judaism were not exclusively Jewish (one could also point to the rejection of cremation) but shared with other cultures in the same region. Moving directly from texts to archaeology and interpreting the absence of pig bones as directly corresponding to religious motivations might lead to a reductionist view. What appears as correspondence might simply be an overlap of two wider phenomena that are not necessarily identical in terms of their ideological background.

R e l i g io n a s O n e o f M a n y C u lt u r a l Fa ct or s Theologians, for obvious reasons, naturally stress the importance of religious concepts in the formation of elements of material culture and everyday life. But as I have pointed out above, following Hodder and Shanks, studies on the method of archaeological interpretation should caution us against any monocausal adventures. Religious factors cannot and should not be isolated from social or economic developments that all worked together to shape the material expressions of a given society. An a priori claim that religion is a significant factor may certainly be made on the basis of a religion’s self-understandings and tenets. However, one can hardly apply such a claim practically to interpreting material culture “on the ground” without making a circular argument. To avoid the Scylla of reductionism and the Charybdis of idealism, I suggest that we avoid describing and carefully ranking the various factors working in a given society before the evidence is independently

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assessed. These descriptions and rankings depend on one’s (modern dogmatic) standpoint and are rarely a result of the careful observation of the available data—fragmentary and confusing as they usually are. The data are much more grey than black or white. Here two examples illustrate my point. First, as I mentioned above, ossuary burials are often seen as a direct indicator of a particular notion of postmortal existence, namely the “idea of an individual identity in death.” The notion of individuality certainly needs some qualification. Only 30 percent of the boxes are inscribed (sometimes with more than just two names), and a good number of ossuaries contain the remains of more than one body (often two adults or an adult and a child). Meyers is certainly correct in interpreting this picture as a reflection of some kind of individuality, but, following Steven Fine,26 I would suggest that this individuality is primarily concerned with the growing wish to give an individual (or a small, closely related group) more attention within the larger kin group as represented in the burial chamber, but not necessarily with respect to conceptions of the afterlife. Furthermore, there is too much variation in the archaeological record for us to see ossuaries as directly linked to any particular concept of postmortal existence. Most important is the observation that many graves contained both: reinterments in ossuaries and secondary burials in collective bone piles (in En Gedi and Jerusalem). Does that mean that some members of the family expected individual resurrection while others were happy with simply being “gathered to their forefathers”? Perhaps. However, it seems more reasonable to refrain from reading too much theological debate into the material evidence. If anything, ossuaries show a kind of relative individuality within the family group, such that the notions of individual retribution and resurrection after death are not necessarily included or presupposed. One does not have to be reburied in an ossuary to attain the resurrection. The wish to emphasize the individual over against the collective kin might very well be an effect of the influence of Hellenistic culture, just as the growing use of script and the availability of financial and artistic resources to express individuality are not conceivable without reference to Hellenism. So, while the belief in the resurrection and the use of ossuaries might both result from growing Hellenistic influence, they are most likely not causally connected but rather parallel phenomena.

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Second, according to Hengel and Deines as well as Meyers,27 the use of stone vessels is related to purity laws as reflected in later sources. While I concur with this view, one needs to differentiate between various vessel types and their different, often completely unknown, practical functions. Recent research, especially by Eyal Regev, Jonathan Reed, Stuart Miller, and Shimon Gibson has pointed out that, while specific groups of stone vessels may indeed reflect purity concerns (especially the ubiquitous “measuring cups” and bowls), there are other products of the thriving Second Temple period stone industry (like craters, tables, and ossuaries) that very likely do not reflect such concerns.28 The fact that the same material was used for all these objects is not sufficient proof that the same motivation is behind them. After all, ossuaries do not make sense as purity-related containers (human bones are impure anyway), while huge craters, stone tables, and trays follow general Hellenistic fashion and customs, and were used as signs of status and wealth. One should not forget that most of these objects do not originate before the Herodian period, making it hard to establish an exclusive connection with much older purity concerns. Thus common Judaism should not only be spelled out in religious terms; there is a distinct cultural side to it, too. Other factors, like growing wealth, the influence of Hellenistic artistic language, certain fashions and customs, and the mere availability of new and favorable raw materials, need also to be taken into consideration.

Va r i e t i e s o f C o m m o n J u d a i s m Sanders rightly stressed that “common Judaism” does not mean “uniform Judaism,” especially if one considers the relationship between the Diaspora and the Palestinian motherland. It is especially the Diaspora that shows how common Jewish concerns were often met with different practices that led to different solutions in material culture.29 Here, too, ossuaries and stone vessels serve as good examples. Both may very well be markers of Jewish identity, but that is only true in a Palestinian context, since, to the best of my knowledge, almost no comparable objects have been found at contemporary Jewish sites outside of Palestine

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(in which I include the Decapolis).30 So it seems Diaspora Jews in general did not follow the custom of using stone vessels and ossuaries and perhaps did not even practice ossilegium (but this requires further study). That, of course, does not mean that Diaspora Jews did not care for purity or for their dead, nor does it mean that none of them expected to be resurrected. It only tells us that these Jews have found other material means to meet their ritual needs. So, if stone vessels and ossuaries are indicative of common Judaism, we have to qualify how common “common” actually was. While the motivation of caring for the dead and maintaining the necessary level of ritual purity certainly was common in Judaism in general, this concern did not result in a common material culture in all places where Jews lived. So there is a distinctly regional ramification to common Jewish material culture. Apart from the regional aspect, there is also a distinctly chronological aspect. Sanders rightly limits his chronological range to the period from 63 b.c.e. to 66 c.e., a period that saw the emergence of the first widespread elements of Jewish material culture. However, two hundred years later some of them (for example, synagogues and miqva’ot) looked quite different, and others (ossuaries and stone vessels) had disappeared. The cessation of the use of stone vessels during the third century c.e. is somewhat a paradox, because it occurred at a time when purity concerns were much discussed in Palestine and when many of the related foundational texts were codified.31 There obviously was no general continuum in material culture despite continuity in basic Jewish concerns, such as purity. Common Judaism neither synchronically nor diachronically resulted in a common Jewish material culture. Regional identities of Jewish groups living in various cultural contexts might have been more important than purely theological motivations, and historical and social developments were equally crucial in the way these religious motivations were expressed.

O u t l o o k : W h y I s S a n d e r s ’s C o ncep t so Con vi n ci n g ? Certainly Sanders’s Judaism: Practice and Belief is not an archaeological book. Nonetheless, his work is crucial for anyone who wants to write an analysis of Jewish material culture. By criticizing the traditional approach

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to texts and by balancing out common and sectarian elements, Sanders paves the way for understanding material culture in its own right. Sanders’s model allows for the possibility that material culture does not directly reflect theological debates. This possibility, however, might raise more questions than it provides answers, since certain elements of material culture are indicative of common Judaism, while others run counter to categories that are ultimately derived from textual sources. Archaeology deals with the phenomenon of la longue durée; there is always some kind of delay before group-specific religiosity creates its own distinctive material culture. We do not know what would have happened if the revolt had not broken out in 66 c.e., and the Romans had not destroyed the temple and forced Palestinian Judaism to reformulate its religious and social foundations. Perhaps Pharisees, Essenes, and many others would eventually have developed their own specific elements of material culture. The Samaritans are a good example of how this might have been possible. From very early times in their history, they had a distinct theological profile and were in constant competition with Jerusalemite Jews. However, they basically shared all elements of Jewish material culture until well into the fourth century c.e. It was only very much later that they developed unique artistic expressions that showed their special religious and social identity. Likewise, it took almost two hundred years for significant elements of early Christian identity to be expressed in visible form. The creation of a distinct material culture requires more than just theological differences. Regional factors and social and economic conditions are equally important. It is the very character of material culture, its multidimensionality and complexity, that makes Sanders’s concept of common Judaism so helpful and should at the same time make us cautious when applying it.

Notes 1. Michael Shanks and Ian Hodder, “Processual, Postprocessual and Interpretive Archaeologies,” in Interpreting Archaeology: Finding Meaning in the Past (ed. Ian Hodder et al.; New York: Routledge, 1995), 8. 2. E. P. Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief 63 b.c.e.–66 c.e. (London/ Philadelphia: SCM/Trinity Press International, 1992), 47. I have benefited greatly

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from E. P. Sanders’s work ever since I came across his Paul and Palestinian Judaism when I was a theology student in Heidelberg back in the mid-1980s. I wish to thank Mark Chancey, Susannah Heschel, Gregory Tatum, and Fabian Udoh for inviting me to the conference honoring Sanders, and Eric M. Meyers for supplying me with a copy of his paper “Sanders’s Common Judaism and the Common Judaism of Material Culture,” to which this essay originally was read as a response. The essay was written in 2005, with references updated in 2007. 3. Martin Hengel and Roland Deines, “E. P. Sanders’ ‘Common Judaism,’ Jesus, and the Pharisees: Review Article of Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah and Judaism: Practice and Belief by E. P. Sanders,” Journal of Theological Studies 46 (1995): 1–70. Deines’s most recent and detailed discussion of Sanders’s concept of common Judaism can be found in Roland Deines, “The Pharisees between ‘Judaisms’ and ‘Common Judaism,’ ” in The Complexities of Second Temple Judaism (vol. 1 of Justification and Variegated Nomism; ed. D. A. Carson et al.; WUNT 140; Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2001), 443–504. Although Deines modifies his earlier model of Pharisaism as “normatives Judentum,” he still speaks of Pharisaism as “the fundamental and most influential religious movement within Palestinian Judaism between 150 B.C. and A.D. 70” (“Pharisees between ‘Judaisms,’ ” 503; emphasis in original). Unfortunately, his latest essay does not specifically deal with archaeological material. Deines applied his model of the Pharisees to archaeological material in his earlier analysis of stone vessels in Roland Deines, Jüdische Steingefässe und pharisäische Frömmigkeit: Ein archäologisch-historischer Beitrag zum Verständnis von Joh 2, 6 und der Jüdischen Reinheitshalacha zur Zeit Jesu (WUNT 2:52; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1993), esp. pp. 4–11 and 237–46. On stones vessels, see below. 4. See Hengel and Deines, “E. P. Sanders’ ‘Common Judaism,’ ” 34: “Also attributable to Pharisaic influence, mediated through synagogue teaching, are the numerous miqva’ot which suddenly appear at about the same time as the synagogue from the middle of the first century bc, as well as the stone vessels which appear a little later; both demonstrate the wide dissemination of the Pharisaic purity halakhah. Something similar could be said of reburial in ossuaries, which presupposes the expectation of resurrection” (see also p. 62). Then Hengel and Deines conclude: “Taken together, these data confirm the historical reliability of Josephus’ report regarding the popular appeal of this intellectual fellowship. . . . The sympathies of the common people were on the side of the Pharisees. . . . And this appears to us to have been the case continuously (with certain fluctuations depending on the situation) during the entire period between John Hyrcanus (135/4–104 bc) and ad 70. It is also the historical presupposition of the religious renewal, including the formation of the rabbinate, which took place in Yavneh after the catastrophe under Pharisaic leadership” (34–35; emphasis in original). See also page 66: “Thus in his reports about the Pharisees, Josephus gives a completely accurate rendering of the real situation, and his

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picture corresponds with that of the New Testament and the early rabbinic literature” (emphasis in original). 5. See especially Shanks and Hodder, “Processual,” and the other articles in Interpreting Archaeology. 6. Eric M. Meyers, Jewish Ossuaries: Reburial and Rebirth (Rome: Biblical Institute, 1971), 85–89; D. Teitelbaum, “The Relationship between Ossuary Burial and the Belief in Resurrection during the Late Second Temple Period Judaism” (master’s thesis, Carleton University, 1997); Jürgen Zangenberg, “Haus der Ewigkeit: Archäologische und literarische Studien zur jüdischen und frühchristlichen Bestattungskultur in Palästina” (habilitation thesis, Wuppertal University and Barmen School of Theology, 2002), 314–47; Byron R. McCane, Roll Back the Stone: Death and Burial in the World of Jesus (Harrisburg, Pa.: Trinity Press International, 2003), 42–43. Levi Y. Rahmani still maintains a close relationship between Pharisaism and the origin and use of ossuaries; see Levi Y. Rahmani, A Catalogue of Jewish Ossuaries in the Collections of the State of Israel (Jerusalem: Israel Antiquities Authority, 1994), 53–55. 7. Sanders, Judaism, 222–29. 8. On miqva’ot, see, Benjamin Wright, “Jewish Ritual Baths: Interpreting the Digs and the Texts: Some Issues in the Social History of Second Temple Judaism,” in The Archaeology of Israel: Constructing the Past, Interpreting the Present (ed. Neil Asher Silberman and David Small; JSOTSup; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1995), 190–214. 9. Hengel and Deines, “E. P. Sanders’ ‘Common Judaism,’ ” 32, but see Steven Fine, This Holy Space: On the Sanctity of the Synagogue during the Greco-Roman Period (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997), 25–33. 10. E. Netzer, Stratigraphy and Architecture (vol. 1–2 of Hasmonean and Herodian Palaces at Jericho: Final Reports of the 1973–1987 Excavations; Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2004), 2:159–92. The interpretation as synagogue is far from certain, however; the similarities to other palatial, contemporaneous triclinia-like structures are too evident. See now Lee I. Levine, “The First Century Synagogue: Critical Reassessment and Assessment of the Critical,” in Religion and Society in Roman Palestine: Old Questions, New Approaches (ed. Douglas R. Edwards; New York: Routledge, 2004), 70–102; on Jericho, see pp. 87–89. 11. For an overview of these buildings, see C. Claussen, “Synagogen Palästinas in neutestamentlicher Zeit,” in Zeichen aus Text und Stein: Studien auf dem Weg zu einer Archäologie des Neuen Testaments (ed. S. Alkier and J. Zangenberg; Tübingen: Francke, 2003), 351–80; J. F. Strange, “Archaeology and Ancient Synagogues up to about 200 c.e.,” in The Ancient Synagogue from First Origins until 200 c.e.: Papers Presented at an International Conference at Lund University, October 14–17, 2001 (eds. B. Olesson and M. Zetterholm; ConBNT Series 39; Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 2003), 37–62; Levine, “The First Century Synagogue.” The synagogue of

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Kiryat Sefer has recently been comprehensively published in Yitzhak Magen et al., “Khirbet Badd ‘Isa-Kiryat Sefer,’ ” in The Land of Benjamin (ed. Yitzhak Magen et al.; Judaea and Samaria Publications 3; Jerusalem: Staff Officer of Archaeology– Civil Administration of Judaea and Samaria, Israel Antiquities Authority, 2004), 149–271; on the synagogue, see pp. 200–206. 12. Hengel and Deines, “E. P. Sanders’ ‘Common Judaism,’ ” 32. 13. Lee I. Levine, The Ancient Synagogue: The First Thousand Years (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 37–38. 14. See, for example, J. Moreland, Archaeology and Text (London: Duckworth, 2001), esp. pp. 77–97. 15. See, for example, the most recent synthesis by Jodi Magness, The Archaeology of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002); for a contrasting view, see Jürgen Zangenberg, “Review on J. Magness, The Archaeology of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls,” DSD 11 (2004): 361–72 ; Jürgen Zangenberg, “Qumran und Archäologie: Überlegungen zu einer umstrittenen Ortslage,” in Alkier and Zangenberg, eds., Zeichen aus Text und Stein, 262–306; Yizhar Hirschfeld, Qumran in Context: Reassessing the Archaeological Evidence (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 2004). 16. Roland de Vaux, Archaeology and the Dead Sea Scrolls: The Schweich Lectures of the British Academy 1959 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973), 45–48 and 57–58; Emile Puech, “The Necropolises of Khirbet Qumran and ‘Ain el-Ghuweir and the Essene Belief in Afterlife,” BASOR 312 (1999): 21–36; Joseph E. Zias, “The Cemeteries of Qumran and Celibacy: Confusion Laid to Rest?” DSD 7 (2000): 220–53. 17. K. D. Politis, “Rescue Excavations in the Nabatean Cemetery at Khirbet Qazone 1996–1997,” ADAJ 42 (1998): 611–14; Jürgen Zangenberg, “The ‘Final Farewell’: A Necessary Paradigm Shift in the Interpretation of the Qumran Cemetery,” QC 8 (1999): 213–18; Jürgen Zangenberg, “Bones of Contention: ‘New’ Bones from Qumran Help Settle Old Questions (and Raise New Ones)—Remarks on Two Recent Conferences,” QC 9 (2000): 51–76; Zangenberg, “Haus der Ewigkeit,” 94–286; L. Triebel and J. Zangenberg, “Hinter Fels und unter Erde: Beobachtungen zur Archäologie und zum Kulturellen Kontext jüdischer Gräber im hellenistischrömischen Palästina,” in Alkier and Zangenberg, eds., Zeichen aus Text und Stein, 447–87; esp. pp. 464–69; Jonathan Norton, “Reassessment of Controversial Studies on the Cemetery,” in Études d’anthropologie, de physique et de chimie (ed. JeanBaptiste Humbert and Jan Gunneweg; vol. 2 of Khirbet Qumran et ‘Ain Feshkha; Fribourg: Academic, 2003), 107–27. 18. On recently analyzed anthropological material, see O. Röhrer-Ertl et al., “Über die Gräberfelder von Khirbet Qumran, insbesondere die Funde der Campagne 1956, Teil 1: Anthropologische Datenvorlage und Erstauswertung aufgrund der Collectio Kurth,” RQ 73 (1999): 3–46; Susan Guise Sheridan, Jamie Ullinger,

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and Jeremy Ramp, “Anthropological Analysis of Human Remains: The French Collection,” in Humbert and Gunneweg, eds., Études d’anthropologie, 129–69. 19. This was already proposed by Robert Donceel and Pauline Donceel-Voûte, “The Archaeology of Khirbet Qumran,” in Methods of Investigation of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Khirbet Qumran Site: Present Realities and Future Prospects (ed. Michael O. Wise et al.; ANYAS 722; New York: New York Academy of Sciences, 1994), 1–38. Recently their view has been fully confirmed by Rachel Bar-Nathan, “Qumran and the Hasmonean Winter Palaces of Jericho: The Implications of the Pottery Finds for the Interpretation of the Settlement at Qumran,” in Qumran, the Site of the Dead Sea Scrolls: Archaeological Interpretations and Debates (eds. Katharina Galor et al.; Boston: Brill, 2006), 263–77; and by Yitzhak Magen and Y. Peleg, “Back to Qumran: Ten Years of Excavation and Research, 1993–2004,” in Galor, ed., Qumran, the Site of the Dead Sea Scrolls, 55–113. 20. Sanders, Judaism, 214–16. 21. See pp. 56–58 in the current volume. 22. See Justin Lev-Tov, “ ‘Upon What Meat Doth This Our Caesar Feed . . . ?’ A Dietary Perspective on Hellenistic and Roman Influence in Palestine,” in Alkier and Zangenberg, eds., Zeichen aus Text und Stein, 420–47. 23. B. J. Grantham, “A Zooarchaeological Model for the Study of Ethnic Complexity at Sepphoris” (Ph.D. diss., Northwestern University, 1996), 91. 24. Lev-Tov, “A Dietary Perspective,” 413: “mapping the geography of Palestinian ethnic groups by using pig percentages would create a huge Jewish world beyond the Galilee, covering vast nearly pig-free lands from Egypt to Asia Minor and beyond.” 25. Lev-Tov, “A Dietary Perspective”; Brian Hesse and Paula Wapnish, “Can Pig Remains Be Used for Ethnic Diagnosis in the Ancient Near East?” in Silberman and Small, eds., Archaeology of Israel, 238–70. 26. Steven Fine, “A Note on Ossuary Burial and the Resurrection of the Dead in First-Century Jerusalem,” JJS 51 (2000): 69–76. See the literature cited in n. 8 above, and Eyal Regev, “The Individualistic Meaning of Jewish Ossuaries: A SocioAnthropological Perspective on Burial Practice,” PEQ 133 (2001): 39–49; Craig Evans, Jesus and the Ossuaries: What Jewish Burial Practices Reveal about the Beginning of Christianity (Waco, Tex.: Baylor University Press, 2003), esp. pp. 26–30; McCane, Roll Back the Stone, 27–60. 27. Hengel and Deines, “E. P. Sanders’ ‘Common Judaism,’” 34; Deines, Jüdische Steingefässe; see Eric M. Meyers, “Sanders’s Common Judaism and the Common Judaism of Material Culture” (chapter 9 of this volume). 28. Eyal Regev, “Non-Priestly Purity and Religious Aspects According to Historical and Archaeological Findings,” in Purity and Holiness: The Heritage of Leviticus (ed. M. J. H. M. Poorthuis and J. Schwartz; Leiden: Brill, 2000), 223–44; Jonathan L. Reed, “Stone Vessels and Gospel Texts: Purity and Socio-Economics

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in John 2,” in Alkier and Zangenberg, eds., Zeichen aus Text und Stein, 381–401; Stuart S. Miller, “Some Observations on Stone Vessel Finds and Ritual Purity in Light of Talmudic Sources,” in Alkier and Zangenberg, eds., Zeichen aus Text und Stein, 402–20; Shimon Gibson, “Stone Vessels of the Early Roman Period from Jerusalem and Palestine: A Reassessment,” in One Land, Many Cultures: Archaeological Studies in Honor of S. Loffreda, OFM (ed. G. C. Bottini et al.; SBF 41; Jerusalem: Franciscan Printing, 2003), 289–302. 29. Especially illuminating is Sanders’s discussion of purification by miqva’ot in Palestine and different practices in the Diaspora in Sanders, Judaism, 222–29 (few miqva’ot, but basins for splashing and not immersion). 30. Alexandria and its North African vicinity are a notable exception. Here ossuaries were indeed found in some Jewish burials from the late Hellenistic and Early Roman periods; see the summary in Marjorie Susan Venit, Monumental Tombs of Ancient Alexandria: The Theater of the Dead (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 19–20; Evans, Jesus and the Ossuaries, 28–29. A catalogue of relevant finds and a systematic study of the topic, however, are still desiderata. 31. On that important phenomenon, see Miller, “Some Observations.”

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PART TH RE Jesus and E the Gospels

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ELEVEN

Jesus in Jewish Galilee Seán Freyne

In this essay I will explore the Jewish character of Roman Galilee relying on three main sources: the Gospels, including the Fourth Gospel;1 the archaeological record from Galilee;2 and Josephus’s writings, especially his Life. None of these is unproblematic for the task of reconstructing Jewish identity, yet a critically aware approach can yield important insights, especially when the differing perspectives are not harmonized too readily but brought into a critical dialogue with each other. To facilitate the presentation I have chosen a well-worn topic, namely, the temple and its symbolism, which I hope to illuminate by an intertextual reading.

G a li l e a n s a n d t h e Te m p le In both Jesus and Judaism and Judaism: Practice and Belief, E. P. Sanders has underlined the centrality of the temple for all branches of Judaism, and at every level of social life from the economic to the symbolic.3 Here the one God of Jewish belief was deemed to be present in a unique way, giving rise to a whole range of obligations that were incumbent on all who identified themselves as Ioudaioi. These practices consisted of the annual pilgrimage and the bringing of various offerings: tithes for the priests, the first-fruits and sin offerings, as well as the payment of the half-shekel for the upkeep of the daily sacrifices. Both Josephus and, to a lesser extent, the Gospels know of these obligations, but by its nature the archaeological record from 197

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Galilee is not so obviously explicit in regard to the temple. Yet the discovery of the incense shovels in a domestic setting in Sepphoris is at least suggestive of some direct contact with, or memory of, the temple, possibly even in a priestly house.4 Furthermore, the legend (written in a mixture of paleoHebrew and Aramaic script) of a special coin minted at Gamala from the first revolt period reads: “For the Redemption” and on the reverse “Jerusalem the Holy.” This points clearly to a definite affiliation with Jerusalem and its temple as “the holy city,” something that has also been claimed with regard to the orientation of the Gamala synagogue structure.5 Recently John Kloppenborg has challenged my earlier claims that Galileans continued to be loyal to the Jerusalem temple, arguing that the evidence I presented does not warrant such a conclusion.6 It is perhaps worthwhile to rehearse some aspects briefly here and, in the process, nuance the argument somewhat. The pilgrimage is of course the acid test, and the fact that both Josephus and the Gospels agree that Galileans went to Jerusalem for the festivals is telling, given these sources’ differing perspectives. It could be argued that Josephus was simply drawing on his ideal picture of the Jewish constitution when he narrated in both the Jewish War and Antiquities incidents to do with Galilean pilgrims.7 However, this assessment would surely be hypercritical in view of the independent evidence from Tacitus (Annales 12.54) with regard to one of those incidents, namely, the attack by the Samaritans. Whatever Josephus’s motivations, the likelihood of Christian evangelists at the end of the first century—especially Luke and John—fabricating stories of Jesus and his disciples going up to Jerusalem for the festivals is remote in the extreme, unless there had been a general acceptance that Jews, including Galilean Jews, normally did so. Kloppenborg, Horsley, and others are undoubtedly correct to question the actual numbers who might have gone up on any given occasion. But surely, the fact that neither they nor I can count heads is not the point. The issue rather concerns the significance of the temple within the symbolic universe of Galilean Ioudaioi, irrespective of whether or not they were in a position to make the journey frequently. Its importance was considerable in my opinion, precisely because Galilean Ioudaioi were not the remnants of ancient Israelites or forcibly converted Itureans, but Judean settlers with strong southern affinities from the time

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of the Maccabean conquests. The present state of the archaeological record seems to have clarified this position, despite efforts by some scholars to ignore or minimize the evidence.8 Josephus’s Life provides us with an interesting insight into what was at stake from a Jerusalem perspective.9 In an attempt to discredit one of his prime opponents in Galilee, Justus of Tiberias, Josephus contrasts the attitudes of the two chief cities of the region toward the Romans. Whereas Tiberias revolted, thus implicating Justus in anti-Roman behavior, Sepphoris remained constantly pro-Roman, even though it had the resources to resist had it so wished. Josephus continues, “Even when our greatest city, Jerusalem, was under siege and the common (koinon) temple of all was at risk of coming under the authority of the enemy,” they refused to send help in order not to rebel against Rome (Vita 348). The reference to the temple here is somewhat peripheral to the thrust of his main argument against Justus, and is therefore all the more significant in terms of illustrating the ideology of a Jerusalemite priest of the first century. The temple is the shared symbolic center of the nation, and readiness to defend its holiness was the hallmark of all true Ioudaioi, whether the enemy be Antiochus Epiphanes, Pompey, or now Vespasian.10 By implication the Sepphorites fail this basic test of loyalty. The archaeological record can corroborate Josephus’s rhetorical flourish in a highly significant way. Whereas Gamala, as we have seen, declares its allegiance to “Jerusalem the holy” on its coins, Sepphoris proclaimed the ideology of Rome, calling itself Eirēnopolis (“city of peace”), with the further legend Neronias on coins struck as late as 67 c.e.11 Yet curiously the archaeological record from first-century Sepphoris indicates evidence of observant Jewish residents in the upper region of the city, with the discovery of stepped pools and stone vessels in domestic locations. Expressing one’s sense of Jewishness can vary in different circumstances, and the fact that the Sepphorites did not feel obliged to support the war effort is not an argument for neglect on other occasions. Perspectives differ also depending on circumstances—that of an apologist presenting oneself and one’s people in the best possible light in Rome of the 90s, or that of the Sepphorites of the 60s, intent on enjoying the continued favor of Rome and mindful of what had happened to their ancestors a generation or two earlier when they dared to resist the Roman general Varus.

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J e s u s a n d t h e Te m p l e What about the 20s and Jesus’ attitude to the temple against this background? The structure itself had been rebuilt and the temple area enlarged recently by Herod the Great to include additional courtyards for the Gentiles and for women. Furthermore, the Hasmonean priesthood had been ousted and a new regime had been introduced, thus obscuring the temple’s religious symbolism in favor of Herod’s own political ambitions.12 At Sepphoris and Tiberias a similar statement was being made through the architectural medium and the introduction of a “Herodian” element into the population—on a much lesser scale to be sure—by Herod’s son Antipas, just when Jesus, the apprentice tektōn, was a young adult.13 Did the ideological connection between developments in Jerusalem and those in his homeland make any impression on the young Nazarene? Did the increased financial burdens that such building projects as the Jerusalem temple and the ornamentation of Sepphoris were making on the hard-pressed Galilean peasants diminish somewhat their attachment to the symbolic center? Did a northern perspective of being surrounded by non-Jewish peoples with whom there was considerable interchange in terms of linguistic habits and commercial transactions raise the issue of the role of the Gentiles in a more acute fashion?14 Obviously we cannot answer such questions, no matter how tempting it might be to speculate. Instead the Gospel evidence calls for a critical evaluation. Whereas in the Fourth Gospel the temple and its festivals provide the symbolic background and the actual stage for the unfolding of the ministry of Jesus, the Synoptic Gospels present a rather different picture. In the Galilean section of the narrative the temple and its rituals do not feature greatly in either the deeds or the words of Jesus, at least in any overt manner. In the Jerusalem section, on the other hand, the incident in the temple is crucial in triggering the trial and death of Jesus. This imbalance of emphasis with regard to the temple between the two different theaters of Jesus’ ministry raises difficult questions for the historian. Was Jesus unconcerned about the temple during the Galilean phase, only to launch an attack on the building and its significance once he was confronted with the reality in Jerusalem? Was it just a matter of “out of sight out of mind” in Galilee? Or did the replacement of the existing temple form part of his horizon for the future from the outset?

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At first sight the signals seem to be rather mixed. Reviewing the sayings tradition, the logion about the imminent destruction of the temple is the best attested evidence, though the notion of rebuilding as part of the original has been queried by some, opting for the Thomas rather than the canonical version of the saying (Gos. Thom. 71; Mark 13:1–2; 14:58; 15:29 and parallels; John 2:19).15 Tithing obligations appear to be affirmed, if demoted on the scale of importance in the early Sayings Source common to both Luke and Matthew (Matt 23:23; Luke 11:42), but the affirmation of tithing obligations as well as the “weightier matters of the law” may well be a redactional addition of a Torah-observant group. However, that would not necessarily mean that Jesus rejected tithing, but only show that it was of less concern to him than the covenantal obligations.16 On the other hand, reference to guilt or sin offerings and the half-shekel obligation are only found in the special Matthean material and are generally regarded as reflecting later Jewish Christian concerns, though that judgment may reflect an overemphasis on the criterion of dissimilarity (Matt 5:23–24; 17:24–27).17 Likewise, a special Lukan parable uses the temple as the setting for the contrasting attitudes of the Pharisee and the tax collector (Luke 18:9–14), and elsewhere Luke has certainly done his homework with regard to the temple and its practices, as is evident from the infancy stories (Luke 1:8–10; 2:22, 41). This evidence does not suggest that Jesus had a burning preoccupation with the temple, its personnel, or its rituals. The role of the priests as local magistrates in Jewish communities is recognized (Mark 1:44 and parallels), and the identification of the temple with God’s presence is acknowledged in the discussion about the making of oaths (Matt 5:34–37; 23:16–22) and the issue of korban (Mark 7:11 and parallels). Certainly there is nothing here to suggest a deepseated and radical dissatisfaction with the temple or a desire to see it either destroyed or replaced. The Jerusalem setting offers a different scenario. As is well-known, views on the significance of the temple incident range from the fairly innocuous to the radical.18 My own preference is to see the incident within the framework of Jesus’ prophetic vision for all Israel, especially in the light of both Jeremiah’s and Ezekiel’s attitude toward the temple at an earlier juncture of Israel’s history (See 2 Chr 36:17–23). That their memory lived on in the popular imagination would seem to be borne out by the action of another

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“rude peasant,” Jesus the son of Ananias, with his combination of symbolic circling of the walls and message of doom for the temple, the people, and the city, just seven years before the revolt (B.J. 6.300–310).19 Particularly significant is the linking of sanctuary, city, and people, a combination alluded to also in Jesus’ lament for Jerusalem. The evangelists’ use of the term oikos with its biblical associations of Israel’s house, rather than hagion or naos, which would apply only to the sanctuary building (Luke 13:31–34; Matt 23:37–39), suggests that Jesus regarded the Jerusalem temple as the spiritual preserve of the whole nation, not a political sanctuary associated with “a famous city,” as Tacitus was to describe it later.20 However one is to understand the concluding statement about “the coming one”—judgment of doom or blessing to come—the overall import of the metaphor of “the hen gathering her brood under her wings” is that of care and protection based on the covenant promises (see Exod 19:6; Ps 62:7; 2 Esd 1:28–34). I fail to see how several modern Q specialists read this passage in the light of a perceived Galilean opposition to Jerusalem.21 It echoes rather the voice of a disappointed but committed Ioudaios for whom Jerusalem is the center of his universe.22 The expression of repeated concern (posakis) for Jerusalem in Jesus’ lament casts the evidence of the sayings’ tradition taken in isolation in a different light. It reflects a Johannine rather than a Synoptic perspective, suggesting several visits to and engagement with the holy city. Does it cast the whole of the Galilean ministry in a different light also? As we have seen, the claim that the temple was “common to us all,” though true in terms of the biblical story, could also serve Jerusalem propaganda well. However, the reality may have been different for Galileans—and for other pilgrims— once they arrived in Jerusalem, as several incidents reported by Josephus illustrate.23 These tensions do not need to be explained in terms of different ethnicities or theologies, as is currently fashionable, however. Self-serving attitudes and feelings of superiority are characteristic of religious centers with high levels of religious functionaries among the population. Likewise, not all Galileans were equally driven by loyalty to all aspects of the temple’s demands, as we have seen. Signs of observance in one respect, such as the use of stepped pools, may not have been translated into zealous action for the temple, if other considerations were more pressing.24 If, as

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Josephus hints, Pharisaism was particularly popular with “townspeople” (dēmois; A.J. 18.15), there may have been good social as well as religious reasons for this. It was in urban rather than in rural contexts that ethnic diversity was more likely to have been encountered, and in these circumstances observance of the purity and dietary regulations became important markers of ethnic separatism.25 The regulations for the pilgrimage and the system of agricultural offerings were designed for a landed peasantry (see Vita 63.80; A.J. 20.181), and insofar as this ethos had been eroded by social and economic changes to land ownership under successive regimes, additional ways of remaining loyal to the temple had evolved long before its actual destruction, as can be seen in developments such as Pharisaism itself.

J e s u s , t h e Te m p le , a n d J e w is h Re st or a t i on i n Ga l i l e e Thus, although Jesus shared with his Galilean coreligionists the notion of the centrality of Jerusalem and its temple at both the symbolic and the actual levels, he expressed deep dissatisfaction with that institution as it actually functioned in his day, because of its failure to give adequate expression to the values of kinship and inclusiveness that were constitutive of “the house of Israel.” In line with his apocalyptic view of history, he believed that the present temple was doomed but would be replaced by a new temple, in accordance with various prophetic declarations. His own ministry was to be interpreted in the light of that hope and his desire to give expression to the new way of being Israel, which such a vision for the future enjoined. This involved a refocusing on the importance of mišpat, hesed, and emunah as the basic covenantal values by which Israel was constituted.26 One issue that such a vision gave rise to with particular significance in Galilee was that of the Gentiles’ sharing in the blessings of this new “house of Israel.” The prophetic pronouncements spoke of the nations going on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, an image that Jesus also seems to have employed, though with reference to the messianic banquet rather than the messianic temple (Matt 8:11–12; Luke 13:28–30; see Matt 7:1–10). Nevertheless, the conjunction of people and temple already referred to insured that the holiness of the land—and therefore the presence of Gentiles—must have been

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a concern for some at least. How might Jews living in Galilee have viewed such an outcome? While the name “Galilee of the Gentiles” most probably originated in the context of early Israel’s experience of being surrounded by Canaanite city-states (following Albrecht Alt), the designation itself took on different connotations at different periods of history. Thus, in the wake of the Assyrian conquest of the north in the eighth century b.c.e., a promise of redemption to come could be addressed to galil ha-goyim (described by the tribal names of Zebulon and Naphtali also) and to “the way of the sea” and “the land beyond the Jordan” (Isa 8:23 [Hebrew text]; Isa 9:1 [rsv]).27 In the second century b.c.e., on the other hand, the expression took on more sinister associations and was rendered by the author of 1 Maccabees as galilaia allophylōn (“Galilee of the Heathens”). The few Jews living there had to be brought to Jerusalem by the Maccabee brother Simon for safety reasons (1 Macc 5:15). Subsequent Hasmonean rulers had done away with this threat, real or perceived, and the bitter memory of the destruction that the Judean expansion had caused in the north seems to have been an abiding feature of relations between Jews and Gentiles in the region thereafter, certainly at the period of the first revolt, as Josephus informs us.28 Josephus’s Life illustrates these tensions rather effectively with the episode of the noblemen from Trachonitis who sought refuge from Agrippa II in Galilee, only to be refused asylum unless they underwent circumcision (Vita 113, 149–50). It is perhaps significant that Josephus used the term Ioudaioi, not the more usual Galilaioi here, as in the reference to the Sepphorites and the temple already discussed, to designate those who were insisting on circumcision for the strangers living in their midst.29 Nevertheless, the episode suggests rigid lines of demarcation between Jew and non-Jew in the region, which would correspond to the atmosphere of suspicion and mutual recrimination that obtained just prior to the war. Galilee is not the place for non-Jews according to this scenario, yet the fact that not all Galileans are incensed at the prospect at least hints at the possibility that there may have been varying points of view on the matter. Just as was suggested already in the case of Sepphoris, there may be a situation of varying degrees of compliance with all the requirements of Jewish identity maintenance, and the possibility is there that in other situations a different attitude might prevail.30

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How illustrative of Galilean Jewish attitudes are these incidents, and are they especially accentuated in the immediate prewar situation? On the whole, the archaeological record would seem to corroborate the evidence for rigid boundaries on a more permanent basis, at least to the extent that a clear demarcation can be traced between Jewish and non-Jewish settlements. In the Byzantine period the line between places where there is evidence of Christian churches, on the one hand, and those with synagogue remains, on the other, runs west of the Mount Meron massif and is more or less identical with Josephus’s description of the borders of Upper Galilee (B.J. 3.35–40). According to the authors of the recently published survey of Upper Galilee, Josephus’s borders already suggest shrinkage toward the east of the area of Jewish settlements, when his borders are compared with those described in the “Baraita of the Borders.” In making this claim, the authors attribute the origins of this list to the Hasmonean period, even though the evidence for it comes from later Talmudic sources.31 This is one possibility, since the Hasmoneans certainly operated with an image of a larger Galilee that stretched as far as Tyre and Ptolemais. Irrespective of whether the baraita describes actual or ideal borders, it does suggest that the Jewish character of the region of western Upper Galilee continued to be of concern much later, and that the shifting political borders did not always correspond to Jewish aspirations and hopes with regard to either the ideal or the actual holy land.32 With what “map” of Galilee was Jesus likely to have operated, and how might he have understood his journeys outside the boundaries indicated by Josephus? The fact that he surrounded himself with the Twelve clearly identifies his movement with a reconstituted Israel, suggesting by association a territorial understanding of his own role. It is the prophet Ezekiel, that most temple-centered of all the prophets, who articulates this vision of renewal most fully, combining the centrality of Jerusalem as a holy city and its temple of Davidic/Solomonic inspiration, with the tribes in their territories reflective of the premonarchic period. They are situated within a greater Israel whose limits extend to the great sea on the west and in the north to the borders of Hammath above Damascus (Ezek 47:15–17; see Num 34:1–12). These boundaries ignore the political realities of the Phoenicians and the Aramaeans and extend well beyond any historical Israelite or

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Jewish territory known to us. Ezekiel acknowledges that the aliens among them should be treated as the citizens of Israel and share in the inheritance of the tribes (Ezek 47:21–23), despite his concern with the special holiness of the temple and the surrounding city, with separate areas designated for priests, Levites, ordinary citizens, and the nasi (Ezek 48:8–22).33 This picture of ethnic relations contrasts sharply with the attitude of Galilean Ioudaioi in Josephus’s Life. Ideals and reality do not always match. While later Jewish writings do not give the detailed geographic description of the restoration of Ezekiel, nevertheless the centrality of Jerusalem is always taken for granted in the various scenarios that are envisaged.34 The theme of the ingathering of the tribes occurs frequently also, a task that is associated with the northern prophet Elijah in Sirach (36:18–19). The idea of a greater Israel also occurs in Eupolemus (Fragment 2) and in the Genesis Apocryphon from Qumran, where Abraham is represented as having journeyed around the promised land, which comprised the territory ascribed to Shem in the threefold division of the world in the Book of Jubilees (1QapGen 21; see Jub. 8:12–21).35 These are scattered and varied indications, yet they do suggest that the notion of a greater Israel was known among diverse circles of Jewish life prior to the first century. Presumably a Galilean prophet with Elijah-like traits might be expected to have an awareness of such ideas and might even have opted to include the surrounding regions within the purview of his mission and ministry to Israel because of them. In suggesting such a background for understanding the movements of Jesus within a “greater Galilee” of his own day, I am not claiming that he ignored all divisions between Jew and Greek, abandoned the purity laws, or directly initiated a Gentile mission. Stories such as the Syro-Phoenician woman, with its apparent denigration of non-Jews, clearly indicate that Jesus was operating with the notion that a restored Israel was essential for the incoming of the nations to Zion. However idealistic and “unreal” the rabbinic debates may appear, they do point to a definite mentality and outlook on the significance of place in terms of the due fulfillment of religious obligations. Josephus, too, tells us that Jews lived in Tyre and Caesarea and that places like Kadesh (Qadasa) and Carmel once belonged to Galilee but now were Tyrian (B.J. 2.459; 3.35). In such circumstances, it would have been remarkable if somebody who felt called to proclaim the coming kingdom to all Israel had not made such journeys, however much it might have

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appeared to some of his more strictly observant coreligionists in the region that he was crossing borders in more ways than one.

J e s u s a n d t h e G a l i l e a n S y m b ol i c Wor l d The argument of my paper is that the temple continued to provide Galilean Jews with “those powerful, pervasive and long-lasting moods and motivations” of which Clifford Geertz speaks in discussing symbol systems and their impact.36 Jesus of Nazareth shared those attachments with his northern coreligionists, even when his sense of prophetic awareness made him deeply disappointed with the existing institution’s failure to fulfill its role properly on behalf of all Israel, especially when judged from the perspective of the in-breaking of God’s reign and the in-gathering of God’s people as a prelude to the “pilgrimage of the nations” to Zion. In this regard he and his followers were not the only group to express such dissatisfaction. However, Jesus seems to have continued to affirm or at least to allow for practices such as pilgrimage, tithing, and other offerings associated with the existing temple, while predicting its imminent destruction. His call for refocusing on the basic covenant values of justice, love, and faithfulness suggests strongly that it was in regard to these values that the temple system as a whole had failed Israel in his view. There are various possibilities for resolving this apparent tension between Jesus’ affirmation and his critique. In a situation of frequent and intense visits to Jerusalem as reflected in the Q passage, and explicitly attested in John’s Gospel, one might plausibly suggest a process of growing disillusionment with the existing institution’s inability to respond to the challenge to be God’s house for all Israel, culminating in the utterance of a prophetic judgment against it. Those who allow themselves to be constrained by the Markan chronology are faced with explaining Jesus’ action in the temple and the accompanying prediction of its destruction as a sudden and uncharacteristic outburst, or of minimizing the significance of the event and the disturbance it gave rise to. Provided that the promise of a future temple is allowed as part of Jesus’ prediction, and there seems to be no good reason, either contextual or literary, for not doing so,37 then it is possible to see Jesus’ Galilean

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ministry and its emphases within the framework of the symbolic universe generated by the temple and what it represented, namely God’s presence to Israel, and through it to the nations. Like his northern prophetic precursor, Elijah, he did not allow himself to be constrained by the political boundaries of Galilee of his own day. While he may not have inaugurated a mission to the Gentiles, his movement outside the confines of the area of strong Jewish settlement in the north shows that he was operating within larger horizons, which were shaped by the hope of a restored Israel leading to the nations sharing in Israel’s blessings. One might go so far as to suggest that Galilee, with its troubled history of relations with the goyim, was a more likely location than Jerusalem for such an inclusive vision of Israel to have emerged. Nor should the symbolic statement that the choice of the Twelve made at the heart of the Jesus movement be underestimated in a Galilean setting, given that it was there that the tribal unity had suffered most, both from assimilation by its neighbors, as in the case of the tribe of Asher (see Judg 5:17), and from the Assyrian invasion, in the case of Zebulon and Naphtali. At the same time the vision remained firmly rooted within the parameters of a temple-centered Jewish symbolic world because it was based on what the great prophets of Israel had repeatedly expressed and hoped for. Notes 1. Paula Fredriksen, Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews: A Jewish Life and the Emergence of Christianity (New York/London: Alfred A. Knopf/Macmillan, 1999); Robert T. Fortna and Tom Thatcher, eds., Jesus in Johannine Tradition (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001). See Peter Richardson, “What Has Cana to Do with Capernaum?” NTS 48 (2002): 314–31. 2. Mark Chancey, The Myth of a Gentile Galilee (SNTSMS 118; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), is a useful presentation of the current evidence. See also a number of my essays in Seán Freyne, Galilee and Gospel: Collected Essays (WUNT 125; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001), and Jonathan L. Reed, Archaeology and the Galilean Jesus (Harrisburg, Pa.: Trinity Press International, 2000). 3. E. P. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism (Philadelphia/London: Fortress/SCM, 1985), and E. P. Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief 63 b.c.e.–66 c.e. (London/ Philadelphia: SCM/Trinity Press International, 1992).

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4. See L. V. Rutgers, “Incense Shovels at Sepphoris?” in Galilee through the Centuries: Confluence of Cultures (ed. Eric M. Meyers; Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1999), 177–98. 5. Danny Sion, “The Coins of Gamala: An Interim Report,” INJ 12 (1992–93): 34–55, esp. pp. 40–41. 6. See Seán Freyne, Galilee from Alexander the Great to Hadrian: A Study of Second Temple Judaism (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1980; repr., Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 2000), 259–304; John S. Kloppenborg, Excavating Q: The History and Setting of the Sayings Gospel (Edinburgh/Minneapolis: T & T Clark/Fortress, 2000), 223–29. See also Richard Horsley, Galilee: History, Politics, People (Valley Forge, Pa.: Trinity Press International, 2000), 144–47. 7. These are the attack by the Samaritans on the Galileans on their way to a festival (B.J. 2.232–46; A.J. 20.118–36) and the inclusion of Galileans among the Ioudaioi from all regions of the country who were present in Jerusalem for the festival of Pentecost while the contenders for succession of Herod the Great were in Rome (B.J. 2.43; A.J. 17.254). 8. Freyne, Galilee and Gospel, 176–82. 9. Steve Mason, Life of Josephus: Translation and Commentary (Leiden: Brill, 2001), stresses the rhetorical features of this work, yet a sociorhetorical perspective does not preclude the use of the document for historical reconstruction. 10. Note Josephus’s use of the term Ioudaioi, not the usual Galilaioi here (Vita 346). It should also be noted that when a Galilean like John of Gischala did come to the defense of the temple, Josephus pours the utmost scorn on his actions (B.J. 4.84; 5.528)! 11. Ya’akov Meshorer, City-Coins of Eretz-Israel and the Dekapolis in the Roman Period (Jerusalem: Israel Museum, 1985), 36. 12. On Herod’s exploitation of the temple for his own political interests, see Doron Mendels, The Rise and Fall of Jewish Nationalism (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 277–332, esp. 282–90. See also Peter Richardson, Herod: King of the Jews and Friend of the Romans (Personalities of the New Testament; Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1996; repr., Minneapolis: Fortress, 1999), 240–49, with a different emphasis, however, in regard to Herod’s intentions. 13. The suggestion that Herod’s redesign of the outer court was intended to transform it into a Roman-style agora is possible but not easy to verify, as can be seen by the widely varying scholarly views on Herod’s intentions regarding the temple restoration and expansion. In addition to those mentioned in the previous note, see Adela Yarbro Collins, “Jesus’ Action in Herod’s Temple,” in Antiquity and Humanity: Essays in Ancient Religion and Philosophy Presented to Hans Dieter Betz (ed. Adela Yarbro Collins and Margaret Mitchell; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001), 45–61, esp. 56–58.

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14. Seán Freyne, “Galileans, Phoenicians, Itureans: A Study of Regional Contrasts in the Hellenistic Age,” in Hellenism in the Land of Israel (ed. John J. Collins and Gregory Sterling; Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2001), 184–217. 15. Stephen Patterson, The Gospel of Thomas and Jesus (Sonoma, Calif.: Polebridge, 1993), 53–54 and 149–50. See, however, John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant (New York/Edinburgh: HarperCollins/T & T Clark, 1991), 355–60. 16. Matt 23:23c // Luke11:42c: “These things you ought to have done and not have ignored the others” is judged redactional by many Q scholars, including John S. Kloppenborg, “Nomos and Ethos in Q,” in Gospel Origins and Christian Beginnings: In Honor of James M. Robinson (ed. James E. Goehring et al.; Sonoma, Calif.: Polebridge, 1990), 35–48, esp. pp. 42–43. In discussing the issue of tithing, E. P. Sanders, Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah: Five Studies (London/Philadelphia: SCM/Trinity Press International, 1990), 48, adds the note that Jesus, “or the part of the early church which remembered the saying” is not attacking the tithing laws but is critical of the Pharisaic concern with the details of collection, given that different views were prevalent. 17. Sanders, Jewish Law, 49–51. 18. See Sanders, Jesus and Judaism, 61–71; see also Collins, “Jesus’ Action.” 19. The episode has such uncanny similarities with Jesus’ actions, especially as portrayed in John 7–8, that it would be tempting to see the former as a Josephan construction based on the profile of the latter. 20. Tacitus (Historiae 5.1–3) views the temple more as a fortress than as a religious shrine. For a discussion of this aspect, see Menahem Stern, ed., Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism (3 vols.; Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1974–84), 2:57–59. 21. The notion that identification of what might be described as “an Israelite” tradition in the sayings of Jesus suggests an anti-Jerusalem bias is quite unwarranted in my opinion. The Hebrew Bible itself contains both northern and southern traditions, which presumably were collected and edited in Jerusalem rather than in Galilee. The fact that they were not suppressed but allowed to remain as identifiably different indicates a shared heritage despite different, even conflicting perspectives. 22. Seán Freyne, “The Geography of Restoration: Galilee-Jerusalem Relations in Early Jewish and Christian Experience,” NTS 47 (2001): 289–311, esp. pp. 308–10. 23. Josephus’s account of the views of the Jerusalem leaders on hearing of the troubles between the Galileans on their way to a festival in Jerusalem and the Samaritans is revealing in this regard. They urged the Galilean crowds “not to bring the wrath of the Romans on Jerusalem, but to take pity on their country and the sanctuary (naos), on their wives and children; all these were threatened with

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destruction merely for the object of avenging a single Galilean” (B.J. 2.237; see A.J. 20.123). Compare the attitude expressed in John 11:46–48. 24. For a detailed examination of the stepped pools of Sepphoris, see Katharina Galor, “The Stepped Water Installations of Sepphoris,” in The Archaeology of Difference: Gender, Ethnicity, Class, and the “Other” in Antiquity (Studies in Honor of Eric M. Meyers) (2 vols.; ed. Douglas Edwards and Thomas McCollough; AASOR 60/61; Boston: American Schools of Oriental Research, 2007), 203–15. See also Reed, Archaeology, 23–61, esp. pp. 43–49; David Adan-Bayewitz and Mordachai Aviam, “Iotapata, Josephus and the Siege of 67,” JRA 10 (1997): 131–65; Douglas Edwards, “Khirbet Qana: From Jewish Village to Christian Pilgrim Site,” in The Roman and Byzantine Near East: Some Recent Archaeological Research (3 vols.; ed. J. H. Humphrey; JRASupS 49; Portsmouth, R.I.: Journal of Roman Archaeology, 2002), 3:101–32. 25. This would explain the indicators from the material culture of concern for purity maintenance at Sepphoris, but also at Yodefat and perhaps other larger “villages” in Galilee, such as Cana, Gamala, and Meiron. 26. Kloppenborg, “Nomos and Ethos,” 40–43. 27. Albrecht Alt, “Jesaja 8, 23–9, 6: Befreiungsnacht und Krönungstag,” in Kleine Schriften zur Geschichte Israel (3 vols.; Munich: C. Beck, 1953–1964), 2:206–25. Note the contrast in this passage, as interpreted by Alt, between the area of Galilee that was destroyed by Tiglath-pilesar and the extended geography of the restored territory, which corresponded with the borders of the ideal land. 28. See Seán Freyne, “The Revolt and the Regions,” in The First Jewish Revolt: Archaeology, History, and Ideology (ed. Andrea Berlin and Andrew Overman; New York: Routledge, 2002), 43–57. 29. Elsewhere he clearly approves of Gentiles who wished to join the Jewish community having to undergo the formal rite of initiation (A.J. 13.318–19; 20.139–43). In this instance, however, he presents himself as the liberal thinker who allows that “each person must worship God in keeping with his own chosen way.” See Mason, Life of Josephus, 75. 30. Likewise, the episode of John of Gischala’s profiteering from the demand among the Jews of Caesarea Philippi for oil that had been produced in Eretz Israel represents an equally complex situation involving Galilean Jewish relations with Gentiles, which of course Josephus exploits to the full in order to discredit one of his chief rivals in Galilee (Vita 74; B.J. 2.591–92). 31. The continuing importance of this information, which appears in several Talmudic texts, is apparent also from its appearance on the floor of a synagogue in the Bethshean valley. See J. Sussman, “The Inscription in the Synagogue at Rehob,” in Ancient Synagogues Revealed (ed. Lee I. Levine; Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1981), 146–53. 32. Rafael Frankel et al., Settlement Dynamics and Regional Diversity in Ancient Upper Galilee (Israel Antiquities Authority Reports 14; Jerusalem: Israel Antiquities

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Authority, 2001), 110–16. See also Mordechai Aviam and Peter Richardson, “Appendix A: Josephus’ Galilee in Archaeological Perspective,” in The Life of Josephus (ed. Steve N. Mason; Leiden: Brill, 2001), 177–201, esp. p. 179. 33. Ezekiel uses the term ger here, and the LXX renders it as prosylytos. The meaning of the Hebrew term had already been restricted somewhat by both the Deuteronomist and the Priestly authors from “stranger” to “sojourner,” thus bringing them under the obligations of Torah with regard to the temple, and this process is even more obvious in the LXX translation. See A. D. H. Mayes, “Deuteronomy 29 and Joshua 9 and the Place of the Gibeonites in Israel,” in Pentateuchal and Deuteronomistic Studies (ed. C. Brekelmann and J. Lust; BETL 94; Louvain: Leuven University Press, 1990), 321–25. 34. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism, 77–90; Peter Söllner, Jerusalem, die hochgebaute Stadt (Tübingen: Francke Verlag, 1998). 35. See Martin Hengel, “Ioudaia in der geographischen Liste Apg 2, 9–11 und Syrien als ‘GrossJudëa,’ ” RHPR 80 (2000): 51–68. 36. Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973). See “Religion as a Cultural System” (87–125, esp. 94–98). 37. While I may agree with Adela Yarbro Collins, “Jesus’ Action,” 49, in seeing the promise of rebuilding the temple in three days as Christian interpretation, later in the same article (55–56) she adduces good evidence from the Temple Scroll to suggest that the idea of a new temple for “the end of days” was current in the Qumran community, based on Ezekiel’s vision.

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TWELVE

Jewish Galilee

Its Hellenization, Romanization, and Commercialization

Peter Richardson

E. P. Sanders summarized his views of a Jewish Galilee in a lively review of John Dominic Crossan and Jonathan L. Reed’s Excavating Jesus,1 focusing on his complaint that Crossan and Reed rest too much on the socalled mission charge. “Free healing and free food” prompt Crossan and Reed to see Jesus as a socioeconomic reformer whose program was opposed to that of Antipas. Their descriptions of the Galilee, however, are inconsistent: Crossan’s Galilee was heavily Romanized, while Reed’s was less pervasively Roman. Not surprisingly, Sanders is more favorably disposed to Reed’s Galilee: The view that Galilee was deeply Hellenized is largely based on material remains dating from the third and fourth centuries. . . . Rome stationed a legion in Galilee around 130 ce. Thereafter signs of Gentile pagan culture appear in the archaeological record. . . . In the archaeological layers from Jesus’ time, however, none of the signs of Gentile paganism appear. For archaeologists as well as for students of the gospels and other literature, the debate about Hellenization is basically over. At the time of Jesus, the culture of Jewish Palestine was thoroughly and traditionally Jewish.2 Crossan and Reed’s signs of Romanization, according to Sanders’s review, are the following: (1) Antipas erected some buildings, restoring the town of Sepphoris and founding Tiberias, and (2) the streets of a part of Sepphoris 213

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were laid out on a grid, thus implying Romanization and commercialization. The results of these developments are that (3) the city got a bigger share of profits from agriculture and (4) these construction activities led to impoverishment of the region—all this despite the fact that Josephus emphasizes the prosperity of Galilee. The economic issue is important: for Crossan and Reed, Jesus was a rebel against economic Romanization, while for Sanders landlessness was a product of population growth; Crossan and Reed blame Antipas for problems, while Sanders holds that Antipas worked to reduce unemployment. Sanders suggests that part of the problem is their attributing to the time of Jesus the social and political unrest of brigands and would-be messianic prophets occurring between 40 and 70 c.e. He posits great changes in Jewish Palestine in the 40s, underscored especially by Gaius’s attempt to put his statue in the temple. He continues to disagree with the prevailing tendency to exaggerate the extent and significance of Roman occupation of Judea, holding that there was no full occupation of the region until later, which is demonstrated by the fact that it was not until the 130s c.e. that Jerusalem was made a colonia. Sanders sharply contrasts Crossan and Reed’s view with his own. They see “Jesus as a mild economic reformer, futilely trying to overthrow the Roman Empire by advocating free healing and food.” Sanders thinks that “the Jesus of the gospels looks forward to a great reversal. . . . The Kingdom will not be brought about by the slow improvement of social reform, but by a great climactic event that will change the world forever. Even the poorest will receive daily bread, and God’s will will be done on earth just as it is in heaven.”3 The contrasts in these two approaches raise major issues: the Romanization and commercialization of Galilee, the exploitation of peasants and their landlessness, the activity of brigands, and the question of changes in the 40s c.e. I will use primarily archaeological investigations to offer a different perspective from both of these general pictures.

J e w is h G a l i l e e ? On the general question of Galilee’s character, I am in closer agreement with Sanders, Freyne (see chapter 11), and Reed—accepting the wedge

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Sanders drives between the two authors—than with Crossan.4 Freyne mentions two surveys, one of which appeared as an appendix in the new Life of Josephus volume, which ended with a view that I continue to hold: Archaeology has thus supplied evidence of the Jewishness of the Galilee: Hasmonean and Herodian coins, ritual baths (mikvot), stone vessels, limited use of figurative art during the Second Temple period, Jewish inscriptions, and ancient synagogues. At the same time, archaeology has also indicated the presence of pagan elements mixed with or in close proximity to the Jewish towns and villages, and the presence of Jewish communities within pagan cities. The archaeological work of the past century or more has also disclosed with startling clarity the vigor of late Hellenistic–early Roman culture and religion in the cities of the Mediterranean coast and of the Decapolis that effectively ringed the Galilee. All of these aspects can give us an exceptionally good view of the Galilee at the time of Josephus, and of the cultural conflicts that resulted in the events that Josephus described so dramatically.5 I still insist upon a balance between the two poles of the debate, at the time both of Jesus and of Josephus. The intimate details of village life in the Galilee were essentially Jewish, but the wider context was a vigorous late Hellenistic–early Roman culture that had for centuries seeped into Galilee from the cities of the Mediterranean coast and the inland Decapolis. Galilean villages, although mainly Jewish, were not devoid of signs of late-Hellenistic paganism, and the Galilean cities, although more mixed, were not devoid of signs of Jewish life. It is a mistake simply to set cities against towns and villages as if size were a primary determinant. I am wary of appeals to urbanization / Romanization / commercialization and the corollaries of landlessness / deprivation / poverty. Yodefat (Jotapata) serves as a useful village study.6 It lay north of Mount Asmon, eight kilometers as the crow flies (less than ten on foot) from the urban center of Sepphoris. Since Yodefat was destroyed in 67 c.e., almost everything at the site derives from the first century c.e. or earlier. It makes a good case for a Jewish Galilee, though archaeology does not allow precision with respect to the pre- or post-40 c.e. date that Sanders emphasizes. Originally a Hellenistic farmstead, it became a small village in the Hasmonean

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period and then grew substantially in the late first century b.c.e. and early first century c.e. A sizable extension developed on the site’s southern plateau, laid out on near-Hippodamian principles. It also had a rather grand house that postdated the original Hellenistic farmstead by many years, with Pompeian-style frescoed walls and plastered floors painted to look like marble. This elite house, with a very urban decorative design, suggests a surprising degree of hellenization, similar to large houses and villas in Jerusalem or elsewhere. The example of Yodefat is important for the following reasons: (1) A too sharp distinction between a rural Jewish village and a Romanized urban center does not fit the facts. (2) The combination of an organic plan on the top and the hillsides laid alongside a Hippodamian plan on the southern plateau suggests that caution is needed when drawing inferences from planning principles. (3) The notion of increased poverty and movement away from a rural agricultural base in the pre-68 (Herodian–Early Roman) period is belied by the village’s expansion and by the character of the houses in the relevant period. (4) Yodefat played a fundamental role in the early stages of the revolt, while Sepphoris remained quiescent, though Yodefat’s proximity to Sepphoris might have been thought influential. Neighboring Khirbet Qana, two kilometers closer to Sepphoris, provides evidence about commercialization and monetization, and their effects on rural peasants.7 Three years of excavation have turned up relatively few coin finds, so the evidence may be thought inconclusive: the largest number of coins from the pre-70 period were Seleucid (ten), then Hasmonean (six), and then Herodian (one only), with a mere four Early Roman coins; there were eight Tyrian coins from several periods and two from coastal cities (Akko/Ptolemais). This distribution suggests that: (1) despite the substantial growth of the town (like Yodefat), from the Hellenistic to the Early Roman periods there was a steady decline in the numbers of coins from the various periods; (2) the smallest number of coins was from the Herodian period, despite claims about monetization in precisely that period and despite continuing Herodian rule in the Galilee; and (3) the coins from Hellenistic coastal cities Ptolemais and Tyre indicate, at the very least, trade connections.8 This suggests a picture at odds with the views of both Crossan and Reed, on the one hand, and of Sanders and Freyne, on the other. It

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seems there was less monetization, less poverty, more hellenization, and more urbanization than has been claimed. The archaeological evidence thus pulls messily in different directions! There is similar but much stronger evidence from the 839 coins found in excavations in the Jewish Quarter in Jerusalem, Area E.9 Donald Ariel summarizes the evidence as follows: there were 20 coins both nonHasmonean and prior to Jannaeus, 796 definitely or possibly Jannaeus, 43 unidentified Hasmonean or other first century b.c.e., 51 from Herod, 22 postdating Herod, and 102 unidentified. To put it comparatively, there were 839 coins from approximately one hundred years of Hasmonean rule, or about 8.5 coins per year, as over against 51 Herodian coins from a thirtysix-year Herodian period, or about 1.5 per year. In other words, between five and six times as many coins may have been circulating in Jerusalem in the Hasmonean period as in the Herodian period, even without factoring into this the increasing size of the population as the Hasmoneans gave way to Herod. So the differences may have been even more marked. By comparison, at Khirbet Qana, similarly factoring for lengths of the periods, there were about six times as many coins (.16 per year versus .025 per year), almost the identical result. In both locations there were about five or six times the number of coins for each Hasmonean year as there were for each Herodian year, leaving to one side population growth. This implies that in both a large city, such as Jerusalem, and a small village, such as Khirbet Qana, far from there being a dramatic increase in monetary supply, the reverse occurred. Money may have been in more substantial supply in the Hasmonean period than in the Herodian period. This implies that the usual views of monetization (and possibly of poverty and wealth) need revision. Another insight can also be drawn from the town of Khirbet Qana, where a fine collection of twelve or thirteen tomb complexes has been found, perhaps the largest collection of early Roman tombs to date in the Galilee. The interior design is similar to tombs in Jerusalem, with chambers and loculi in varying numbers (but no arcosolia or evidence of the use of ossuaries).10 Despite the similarities in burial chambers and loculi at Khirbet Qana and Jerusalem, the entrance courtyards are different from Jerusalem tombs. The nearest resemblance seems to be Canaanite tombs

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with shaft entrances, though even this similarity is not exact. Again, we find cultural mixture and mixed evidence. In a full-scale study of urbanization in the Roman Near East, I have attempted to demonstrate that (1) considerable parts of the urbanization of the Near East were carried out from the late first century b.c.e. through the first century c.e., preceding by many years the date Sanders favors of about 130 c.e., and (2) this urbanization was to a considerable extent indigenously motivated and not the passive result of a Roman policy of urbanization.11 While some features were copied from Rome, other features, including some of the main hallmarks of urbanization and monumentalization, were, in fact, eastern in origin, such as colonnaded streets, first constructed by Herod the Great at Antioch. The realities are complex and defy simple definitions.

Galilean Bandits? Sanders has correctly emphasized that Roman presence was relatively slight at the time of Jesus, especially in the Galilee, but there is still something to be said about a culture of resistance. There certainly was pervasive difficulty with brigands in the empire as a whole; the literary sources are strong and are spread fairly evenly throughout the period (Strabo, Seneca, Philo, Plutarch, Appian, Dio Cassius), though undoubtedly the level of activity rose and fell through the first centuries b.c.e. and c.e.12 In Palestine the literary sources are more or less limited to Josephus and the New Testament, and they both reflect conditions in the mid first century c.e. Josephus’s evidence is relatively rich for some aspects of the period, but it is selective and not fully representative of the situation, either at that time or at earlier times. He uses the brigands as an anticipation of his program to lumber a small group of revolutionaries with the responsibility for the revolt, so his picture of the heightened significance of the period from 40 to 66 c.e. should not be accepted uncritically. The problems were acute at other times, too: during the middle of the first century b.c.e., when Herod made his reputation, at the time of his death in 4 b.c.e. and during the transition to his successors, and in the lead-up to the Great Revolt. Rather than

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posit a major change in the 40s c.e. contingent on Gaius’s actions, it seems more accurate to imagine protest movements rising and waning according to political and social conditions. Archaeological evidence can be marshaled alongside literary evidence. A number of important archaeological sites were associated with protest movements, brigands, and revolt, providing perhaps better evidence than is available elsewhere in the empire. The hilly borderlands between Galilee and Syria, where the problems were greatest according to the literary evidence, had relatively few watchtowers or fortresses, while more undisturbed parts of the country, such as Samaria, had numerous watchtowers (second century b.c.e. to second century c.e.). Similarly, a key fortress at Keren Naftali, between Upper Galilee/Tyre and the Huleh Valley, was abandoned after Herod took it by siege; given its prominence and strategic suitability, one can only assume that it was no longer needed. And Herod’s fortified palaces (mainly in Samaria, Judea, and Perea) were all modified in the direction of palatial residences; their fortified elements were largely derived from the earlier Hasmonean period. So while we have good evidence of continuing brigandage, there is virtually no archaeological evidence of an increased defensive concern with brigands or social revolutionaries prior to the evidence associated with the First Revolt. This lack of evidence appears to call into question the exaggerated claims that are sometimes made about banditry and social dislocation.

G r e a t e r G a li l e e ? In his essay in this volume (chapter 11), Seán Freyne argues that Jesus worked from a notion of a “greater Galilee,” which included areas north of Galilee and the Golan (Lebanon and parts of Syria in today’s terms), consistent with Ezekiel’s vision.13 This proposal ties in with a passage that Freyne does not mention but that could be relevant, namely, Mark’s description of Jesus’ travels outside of Galilee in Mark 7:24–9:29 (described differently in Matt 15:21–28). This account of an itinerary through the regions of Tyre, Sidon, and the Decapolis is baffling at best, yet it seems a historically grounded reminiscence, though not an indication of a “Gentile mission.”14

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A survey of the Upper Galilee details an area that could lie behind Mark’s reference to “the region of Tyre”: some Jewish villages, included in Josephus’s description of “the land held by those who came up from Babylon,” that intruded upon land traditionally held by Tyre.15 Several more villages were referred to in a later baraita as “forbidden villages in the territory of Tyre” (which intruded even further just around the Ladder of Tyre). One might plausibly argue that, taken alone, these Jewish villages comprised the region of Tyre to which Jesus went, though so far as I am aware this suggestion has not been made. In the context of Mark 7:24–9:29, however, the limited area just north of Ptolemais does not fit Mark’s description of Jesus going beyond “the region of Tyre” to include “the region of Sidon and . . . the region of the Decapolis.” Mark has in mind something more than this northwest corner of modern Israel. Does he envisage a “greater Galilee”? Relevant to this question is the point that parts of the Galilee had been relatively recently judaized, as the excavations at Yodefat and Khirbet Qana and many other sites show. Some parts of the Upper Galilee were judaized for a relatively short time.16 There is good evidence both of continuity and of interruption: for example, the presence of Galilean Coarse Ware in the Meiron block ended in the Roman period, the presence of the Phoenician jar diminished so that it centered in the northwestern areas, use of Roman Eastern Sigillata was particularly strong in the western Upper Galilee, while Kfar Hananyah ware was densest in the east. Such factors point to an important transition from a non-Jewish Persian period to increased Jewish settlement patterns in the Roman period. The tabular summary of sites shows rapid growth and substantial numbers of new sites.17 This evidence underscores the Jewish character of the Galilee in the Early Roman period, but the absence of contemporary literary evidence of a concept of a greater Galilee along the lines of Ezekiel’s vision renders the proposal moot, in my opinion. Both Upper and Lower Galilee were filled with Jewish settlements following the Hasmonean Revolt, Lower Galilee more completely than Upper. All this is well-known, but it is now solidly established by the survey. It is tenuous to suggest, however, that Jesus reflected theologically on Ezekiel to develop a notion of a greater Galilee when the only basis for this suggestion is in the Hebrew Bible. I suspect there was no

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such first-century idea. Nevertheless, sites such as Khirbet Qana and Yodefat show the transition clearly in pottery assemblages, and in both cases the association of distinctive Jewish artifacts with houses whose origins lay in the Hellenistic period but whose use continued into the Early Roman period (and even into the Byzantine period in the case of Khirbet Qana) demonstrates the transition architecturally. The presence in both cases of such indicators as miqva’ot, stoneware, and the like reinforce the picture, and if the indications of a first- or second-century synagogue with associated Beth Midrash at Khirbet Qana are substantiated, the case will be even stronger.

G a l i l e e a n d t h e Te m p le ? Sanders’s idea of a prophetic anticipation of the destruction of the temple, one of the influential proposals in Jesus and Judaism,18 has become a standard critical view. I myself am not persuaded. Like Fredriksen (chapter 14) and Freyne in this volume, I think John’s overall chronological framework has much to commend it:19 the longer ministry, the day of the week of Jesus’ death (with the implied year), and several indications of chronological data that fit with the larger setting seem correct. John’s moving of the temple action to an early point, however, seems incorrect, and rejecting the incident altogether seems an act of desperation. So I agree with Sanders on the placing of the incident but not on its motivation. The most cogent explanation of Jesus’ action is anger; an independently attested saying anticipating the temple’s destruction then would have been linked to the account of the temple action later. Jesus’ anger was predicated on one of two practices: either the use of iconic Tyrian shekels for the temple tax or the change to an annual levy in place of a one-time-only tax, in the latter case putting Jesus on the side of Qumran. There is an architectural side to the question, which Sanders anticipates in a very suggestive comment on the Women’s Court: “At some point Jewish women were also admitted to the outer court. We hear of no objection to Herod’s construction of a Court of the Women, and a place for women probably preceded him . . . [citing Exod 38:8; Neh 8:2–3]. It may be that women were automatically given a place in the temple area when the space outside

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the sanctuary was made into an outer court.”20 Along somewhat the same lines, Freyne makes what is almost an aside, that Herod the Great included additional courtyards for the Gentiles and for women, a view more likely to be correct than the “automatic” view of Sanders. These developments had to take their place in the sociohistorical setting of Herod’s reign.21 Both the Women’s Court and the Court of Gentiles had not been formalized prior to Herod’s temple: the precursor institutions lacked separate facilities for women and Gentiles. The tabernacle, the first temple, Ezekiel’s visionary description of a rebuilt temple, Zerubbabel’s temple, and the Hasmonean rebuilding all lack these two zones of regulated “holiness.”22 Thus, both features of Herod’s temple architecture were precisions of earlier unrealized elements in the function of the temple, a fact that largely has been ignored in assessing the social and religious character of the period. The Temple Scroll (11QT) has almost as complex a series of courts as Herod’s (they were even larger than his completed project), but what is important about 11QT’s visionary proposals, which have features in common with Ezekiel’s and Herod’s, is that the outer courtyard was jointly for women, proselytes, and children. Gentiles and new proselytes were left outside 11QT’s temple complex altogether, and only partial access was given to third-generation proselytes, to the same degree as women had. Herod, we must suppose with the concurrence of the priestly authorities, institutionalized the relationship of women and Gentiles, not just proselytes, to the temple cult in ways that had not been done previously. Jesus probably affirmed the temple cult’s centrality, and he probably felt at home in it. But in his view some of its practices, not only such matters as justice, love, and faithfulness, fell short. The use of Tyrian shekels for the temple tax attracted his ire, and the annual demand for the temple tax may have been another irritant. It is probably significant that both practices were innovations of Judaism’s officials, the priestly authorities. I am almost prepared to propose that Herod’s innovations in the courtyard system were also a concern. If these architectural innovations were troubling to Jesus and his movement, two contrary positions might be possible: objections to Gentiles’ inclusion (within the outer wall of the temple) or exclusion (the well-known inscription on the barrier or hel limiting their entry); objections to women’s inclusion (beyond the hel) or exclusion (from the Court of Israel). Since Jesus’

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attitudes toward women and Gentiles remain matters of dispute because of the paucity of clear textual references, it is not possible to argue from the literary evidence as convincingly about his attitude to these Herodian innovations as about the priestly innovations. Regardless of the reactions that these innovations of Herod the Great might have prompted, they reflected gradual changes in the socioreligious character of Judaism in the preceding couple of generations, together with a new affirmation of the religious-political role that Judaism might play in the Roman world. The differently built forms of the temple influenced attitudes to the temple at different periods, based on eager approval of or anxious resistance to the implications of these changes. The differences, for example, between Qumran and the temple authorities probably had as much to do with differences over temple tax, coinage, entry of Gentiles, roles of women, and other very visible practices as with differences in the interpretation of torah.

Jesus? I conclude with a rough sketch of Jesus that fits within these few elements of his social setting. Antipas perceived Jesus as a social revolutionary, not perhaps as potentially violent but as a threat nevertheless, consistent with Josephus’s report that Antipas executed John the Baptist because he “feared lest the great influence John had over the people might put it into his power and inclination to raise a rebellion” (A.J. 18.118). Jesus felt himself facing the same fate. So he spent time outside of Galilee, not because he saw the regions of Tyre, Sidon, and the Decapolis as parts of a “greater Galilee” but because Antipas was a menace. Jesus felt less threatened in the regions around Caesarea Panias, controlled by Philip, perhaps because Philip was a more just ruler, if Josephus’s comments are accurate. When Jesus returned to Galilee, he went secretly (Mark 9:30). Soon thereafter he went to Jerusalem for the last time. He was executed ultimately between two lēstai. Probably no one, least of all Jewish or Roman authorities, seriously thought of him as a brigand, but there is little doubt that the process’s justification included either brigandage or revolution as an important element of the case against him.

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Between Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem and his execution, the temple incident was his most publicly visible action. This is best interpreted in terms of socioreligious protest noted above, objections to Tyrian shekels, the annual tax (in this respect like Qumran), and possibly the innovations of Herod’s rebuilding of the temple a generation earlier. Jesus certainly fits within a Jewish Galilee; his actions and attitudes during his visits to Jerusalem must have been influenced by Galilean attitudes and behaviors. This makes it crucially important for accounts of the historical Jesus that we create as accurate a picture of Galilee as possible, avoiding oversimplified generalizations. Ed Sanders has devoted his career to clarifying these issues in sometimes thankless ground-clearing work that has reshaped more than one field. We should be grateful that he has left us a few minor bumps in the road to which we still can turn our attention. In the end, as he has shown so clearly, practice, belief, and material culture (the aspect that I wish to emphasize) all dovetail into a single picture. Those of us who worry over the material culture side of things can only be grateful for his prodigious accomplishments.

Notes 1. E. P. Sanders, “Who Was Jesus? Review of John Dominic Crossan & Jonathan L. Reed’s Excavating Jesus: Beneath the Stones, Behind the Text,” New York Review of Books, April 10, 2003, 49–51. 2. Ibid., 49–50. 3. Ibid., 51. 4. For earlier general comments, see Peter Richardson, “Enduring Concerns: Desiderata for Future Historical Jesus Research,” in Whose Historical Jesus? (ed. William E. Arnal and Michel Desjardins; Studies in Christianity and Judaism 7; Waterloo, Ont.: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1997), 296–307. On urbanism, see Peter Richardson, “Archaeological Evidence for Religion and Urbanism in Caesarea Maritima,” in Religious Rivalries and the Struggle for Success in Caesarea Maritima (ed. Terrence L. Donaldson; Studies in Christianity and Judaism 8; Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2000), 11–34. 5. Mordechai Aviam and Peter Richardson, “Appendix A: Josephus’ Galilee in Archaeological Perspective,” in The Life of Josephus (ed. Steve N. Mason; Leiden: Brill, 2001), 177–201; see also the assessment in William Arnal, Jesus and the Village Scribes (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001), 96–155.

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6. Peter Richardson et al., “3-D Visualizations of a First-Century Galilean Town,” in Virtual Reality in Archaeology (ed. Juan Barceló, Maurizio Forte, and Donald H. Sanders; BAR International Series; Oxford: BAR, 2000), 195–204; Peter Richardson, “First-Century Houses and Q’s Setting,” in Christology, Controversy and Community: New Testament Essays in Honour of David Catchpole (ed. David G. Horell and Christopher M. Tuckett; Leiden: Brill, 2000), 63–83; Peter Richardson, “Khirbet Qana (and Other Villages) as a Context for Jesus,” in Jesus and Archaeology (ed. James H. Charlesworth; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), 120–44. These essays also appear in Peter Richardson, Building Jewish in the Roman East (SupJSJ 92; Waco, Tex.: Baylor University Press, 2004). 7. My article “Khirbet Qana” suggests preliminary indications of ways in which commercial opportunities may have been cooperatively developed between Yodefat and Cana. 8. No hoard of Tyrian shekels was found, unlike Gamla in the Golan; hoards of Tyrian shekels may in some cases have been related to close adherence of the temple cult. 9. Donald T. Ariel, “The Jerusalem Mint of Herod the Great: A Relative Chronology,” INJ 14 (2000–2002): 99–124. 10. Peter Richardson, “Khirbet Qana’s Necropolis and Ethnic Questions,” in The Archaeology of Difference: Gender, Ethnicity, Class, and the “Other” in Antiquity (Studies in Honor of Eric M. Meyers) (2 vols.; eds. Douglas Edwards and Thomas McCollough; AASOR 60/61; Boston: American Schools of Oriental Research, 2007), 257–66; Peter Richardson, “The James Ossuary’s Decoration and Social Setting,” in Building Jewish, 309–24; see also Byron R. McCane, Roll Back the Stone: Death and Burial in the World of Jesus (Harrisburg, Pa.: Trinity Press International, 2003), who emphasizes the mixture of Hellenistic and Jewish ideas and influences. 11. See Peter Richardson, City and Sanctuary: Religion and Architecture in the Roman Near East (London: SCM, 2002). 12. Peter Richardson and Douglas Edwards, “Jesus and Palestinian Social Protest: Archaeological and Literary Perspectives,” in Handbook of Early Christianity: Social Science Approaches (ed. Anthony J. Blasi, Jean Duhaime, and Paul-André Turcotte; Walnut Creek, Calif.: AltaMira, 2002), 247–66. 13. See pp. 205–7. 14. E. P. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism (Philadelphia/London: Fortress/SCM, 1985), 212–21, esp. 219. 15. Rafael Frankel et al., Settlement Dynamics and Regional Diversity in Ancient Upper Galilee (Israel Antiquities Authority Reports 14; Jerusalem: Israel Antiquities Authority, 2001), 108–14. 16. See the analyses and tables in Frankel et al., Settlement Dynamics, esp. 126–40.

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17. Frankel et al., Settlement Dynamics, 132–33 for the former point, and 126 (Table 5.1 “Number of Sites—Continuity and Interruption”) for the latter. 18. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism, 61–76; per contra, see Peter Richardson, “Why Turn the Tables? Jesus’ Protest in the Temple Precincts,” in SBLSP (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992), 507–23. 19. See pp. 205 and 207; also Peter Richardson, “What Has Cana to Do with Capernaum?” NTS 48 (2002): 314–31. 20. E. P. Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief 63 b.c.e.–66 c.e. (London/ Philadelphia: SCM/Trinity Press International, 1992), 57; see 51–69. 21. Peter Richardson, “Origins, Innovations, and Significance of Herod’s Temple,” in Building Jewish, 271–98. A short summary appeared in Peter Richardson, Herod, King of the Jews and Friend of the Romans (Personalities of the New Testament; Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1996; repr., Minneapolis: Fortress, 1999), 245–47. 22. The tabernacle had one courtyard (Exod 29:9–19; 38:9–29); the temple of Solomon was complicated by the enclosure of the royal palace within the same courtyard, but it seems to have had only an “inner courtyard” (1 Kings 6:36; see 2 Sam 4:9: “the courtyard of the priests and the large court”); Ezekiel’s vision included an outer and inner courtyard, with even the outer one not accessible to the uncircumcised (Ezek 40:24–37); Zerubbabel’s temple is poorly represented in the sources (see Ezra, Haggai, Zechariah), as is the Hasmonean rebuilding. The most intriguing evidence for the Hasmonean period derives from the Temple Scroll (11QT) with its “inner courtyard” (col. 37), “second courtyard” (col. 38–39) apparently closed to women and children, and a “third courtyard” for women, proselytes in the third generation, and children who had not yet paid their half-shekel tax (col. 40). This third courtyard was approximately the equivalent of the women’s courtyard in the Herodian temple, whose details are well-known.

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THIRTEEN

Crucifying Caiaphas

Hellenism and the High Priesthood in Life of Jesus Narratives

Adele Reinhartz

To Ed P. Sanders—teacher, mentor, friend

Caiaphas the high priest is one of the most vivid players in contemporary retellings of the gospel story. Although his name appears only nine times in the New Testament, Caiaphas takes center stage as life of Jesus stories, of all genres, wind toward their inevitable conclusion: the condemnation and crucifixion of Jesus. In many, though not all, of these narratives, Caiaphas is the calculating political leader who orchestrates the arrest, trial, and death sentence of Jesus. He thus bears ultimate responsibility for the crucifixion. For example, in the Passion play performed in Oberammergau, Germany, every decade for the last four centuries, Caiaphas persuades his council to condemn Jesus to death by predicting that “the man will proclaim himself the king of Israel, then will schism and rioting flood the land, then will the Romans come with troops and desolate the land and people. . . . Vindication rests with us. We must this very day frame some strong course of action.”1 Caiaphas asks his colleagues to support a scheme that will remove Jesus and at the same time absolve him and the other Jewish leaders of any blame. “Brothers,” he 227

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says, “it is better if we could bring it about that the Governor of the Province condemn him to death—then will all responsibility, all blame, be removed from us.”2 In Norman Mailer’s novel The Gospel according to the Son, a similar portrait appears. Jesus is arrested, taken to the house of Caiaphas, blindfolded, mocked, and then condemned by Caiaphas, the chief priests, and the Council, with the aid of false witnesses. During his last, long night in the temple dungeon, Mailer’s Jesus reflects on the words of Judas, “the wisest in explaining how our priests went about arranging matters with the Romans.” Jesus comments: “Judas had spoken often of these two men and how they kept peace in Jerusalem. Pontius Pilate allowed his soldiers to commit no insolence against the Great Temple, and Caiaphas tolerated no orthodox burial for those Jews who died in attacks upon Roman soldiers. Thereby they maintained order.” Jesus knew that his fate depended on the nature of the agreement that Caiaphas and Pilate would establish between them.3 Caiaphas is treated similarly in the renditions of the Jesus story in Hollywood films. In Cecil B. DeMille’s 1927 silent film, The King of Kings, Caiaphas appears early on as a Roman appointee “who cared more for Revenue than for Religion—and saw in Jesus a menace to his rich profits from the Temple.” DeMille’s rendition of the trial before Pilate portrays Caiaphas as the one who not only accuses Jesus before the Roman prefect but also continues to scheme behind the scenes to make sure that a death sentence is handed down. Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ portrays a ruthless, cruel Caiaphas whose hatred of Jesus is palpable but apparently without foundation. Caiaphas and his minions are portrayed in dark clothing, in surroundings lit by red flames, evoking images of hellfire. Satan moves smoothly and stealthily among them as they condemn Jesus to death and observe his torments at the hands of sadistic Roman soldiers and his painful walk to Golgotha. At the moment of Jesus’ death, Caiaphas holds on to his head and screams. Moments later, the camera cuts away to Satan, now banished below the earth, who screams in pain as her hair lifts up off her head and the earth closes over her. Their synchronic screams confirm the close association of priest and Satan and accuses them of colluding in deicide.4 Like these popular renditions of the life of Jesus, many academic narratives also place primary responsibility for Jesus’ death upon Caiaphas. In

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C. H. Dodd’s The Founder of Christianity, for example, the chief priests, led by Caiaphas, decide that Jesus must be “liquidated,” lest he disturb “the extremely delicate balance by which Judaea enjoyed a limited autonomy under Roman rule.”5 Not only must Jesus die, he must also be discredited. For this reason, the death sentence, though orchestrated by Caiaphas, must be pronounced formally by the prefect.6 The idea that Caiaphas was directly involved in the process leading to Jesus’ death finds support in the Gospel Passion narratives. According to Matt 26:3–5, “the chief priests and the elders of the people gathered in the palace of the high priest, who was called Caiaphas, and they conspired to arrest Jesus by stealth and kill him,”7 though not during the festival, for fear of causing a riot. John also implies conspiracy: in 11:49–50 Caiaphas tells the council, “You know nothing at all! You do not understand that it is better for you to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed.” From that day on they planned to put him to death (John 11:53). In both the primary and secondary narratives, Caiaphas and his priestly company emerge as instrumental in the events leading up to the crucifixion. Our high priest is a “crucifying” Caiaphas in the active sense of the term. The question is: Why? What motivated Caiaphas to turn a fellow Jew over to the Roman authorities for certain death?

P o l i t ic a l I n t e r p r e t a t i o n s A number of recent studies of the historical Jesus take their cues directly from the Gospel portraits of Caiaphas and argue that his actions must be situated squarely within the particular political, social, and economic structures of the Roman Empire. As high priest, Caiaphas was the one who mediated between Israel and God. In the Roman period, however, the high priest also was charged with the important (if unenviable) task of mediating between Israel and Rome. Ed Sanders argues that in contriving to eliminate Jesus, Caiaphas simply was carrying out his duties as prescribed: to preserve the peace and to prevent riots and bloodshed. Jesus was dangerous because his self-declarations as well as his behavior in the temple could all too easily cause a riot, which Roman troops would put down with great loss of life (see John 11:50).8

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Similarly, Paula Fredriksen views Caiaphas’s actions in the limited context of the need for order. She attributes no role whatsoever to Jesus’ teaching or to what she calls his “temple tantrum,” but rather argues that it was the crowd’s enthusiastic (if ill-informed) acclamation of Jesus as Messiah that led Caiaphas to act.9 Fredriksen does not place sole or even primary responsibility for Jesus’ death upon Caiaphas, but, like novelist Norman Mailer, she argues that Caiaphas and Pilate would have worked together, needing to move swiftly, effectively, and in secret in order to avoid a public riot.10 According to the position represented by Sanders and Fredriksen, Caiaphas is responding not to any particular element in Jesus’ teaching but only to the potential for havoc that his presence and activities in Jerusalem created. A number of recent studies provide another perspective on Caiaphas’s actions by placing them explicitly within the context of the relationship between Rome as colonizer and the Jews as colonized. Marcus Borg states: “The society of which Jesus was a part had been promised universal sovereignty [by God] and yet found itself in a colonial situation under a mighty and often ruthless world power with its own claims to universal sovereignty.”11 In contrast to Fredriksen, who argues that Jesus did not intend a revolt against Rome when he came to Jerusalem for the Passover festival, John Dominic Crossan believes that Jesus had a personal and corporate social program for the kingdom of God there and then in the Lower Galilee and, later, in Jerusalem as well. He writes, “That program opposed the systemic injustice and structural violence of colonial oppression by Roman imperialism.”12 Many contemporary historical Jesus scholars connect this political program to apocalypticism, an ideology of resistance that in their view fueled Jesus’ actions both in Galilee and in Jerusalem on the eve of his last Passover, and directly led to Caiaphas’s successful plot against his life.13 Some scholars emphasize other kinds of tensions in addition to or instead of the political issues mentioned above. John Meier summarizes the various aspects of Jesus’ background that converged to put him on a collision course with Caiaphas and the Jerusalem priesthood: He was a no-account Galilean in conflict with Jerusalem aristocrats; he was (relative to his opponents) a poor peasant in conflict with the urban rich; he was a charismatic wonderworker in conflict with priests

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very much concerned about preserving the central institutions of their religion and their smooth operation; he was an eschatological prophet promising the coming of God’s kingdom in conflict with Sadducean politicians having a vested interest in the status quo.14 Meier argues that these tensions stemmed from a more fundamental conflict—that between layperson and clergy. In his view, Jesus “was a religiously committed layman who seemed to be threatening the power of an entrenched group of priests.”15 Borg, Crossan, Meier, and others view Caiaphas’s actions not only as motivated by a desire to maintain order but also as a response to Jesus’ direct challenge to the various hierarchies in which the high priest was implicated. Jesus’ challenge incorporated the essence of his social message, namely, a concern for the poor, the rural, and the colonized. For this reason, Jesus inevitably, and indeed intentionally, came into conflict with the high priest, who represented the rich, urban Jewish leadership in collaboration with the Roman oppressor.

R e li g io u s a n d C u l t u r a l I n t e r p r e t a t i on s All of the above interpretations, though not directly supported by the primary sources, are generally consistent with Caiaphas’s role as high priest as it emerges in the Gospels as well as in Josephus’s accounts of the high priests in the Roman period.16 The same cannot be said for another set of interpretations that is prominent in the current body of historical Jesus research. According to some scholars, Caiaphas’s condemnation of Jesus is to be situated not only in the hierarchies and power politics of Roman occupation, but in a much broader, explicitly religious framework: that of the opposition between Judaism and Hellenism. In this scenario, the crucifixion is the tragic outcome of a far-reaching conflict between pure and untainted Judaism, represented by Jesus, and corrupt and materialistic Hellenism, represented by Caiaphas. Bruce Chilton emphasizes the centrality of the opposition between Judaism and Hellenism in the experience of Palestinian Jewry in the time of Jesus. He argues that Jesus is to be placed firmly in the company of Jewish

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peasants who “were a beleaguered people under the thumb of Rome who cherished their rich Judaic customs and traditions” and “vigilantly shielded themselves from the incursions of Hellenistic culture.”17 Caiaphas mediated the relationship between the Jewish populace and the Roman prefect Pilate, occupying an uncomfortably liminal position with respect to each.18 The late David Flusser, on the other hand, couples the opposition between Judaism and Hellenism tightly to the opposition between the Pharisees and the Sadducees in the post-Maccabean period. Flusser views the Sadducees as the prime representatives of Hellenism in its Palestinian Jewish mode. This much is implied by the evidence concerning a certain Jerusalemite named Jason, a Sadducee who bears a Greek name and whose tomb boasts a Greek inscription inviting men to enjoy their life.19 By the time of Jesus, the Sadducees had made a pact with Rome and ensconced themselves in the Jerusalem temple through the high priest and his priestly council.20 By contrast, the Pharisees fought against Hellenism and defended Jewish law and custom in the civil war of the late Maccabean period. By Jesus’ time they were recognized as the teachers of the masses and consciously identified themselves with a popular faith in line with a nonsectarian universal Judaism.21 Although Jesus criticized the hypocrisy of the Pharisees, this critique was not instrumental in bringing about his death. The Pharisees would never have handed a fellow Jew over to the Romans, since they considered this to be a “repulsive act of sacerdotal despotism.”22 Flusser suggests that “Caiaphas decided to act because he feared that Jesus’ movement and its possible success among the people would trigger violent Roman intervention. His anxiety was exaggerated but not unfounded.” According to Flusser, “this way of reasoning and acting was and is without doubt contrary to the Jewish faith’s humane approach—but a Sadducean high priest could disagree.”23 By virtue of his official role and Sadducean affiliations, Caiaphas—the Sadducean and, by implication, the highly hellenized high priest—becomes the antithesis of a humane Jewish faith that is represented both by Jesus and by the Pharisees who, though not identical with the later rabbis, should be seen as their spiritual predecessors.24 The notion that the conflict between Jesus and Caiaphas is propelled by the fundamental opposition between Judaism and Hellenism comes to a detailed and explicit expression in the work of N. T. Wright, who argues:

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If Jesus is to be vindicated as the true representative of YHWH’s people; and if he, Caiaphas, is presently sitting in judgment on him; then Caiaphas himself, and the regime he represents, are cast in a singularly unflattering light. His court has become part of the evil force which is oppressing the true Israel, and which will be overthrown when YHWH vindicates his people. Caiaphas, the High Priest, has become the new Antiochus Epiphanes, the great tyrant oppressing YHWH’s people.25 Wright’s description of Caiaphas as the new Antiochus is not merely a colorful and provocative rhetorical flourish. It is part and parcel of an elaborate theory regarding Jesus’ messianic and martyrological consciousness that can be pieced together from Wright’s massive study Jesus and the Victory of God. The basic premise of Wright’s theory is that Jesus, like all first-century Jews living in Palestine, would have been very familiar with the story of Hanukkah, in which the underdog Maccabean warriors succeeded in warding off the imposition of Hellenistic religion engineered by Antiochus IV and his Jewish collaborators. Jesus and his compatriots would have seen this story not only as an important element of their people’s history but also as a paradigm of or analogy to their own situation under Roman rule. Jesus saw himself as the one who would deliver the faithful Jews from this current incarnation of the Hellenistic menace to their ancestral Jewish religion and way of life.26 Indeed, Jesus modeled his teachings and actions on the very words and deeds of the Maccabean martyrs, often taking them a step or two further.27 For example, Jesus’ aphorism regarding money rendered to Caesar should be read as a coded statement in which Jesus deliberately echoes and subverts the meaning of Mattathias’s last words as recorded in 1 Macc 2:66–68: “Pay back the Gentiles in full, and obey the commands of the law.”28 Where Mattathias called for retribution, however, Jesus called for the prompt filing of one’s tax return.29 Similarly, Jesus’ so-called cleansing of the temple can be seen as a new and improved version of the Maccabean rededication of the temple. For Jesus, says Wright, the activities of the present temple authorities, led by Caiaphas, polluted the temple much as the Seleucids did under Antiochus IV. Jesus fought not so much to restore the temple to its pristine state,

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as did Judas Maccabeus before him, but to bring God’s rule into the world once and for all.30 In doing so, Jesus had in view the scene painted in 2 Macc 8:16–17, according to which “Maccabeus gathered his forces together . . . and exhorted them not to be frightened by the enemy and not to fear the great multitude of Gentiles who were wickedly coming against them, but to fight nobly, keeping before their eyes the lawless outrage that the Gentiles had committed against the holy place, and the torture of the derided city, and besides, the overthrow of their ancestral way of life.” It was the temple act, above all, that set the high priest against Jesus, for he too understood Jesus’ actions in light of the sequence of events enshrined in the celebration of Hanukkah. The Hanukkah plot line included victory over the pagans, cleansing of the temple, fulfillment of the promises, and establishment of the new dynasty.31 So too, Caiaphas feared, might Jesus’ audacious victory in the temple overthrow his own rule and disrupt the current order of things forever. For Wright, not only Jesus’ words and deeds but also his manner of death aligned him with the Maccabean martyrs. These martyrs experienced a painful death that can be seen as redemptive, in the sense that their suffering was intended to spare the nation as a whole.32 Jesus’ expectation of a painful death was grounded in the story of the seven martyred sons in 2 Maccabees 7. This passage recounts how one son after another chose to die rather than transgress the laws of his ancestors by eating forbidden meat. Before each son finally succumbed to the horrendous torture prepared under the king’s orders, he spoke passionately about atonement for sin, the hope for future resurrection, and God’s eventual punishment of the king for having fought against God (2 Macc 7:19).33 These declarations help to explain Jesus’ mind-set as he approached his own martyrdom in Jerusalem. For these reasons, says Wright, “Jesus’ story sets him firmly within major narratives of Jewish tradition: Daniel would face the lions and be exalted, Judith would go into the tent of the enemy commander and emerge victorious. Maccabean martyrs would die horribly and a new dynasty would be set up within an independent Israel. The son of man would suffer at the hands of the beasts and then be lifted up to the right hand of the Ancient of Days.”34 Jesus reenacted the suffering of the Maccabean martyrs and also completed the story that they had begun. He was not simply “enabling the

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nation of Israel to escape from her exile while the rest of the world lurched towards its doom. His symbolic actions had pointed towards a renewal of Israel which broke the boundaries, the wineskins, the taboos, and which incorporated a new set of symbols. His last symbolic action, we may assume, was intended to continue and complete this process.”35 Wright portrays Jesus as the representative of “true” and pure Judaism in holy conflict with the corrupting powers of Hellenism. These powers were embodied not only by Rome but also by the Jewish authorities, and by Caiaphas in particular. Wright expresses Jesus’ assessment of Caiaphas in the harshest possible terms: “The satan had taken up residence in Jerusalem, not merely in Rome, and was seeking to pervert the chosen nation and the holy place into becoming a parody of themselves, a pseudo-chosen people intent on defeating the world with the world’s methods, a pseudoholy place seeking to defend itself against the world rather than to be the city set on a hill, shining its light on the world.” Jesus had no choice but to fight this evil power with every means at his disposal: He would go, then, to the place where the satan had made his dwelling. He would defeat the cunning plan which would otherwise place the whole divine purpose in jeopardy. . . . He would stand, like Mattathias or Judas, against not only the pagans but also the compromisers within the chosen people, more particularly those who wielded power, those who ran the holy place, the shepherds who had been leading the people astray. Jesus, once more, was a first-century Jew, not a twentieth-century liberal.36 In taking this bold stand against the high priest, the “new Antiochus Epiphanes,” Jesus was not rejecting Judaism and the fundamental principles of election and temple at all. On the contrary, he constituted the full embracing and indeed fulfillment of these quintessentially Jewish concepts.37 Wright’s grand theory about Jesus’ Maccabean consciousness possesses the drama and pathos befitting his weighty tome. Of course, the analogies he draws between the players in the Hanukkah story and those in the Jesus story do not quite fit. One would think, for example, that the Roman emperor, or even Pilate, and not the Jewish high priest would take on the role of

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Antiochus IV. Leaving such problems aside, the sharp opposition between Judaism and Hellenism that emerges in the work of Wright and others is surprising in the context of contemporary New Testament scholarship. These studies reintroduce, through the back door, a distinction that was evicted from the standard rehearsals of Second Temple Judaism some thirty years ago. In works prior to the late 1960s, it is not uncommon to encounter the assertion that Judaism remained untainted by Hellenism. Typical is Günther Bornkamm’s Jesus of Nazareth, which asserts that “through the power of . . . faith, not only ancient Israel but no less post-exilic Judaism did its best to hold aloof from the changing foreign powers, although the land lay in the magnetic field of their aspirations. Again and again it repelled the influences of their cultures and religions, and never produced anything like Babylonian or Egyptian science, not to mention anything of the type of Greek philosophy and science.”38 Scholarship from the 1930s through the 1960s produced strong evidence undermining the sharp distinction between Judaism and Hellenism.39 Arguably the most influential study in this regard in the New Testament field is Martin Hengel’s Judaism and Hellenism, first published in German in 1969.40 Speaking of New Testament scholarship at the time of his study, Hengel noted that “one fundamental presupposition of historical work on the New Testament which seems to be taken for granted is the differentiation, in terms of tradition, between ‘Judaism’ on the one hand and ‘Hellenism’ on the other.”41 Hengel’s detailed study of the literary and other evidence for the complex relationship between Judaism and Hellenism in the period between Alexander’s conquest in 323 b.c.e. and the Maccabean revolt in circa 165 b.c.e. concludes that all of the major groups of Second Temple Judaism that emerged from that conflict (that is, the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes) were strongly influenced by Hellenism. “For this reason,” says Hengel, “the distinction between ‘Palestinian’ Judaism and the ‘Hellenistic’ Judaism of the Greek-speaking Diaspora, which has been customary for so long, now becomes very questionable. Strictly speaking, for the Hellenistic Roman period the Judaism of the mother country must just as much be included under the heading ‘Hellenistic Judaism’ as that of the western Diaspora.”42 To be sure, not all New Testament scholars accept Hengel’s last statement, at least in its absolute form. Geza Vermes disagrees with Hengel rather

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categorically, declaring that he is firmly convinced of the “untenability” of Hengel’s declaration that all Judaism from the middle of the third century b.c.e. must be designated “Hellenistic Judaism.”43 E. P. Sanders offers a more tempered view. He argues that while “Simon and his successors acted very much like other Hellenistic kings, and various aspects of Hellenistic culture continued to percolate through Palestine,” the Maccabean victory ensured that distinctive Jewish practices, such as circumcision, as well as the normative role of Jewish law would be maintained, and that “there would be no further effort to break down the barriers between Judaism and the rest of the Graeco-Roman world.”44 Yet the maintenance of distinctive practices and beliefs does not in itself argue against Hellenistic influence, nor does it necessarily place barriers between Judaism and Hellenism. Martin Goodman argues that, in fact, “the oddities of the Jews in the Graeco-Roman world were no greater than that of the many other distinctive ethnic groups, such as Idumaeans, Celts, or Numidians, who between them created the varied tapestry of society in this region and period.”45 Indeed, if we were to base our view of the Jews solely on what others said about them, “Jews would not seem anything like as marginal in the Graeco-Roman world as they do when their own, often jaundiced, views of the outside provide the basis for understanding them.”46 Virtually every recent historical Jesus study includes a survey of the Jewish background of Jesus that acknowledges the pervasive impact of Hellenism upon the diverse groups within Second Temple Palestinian Judaism. But when the time comes to account for the timing and manner of Jesus’ death, this nuanced view often falls away. Even scholars who view Palestinian Judaism as thoroughly hellenized can find a way to incorporate the sharp opposition between Judaism and Hellenism into their analysis. John Dominic Crossan, for example, places Jesus within a broad Mediterranean context in which the central philosophical trends and schools of the Hellenistic world have become firmly entrenched among all levels of society. Crossan’s Jesus was an itinerant Cynic Jewish philosopher who traveled the hills and dales of Galilee with his followers, teaching “free healing and common eating, religious and economic egalitarianism” to rural Galilean peasants.47 Yet Crossan too must account finally for the fact that one hellenized Jew, Caiaphas, plotted against the life of another hellenized Jew, namely,

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Jesus. He does so by positing a distinction within Hellenistic Judaism itself. This is the distinction between exclusive and inclusive Judaism. Crossan defines this difference on the basis of exclusive and inclusive reactions to Hellenism. While he explicitly disavows value judgments according to which exclusivity is wrong and inclusivity is right,48 his distinctions between exclusive and inclusive Judaism correspond rather neatly to the distinctions between Judaism and Hellenism as they appear in both Flusser and Wright. Exclusive Judaism refers to that form of Judaism that sought to preserve its ancient traditions as conservatively as possible with minimal conjunction with Hellenism; inclusive Judaism refers to that form of Judaism that sought to adapt its ancestral customs as liberally as possible with maximal association, combination, or collaboration with Hellenism.49 Crossan’s interpretive move subsumes the Judaism/Hellenism dichotomy into his framework of a hellenized Jewish Palestine. This way, Crossan can have his cake and eat it too: he can accept the evidence for hellenization in first-century Palestine and still retain the crucial opposition of elements within Judaism as an explanation for the conflict between Jesus and the Jewish authorities headed by Caiaphas. Interestingly, even Hengel himself backs away from the implications of his own theory. Despite the bold way in which he collapses the dichotomy between pure Palestinian Judaism and hellenized Diaspora Judaism, he limits the most powerful effects of hellenization to those he refers to as the Jewish upper classes. He argues that the “process of Hellenization did not affect all the Jewish population in the same way. Following the character of the new civilization in the conquered areas of the East as being a civilization for the aristocrats and more well-to-do citizens, it had an open and direct influence only on the relatively narrow, but normative stratum of the priestly and lay nobility and the prosperous city population.”50 Thus Hengel’s work provides not only a basis upon which to critique the Judaism/Hellenism dichotomy of life of Jesus narratives, but also a foundation upon which to support the polarity as well. Not only does the Judaism versus Hellenism framework fly in the face of what we now know to have been the profound penetration of Hellenism into all types and aspects of Judaism in Jesus’ time, it also places an insupportable and unsupported burden upon Caiaphas himself. If Caiaphas were indeed a

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second Antiochus Epiphanes, as Wright calls him, one might have expected him to do all he could to insinuate Greek language and Hellenistic culture into the “pure” Judaism of first-century Palestine. One might have expected him to establish a gymnasium right under the citadel or to induce Jewish young men to wear the Greek hat, as did the high priest Jason according to 2 Macc 4:12; or to advocate the removing of the marks of circumcision and abandoning the holy covenant, as did the hellenizers described in 1 Macc 1:13–15; or to raid the temple sanctuary for his own enrichment, plunder the city, persecute its Jewish inhabitants, install Gentile cults, and burn the books of the law, as Antiochus IV is described as doing in 1 Macc 1:20–56. But the primary sources provide no support for the notion that Caiaphas either imposed or promoted hellenization in any form.51 Just as Caiaphas, in effect, crucifies Jesus on the basis of false witnesses, so do these scholars, colloquially speaking, crucify Caiaphas on the basis of no evidence whatsoever. When otherwise careful scholars frame their historical theories around hypotheses that cannot be supported from the primary sources, we may well suspect that there is ideology at work on one level or another. How might we account for the identification of Caiaphas as the supreme hellenizing villain, out to destroy Jesus, the champion of pure, uncorrupted Judaism? I would suggest that at least two factors are at work here. One is a tendency among some New Testament scholars to promote a highly negative view of Hellenism as a historical and cultural phenomenon—that is, the force that corrupted the pure Judaism of the Second Temple period. Although, as Tessa Rajak points out, Greek culture was often valued above Hebraic culture throughout the history of ideas, this evaluation was often reversed by Christian scholars for whom “rampant polytheism” was a major obstacle.52 This factor is illustrated in a passage in Hans Dieter Betz’s entry on Hellenism in the Anchor Bible Dictionary. Note that Betz repeatedly asserts the opposition between Jesus the Jew and Hellenism at the same time as he acknowledges the lack of evidence for this dichotomy.53 According to Betz, The movement initiated by Jesus of Nazareth was anti-Hellenistic. So much at least seems to be clear in spite of the dearth of reliable data. [Even the little we know about John the Baptist suggests his antiHellenistic tendencies. . . . His opposition against Herod Antipas, his

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death as a martyr, and his messianic-apocalyptic message were reactions against Hellenization of Judaism. The ritual of baptism, the origin of which has not yet been sufficiently clarified, served as a means of demarcation between faithful Jews and those whose religion had been corrupted as a result of Hellenism. On the whole, the historical Jesus appears to have shared the anti-Hellenistic sentiments of his mentor.] In the eyes of Jesus, Hellenism was represented in Palestine by the Roman occupation and by the Jewish authorities imposed on the Jews by Rome. Although the Christian gospel writers who were Hellenists themselves have done their best to tone down these anti-Hellenistic sentiments, Jesus’ rejectionist attitudes are clearly stated in the tradition [Mark 12:15–22]. . . . The fact that Jesus was crucified as a messianic revolutionary is a sure indication of his anti-Roman and thus anti-Hellenistic attitude.54 While Caiaphas is not mentioned here, Betz maintains the fundamental opposition between the Jewish Jesus and the hellenized Roman and Jewish authorities. But he does so without providing any evidence or even argument for Hellenism as a corrupting force. The second factor at work in the persistence of the Judaism/Hellenism opposition is more subtle and, I admit, more speculative on my part. It seems to me that the opposition between Judaism and Hellenism around which some of the recent historical Jesus accounts are built functions as a substitute for an older and now discredited opposition, namely, that between Jesus and Judaism. Until the middle of the twentieth century, and in some cases beyond, scholars posited a sharp opposition between Jesus, the unique Messiah and Son of God, and the Jews, including the chief priests, scribes, and those misguided, legalistic Pharisees, who blindly rejected him, called for his death, and took responsibility for his blood upon themselves and their children. Günther Bornkamm, for example, states categorically that “only a criticism blinded by racial ideologies could deny the Jewish origin of Jesus.”55 But his own analysis of Jesus’ relationship to Judaism consistently sets Jesus apart from his Jewish compatriots. He declares that “Jesus’ attitude to the law . . . his concern about the people and his behaviour towards tax collectors and sinners, which was offensive to all pious Jews, prove that he

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stands in a complete contrast to these separate circles of the ‘righteous,’ as well as to the representatives of official Judaism.”56 Jesus is also completely unlike the various messianic rebel movements to which Josephus attests.57 The absolute isolation of Jesus from his Jewish contemporaries is no longer acceptable. The best of current scholarship fully acknowledges Jesus’ Jewish identity. One of the tasks of current historical Jesus research is to situate Jesus within the sphere of Second Temple Judaism rather than in contrast to it. Furthermore, negative representation of all of Judaism, or even of the Jews of Jesus’ time, has become unacceptable, as a result of increased sensitivity to the anti-Jewish potential of such representations. This sensitivity is apparent, for example, in the heated debate over the meaning and intention of Matthew 23, in which the Matthean Jesus repeatedly calls the Pharisees hypocrites. To many post-Holocaust scholars, both Matthew 23 and much of the history of its interpretation sound unacceptably anti-Semitic in light of the fact that traditional Judaism posits a continuity between the Pharisees and the later rabbis of the Mishnah and Talmud, the foundational texts of traditional Judaism to this day. Nevertheless, the element of conflict between Jesus the Jew and at least some other Jews cannot be eliminated, because the Gospels themselves include many controversy narratives, refer repeatedly to the Jews’ or Jewish leaders’ murderous intent toward Jesus, and explicitly implicate Jews in Jesus’ death. Transforming the opposition between Jesus and Judaism into a conflict between Jesus, the representative and champion of pure Judaism, and Caiaphas, the hellenized Sadducean high priest of Roman Palestine, not only takes care of the problems of the Jewish Jesus and apparently avoids anti-Semitism, but also maintains the traditional warm and fuzzy picture of Jesus as the watchdog of the poor and oppressed rural peasants. For the proponents of this construction, however, one problem remains, namely, the obvious fact that the rural, poor, and pure Jews (for whom Jesus battled the Hellenistic enemy) apparently did not appreciate his sacrifice on their behalf. Accounts of the historical Jesus must have at least one eye on the history of the early church, which eventually became a separate and to some extent an antagonistic entity with respect to the majority of Jews. It is Hengel himself who allows us to see how the pattern is worked into the story of Christian origins both within and beyond the life span of

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the earthly Jesus. In Hengel’s view, the lower, nonaristocratic strata of the population reacted against the hellenization of the upper classes by fixating rigidly on the law. This fixation, according to Hengel, “meant that any fundamental theological criticism of the cult and the law could no longer develop freely within Judaism.”58 Unfortunately, every critique of law was misinterpreted by ordinary Jews as an attack on the Israelite faith or as apostasy to polytheism. “Here,” says Hengel, “is the profound tragedy of the reaction of Judaism to the primitive Christian movement which developed from its midst. Jesus of Nazareth, Stephen, Paul came to grief among their own people because the Jews were no longer in a position to bring about a creative, self-critical transformation of the piety of the law with its strongly national and political colouring.”59 As a community rigidly fixated on the law, first-century Judaism could not recognize, let along appreciate, the prophetic spirit that emerged within it through the good offices of Jesus. Hengel concludes his study as follows: That it [the Jesus movement] was misunderstood from the Jewish side at that time as a new sect urging apostasy from the law and assimilation is indirectly the last and most grievous legacy of those Jewish renegades who, between 175 and 164 bc, attempted to do away with the law and “make a covenant with the people round about.” The zeal for the law aroused at that time made impossible all attempts at an internal reform of the Jewish religion undertaken in a prophetic spirit, as soon as the nerve centre, the law, was attacked.60 Thus Hengel resorts to the familiar portrayal of postexilic Judaism as a narrow and petrified version of ancient Israelite religion.61 The search for the historical Caiaphas is plagued by the same basic problem as the searches for the historical Jesus, for the historical Pilate, and for most other figures of the first century, namely, the partial nature of our sources. These are partial in two senses: they are usually anything but impartial, and they represent only a portion of the evidence that would allow us to construct a balanced and full picture. Perhaps somewhere, buried in some cave in the Judean Desert, there exists an order dictated by Caiaphas foisting ham and cheese sandwiches on white bread upon all pilgrims to the temple,

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or forbidding the use of Hebrew and Aramaic on shop signs or advertisements (a tack taken by the pro-separatist government of Quebec to guard against the withering of Francophone language and culture). The most that can be said about Caiaphas is captured by that well-known New Testament scholar of the Hollywood school, Nicholas Ray, whose Caiaphas “tells it like it is” to Nicodemus the Pharisee in the 1961 film King of Kings. Caiaphas explains to Nicodemus that “self-appointed saviours like your Jesus might stir the people up against the Romans.” Nicodemus protests: “But he is a good man.” Caiaphas dismisses this point: “You are a fool Nicodemus. . . . Good or bad, he is a threat. If Pilate could use Jesus and his followers as an excuse he would massacre our people. For the present we will bide our time.” Until further notice, I too, like Ray, will cast my vote along with Sanders and Fredriksen for Caiaphas the pragmatic politician, and against Wright and Crossan for whom Caiaphas is the new Antiochus. Neither portrait is particularly flattering, but the former has at least two advantages over the latter: it bears some relationship to the primary sources, and it avoids the faint whiff of supercessionism that lingers in the air after Jesus the truest Jew has done battle with Caiaphas the corrupt hellenizer.

Notes 1. Eric Lane and Ian Brenson, Oberammergau, A Passion Play: The Complete Text in English (London: Dedalus, 1984), 46 (act 2, scene 1 of the 1980 production). 2. Ibid., 84 (act 4, scene 4). 3. Norman Mailer, The Gospel according to the Son (London: Little, Brown, 1997), 211–14. 4. For more detailed discussion, see Adele Reinhartz, Jesus of Hollywood (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007). 5. C. H. Dodd, The Founder of Christianity (New York: Macmillan, 1970), 151. 6. Ibid., 156. 7. All Bible quotations in this chapter are nrsv. 8. E. P. Sanders, The Historical Figure of Jesus (London: Allen Lane Penguin, 1993), 272–73. 9. Paula Fredriksen, Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews: A Jewish Life and the Emergence of Christianity (New York/London: Alfred A. Knopf/Macmillan, 1999), 265.

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10. Ibid., 258. 11. Marcus Borg, Conflict, Holiness and Politics in the Teachings of Jesus (Studies in the Bible and Early Christianity 5; Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen, 1994), 2. 12. John Dominic Crossan, “Itinerants and Householders in the Earliest Jesus Movement,” in Whose Historical Jesus? (eds. William E. Arnal and Michel Desjardins; Studies in Christianity and Judaism 7; Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1997), 7–24, here 9–10. 13. Bart Ehrman, Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 107. 14. John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus (3 vols.; Anchor Bible Reference Library; New York: Doubleday, 1991, 1994, 2001), 1:347. 15. Ibid. 16. See, for example, Josephus, A.J. 16.160–78. 17. Bruce Chilton, Rabbi Jesus: An Intimate Biography (New York: Doubleday, 2000), xx. 18. Ibid., 232–33. 19. David Flusser, Jesus (2nd ed.; in collaboration with R. Steven Notley; Jerusalem: Magnes, 1998), 67. 20. Ibid., 137–38. 21. Ibid., 67–68. 22. Ibid., 74. 23. Ibid., 204–5. 24. Ibid., 68. 25. N. T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God (Christian Origins and the Question of God 2; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996), 525–26. 26. Ibid., 351. 27. Ibid., 595. 28. Ibid., 503–4. 29. See the translation by Jonathan A. Goldstein, I Maccabees (AB 41; Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1976), 239. 30. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, 491–92, 525. 31. Ibid., 493. 32. Ibid., 583. 33. Ibid., 582. 34. Ibid., 465. 35. Ibid., 596. 36. Ibid., 609. 37. Ibid., 608. 38. Günther Bornkamm, Jesus of Nazareth (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1960), 29.

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39. See the excellent survey by Lee I. Levine, Judaism and Hellenism in Antiquity: Conflict or Confluence? (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1998), 6–15. 40. Martin Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism: Studies in Their Encounter in Palestine during the Early Hellenistic Period (2nd ed.; 2 vols.; trans. John Bowden; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1974). 41. Ibid., 1:1. 42. Ibid., 1:311–12. 43. Geza Vermes, Jesus and the World of Judaism (London: SCM, 1983), 26. 44. E. P. Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief, 63 b.c.e.–66 c.e. (London/ Philadelphia: SCM/Trinity Press International, 1992), 22. 45. Martin Goodman, “Jews, Greeks, and Romans,” in Jews in a Graeco-Roman World (ed. Martin Goodman; Oxford: Clarendon, 1998), 3–14, here 14. 46. Ibid., 13. 47. John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant (New York/Edinburgh: HarperCollins/T & T Clark, 1991), 422. 48. Ibid., 418. 49. Ibid. 50. Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism, 1:310. 51. Nor is there evidence that he himself was comfortable with the Greek language; indeed, his ossuary is inscribed in Aramaic, not in Greek. See Ronny Reich, “Ossuary Inscriptions of the Caiaphas Family from Jerusalem,” in Ancient Jerusalem Revealed (ed. Hillel Geva; Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1994), 223–25. 52. Tessa Rajak, “Jews and Greeks: The Invention and Exploitation of Polarities in the Nineteenth Century,” in The Uses and Abuses of Antiquity (ed. Michael Biddiss and Maria Wyke; Bern: Peter Lang, 1999), 57–77. 53. This article wins the prize for the most repetitions of the word “antiHellenistic” in a single paragraph. 54. Hans Dieter Betz, “Hellenism,” in ABD 3:130. 55. Bornkamm, Jesus of Nazareth, 53. He is here referring to the theory of the “Aryan Jesus”; see p. 199, n. 2. 56. Ibid., 43. 57. Ibid., 44. 58. Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism, 1:306. 59. Ibid. 60. Ibid., 1:314. 61. See Bornkamm, Jesus of Nazareth, 37.

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FOURTEEN

Gospel Chronologies, the Scene in the Temple, and the Crucifixion of Jesus Paula Fredriksen

How are we to use the stories in the Gospels1 to reconstruct a historically sound view of Jesus of Nazareth?2 Scholarly agreement on general criteria of authenticity (dissimilarity, multiple attestation, and so on) coexists with widely divergent commitments to methods drawn from various disciplines (literature, sociology and anthropology, economics, archaeology). A wild profusion of “historical Jesuses” has flourished as a result. The controversies that reached their highest pitch in the mid-1980s to mid1990s have not subsided so much as settled into position. Perhaps we have just resigned ourselves to talking past each other, or perhaps we have all gotten used to the noise. This swirl of various images of Jesus and contesting methodological commitments, however, obscures a unique point of consensus that seems to withstand our other confusions. Almost all New Testament scholars concur that Jesus of Nazareth overturned the tables of the moneychangers in the Temple Court, around Passover, during the final week of his life. In so doing, he symbolically announced the temple’s impending destruction, and this action triggered the events that led directly to his death.3 This consensus gives the measure of the profound influence that E. P. Sanders’s fundamental study, Jesus and Judaism, has had on all work in the field. Sanders’s Jesus, in that particular study and elsewhere, is an apocalyptic prophet. Other, nonapocalyptic Jesuses also stalk the New Testament 246

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terrain, some given to social reform and subversive wisdom (Marcus J. Borg’s), others to egalitarian commensality (John Dominic Crossan’s), still others to Christocentric anti-Zionism (N. T. Wright’s). Yet they all overturn the moneychangers’ tables, they all intend by that gesture a prophecy of the temple’s destruction, and they all, consequently, end up passing from the chief priests to Pilate to the cross. This scholarly agreement on the causal relation of Jesus’ gesture to his execution, in other words, reveals another agreement: namely, that Mark’s chronology—which this reconstruction fundamentally repeats—provides the key to understanding the circumstances of Jesus’ death.4 I, too, once held these views. For various reasons, my confidence in them has eroded. Working with the tools, the information, and the style of critical thinking that I have learned, at a distance, from Sanders, and for which I remain forever indebted to him, I now find myself (mutatis mutandis) standing where Q-people, (the) Jesus Seminarians, and nonapocalyptic Jesuses habitually tread. I question the historicity of the scene in the temple. I doubt that the historical Jesus ever predicted the temple’s destruction. I doubt, too, that any of his contemporaries ever thought that he had. Finding Mark’s chronology—certainly for Jesus’ mission but also for events around the Passion—not only fundamentally implausible but also historically unhelpful, I have begun to think with John. All this calls for some apology. Let me explain.

The Synoptic Gospels and John John’s status as a historical source for Jesus has been queried for many reasons. Two prime considerations are the chronology of his Gospel and the character and self-presentation of his protagonist. The problem with John’s chronology relative to that of the Synoptics is chiefly that it is different. Its place within the canon creates the illusion of a three-to-one split. Matthew, Mark, and Luke all present Jesus as traveling along a one-way itinerary from his encounter with the Baptist through his mission in and around the Galilee to, finally, his death in Jerusalem at Passover. The period implied is about a year. John’s Jesus moves more like

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a metronome—up and down, back and forth, now in Jerusalem, now in the Galilee, now in Samaria or back in Judea. Because John accounts for Jesus’ travels by invoking pilgrimage holidays, it’s often said that John’s Jesus travels frequently to Jerusalem—and, again depending on the temporal scaffolding provided by these holidays, for a period of over two years. But in fact, most of Jesus’ major speeches and the evangelist’s dramatic didactic scenes occur near or in the capital, often in the precincts of the temple. The Fourth Gospel hardly presents a Galilean mission at all. Two details of this chronological difference highlight it: (1) John’s placement of the “cleansing of the temple,” and (2) his depiction of Jesus’ final interview with the high priest. In the Synoptics, the temple scene marks the beginning of the end. A narrative high point, the action both punctuates the energetic sweep into Jerusalem announced by the Triumphal Entry and triggers the Gospels’ climax by bringing Jesus to the hostile attention of Jerusalem’s chief priests, who thereafter plot to destroy him. John, however, disconnects the Triumphal Entry from Jesus’ disruption in the temple. That scene he places in his second chapter, right at the beginning of Jesus’ mission. Dramatically, it goes nowhere—no priestly plots, no endangerment to the hero, no thickening hostility. And while the Synoptics pair Jesus’ trial before Pilate with equally dramatic trials before a congested Jewish high court—with the additional drama, in Matthew and Mark, of a pronouncement of Jesus’ blasphemy by the high priest—the correlating event in John is brief, spare, and (unusual for him) austerely nontheological. Nothing in John’s chronology is intrinsically improbable. Scholars have even noted its superiority on several points to that of the Synoptics, particularly on the duration of Jesus’ mission and on the presentation of his final encounter with Annas and Caiaphas. And, of course, the impression that chronological consensus of the three Synoptic Gospels stands against John’s chronology is chimerical, since Matthew and Luke both rely on Mark for the linear organization of their respective narratives. On the specific issue of chronology, what we have is not a three-one split but an even choice, Mark’s or John’s. The general lack of confidence in John’s historicity, which has affected as well the use that scholars are prepared to make of his chronology, stems, I think, primarily from the way that John suffers in comparison to

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its canonical companions on the issue of the characterization of Jesus. To put the same point differently: synoptic chronology enjoys a borrowed respectability because of the substantially greater historical plausibility of the synoptic Jesus. A recognizably first-century Jewish figure can be sketched from the material available in Mark and Q, one who coheres with material we have in Paul’s letters,5 with what we have in Josephus’s histories, and with what can be matched to still later Aramaic Jewish traditions.6 The protagonist of the Fourth Gospel, by contrast, is first of all a mouthpiece for the evangelist’s peculiar Christology. John’s Jesus is always and everywhere the Johannine Christ, tirelessly expatiating on his own unique and very high theological status, often in terms idiosyncratic to the Gospel itself. If Jesus of Nazareth during his lifetime really did have anything like a popular Jewish following (as the simple fact of his execution implies), he cannot have been making speeches like this to them. Nolo contendere. On this issue— the characterization of Jesus—the superiority of the Synoptics is clear. What then of the use to which scholars of the historical Jesus have been prepared to put the Fourth Gospel? Here the Synoptics dominate reconstructions.7 For some scholars, this is a matter of principle. Geza Vermes, whose work has focused particularly on the coherence of certain evangelical phrases, traditions, and titles with material in later Aramaic Jewish sources, sees John’s Gospel as both symptomatic of and contributory to “the deJudaization of the pristine gospel in the Graeco-Roman world.” John’s Jesus only obscures the Jesus of history, says Vermes; his theologically freighted Gospel only confuses the historian’s enterprise. Vermes, in brief, sees no place for John in any serious reconstruction.8 Other scholars, whether their Jesus is an apocalyptic prophet (Sanders, Allison), a social radical variously conceived (Crossan, Borg), or a Christian theologian avant la lettre (Wright), to the degree that their Jesus adheres to Mark’s chronology, to that degree they do not engage John.9 The question of John’s historical usefulness turns in part upon the vexed issue of its literary relationship to the other three Gospels. The question is usually framed in terms of Mark. Did John depend on Mark? If so, why did he change what he changed? Is he independent of Mark? If so, this enhances the claim of historicity for some of his material, which then shifts from being redactional decisions relevant only to reconstructing the evangelist’s

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intent to traditions that may count as evidence toward reconstructing the life and times of Jesus. In his new edition of John Among the Gospels, Moody Smith spends approximately 240 pages surveying the various positions on the question of the literary relations among the four Gospels that scholars have taken since 1904.10 I do not propose to solve the problem here. Innumerable combinations of theories of literary dependence and of evangelical motivations have been proposed and defended with conviction and ingenuity by generations of scholars, among whom are some of the greatest names of modern New Testament scholarship. These theories and reconstructions frequently conflict. Consensus on this issue is elusive or ephemeral. Given the nature of the evidence, any firm conclusion seems impossible. Still, what do I think? I think that John is pretty much independent of the Synoptic tradition. I also think that at some point through some means a redactor of John’s text became acquainted with some of the traditions that are evident as well in the other three Gospels. I also think that I have little hope of getting much clearer on this question.11 But John’s independence or lack thereof does not much matter for the argument that I make in this essay: John provides us with some critical purchase on the scene at the temple and on the way that it functions in what has become a new orthodoxy in historical Jesus research. I also argue that, alone of our canonical choices, John provides us with the sort of picture that can point us toward a historically coherent reconstruction of the shape of Jesus’ mission, of the circumstances around his death, and of the growth and spread of the earliest movement in the years following his crucifixion. To make these points, however, I shall have to begin at the end.

T h e D e a t h o f J e s u s a n d t h e S c e n e a t t h e Te m p l e The single most solid fact we have about Jesus’ life is his death. Jesus was crucified. Thus Paul, the Gospels, Josephus, Tacitus: the evidence does not get any better than this.12 This fact, seemingly simple, implies several others. If Jesus died on a cross, then he died by Rome’s hand, and within a context where Rome was concerned about sedition. But against this fact of

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Jesus’ crucifixion stands another, equally incontestable fact: although Jesus was executed as a rebel, none of his immediate followers was. We know from Paul’s letters that they survived: he lists them as witnesses to the resurrection (1 Cor 15:3–5), and he describes his later dealings with some (Galatians 1–2). Stories in the Gospels and in Acts confirm this information from Paul. The good news is that we have two firm facts. The bad news is that they pull in different directions, with maximum torque concentrated precisely at Jesus’ solo crucifixion. Rome (as any empire) was famously intolerant of sedition. Josephus provides extensive accounts of other popular Jewish charismatic figures to either side of Jesus’ lifetime: they were cut down, together with their followers.13 If Pilate had seriously thought that Jesus were politically dangerous in the way that crucifixion implies, more than Jesus would have died,14 and certainly the community of his followers would not have been able to set up in Jerusalem, evidently unmolested by Rome for the six years or so that Pilate remained in office. The implication of Jesus’ having died alone is that Pilate did not think that he, or his movement, truly was politically dangerous. If Pilate knew that Jesus was not dangerous, we still have two questions. Why, then, did he execute Jesus? And why, specifically, by crucifixion? At this juncture most historians, like the Gospel narratives that we all ultimately rely on, turn for explanation to the chief priests. Both the synoptic tradition and John, though very differently, posit priestly initiative behind Jesus’ arrest. Secondary support for this reconstruction comes from 1 Thess 2:14–1515 and from Josephus.16 Ancillary considerations might support this conjecture, a prime one being that Caiaphas held the office of high priest from 18 to 36 c.e. Presumably he had excellent working relations with whichever prefect was in power.17 If he wanted a favor—like getting Jesus out of the way—Pilate might have been happy to oblige. Priestly hostility to Jesus also obliquely solves the puzzle, “Why only Jesus?” The priests typically were concerned to minimize bloodshed. Jesus alone is the target of their animosity or anxiety, so Jesus alone, they tell Pilate, need die. Pilate obliges the priests. Whence their mortal enmity? On this point, despite surpassingly different, indeed incommensurate, portraits of Jesus, his mission, and his message, many scholars agree: Jesus’ action in the Temple Court before Passover

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moved him into the crosshairs of Jerusalem’s priests and sealed his fate. At this point, the quest for the historical Jesus segues into the quest for the historical action in the temple. What did Jesus do there, and what had he meant by it? Known in church tradition as the “Cleansing of the Temple,” Jesus’ disruption in the Temple Court had long been seen as his protest against commerce in the temple precincts. When scholars held this view, they took their cue from the evangelists themselves, who (albeit with variations) presented Jesus as protesting against such activity. And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold and those who bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons; and he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. And he taught, and said to them, “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers.” (Mark 11:15–17) The Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money-changers at their business. And making a whip of cords, he drove them all, with the sheep and the oxen, out of the temple; and he poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables. And he told those who sold the pigeons, “Take these things away; you shall not make my Father’s house a house of trade.” (John 2:13–16)18 It was Sanders, in Jesus and Judaism, who did most to dissolve this earlier reading.19 He did so by pointing out that it made no historical sense. The function of Jerusalem’s temple—as indeed, of any ancient temple—was to serve as a place to offer sacrifices. Money changing and the provision of suitable offerings were part of the support services offered at the temple to accommodate pilgrims. Did Jesus then mean to repudiate temple sacrifice itself ? That would have made him virtually unique among his contemporaries, whether Jewish or pagan: in antiquity, worship involved offerings.

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It also would have been tantamount to rejecting the better part of the five books of Torah, wherein God had revealed the protocols and purposes of these sacrifices to Israel. If Jesus targeted not the sacrifices but the support services facilitating them, his gesture would have lacked practical significance. If he were targeting not the support services but some sort of priestly malfeasance that might have stood behind them, no trace of this protest remains either in the Gospels (nothing of the sort figures in the accusations against Jesus brought at his trials) or in later Christian tradition (Paul, for instance, says nothing of the sort). And finally, on either reconstruction, Jesus would have failed utterly to communicate his message to his earliest followers, who after his death continued, on the evidence, to live in Jerusalem, to worship at the temple, and to revere the temple and its cult as a unique privilege granted by God to Israel.20 Sanders’s analysis moved academic discussion from what Jesus (supposedly) said to what he did, namely, overturning the moneychangers’ tables. The earlier interpretation of this scene as a “cleansing” had seen Jesus’ action through the lens of the—admittedly redactional—lines attributed to him in Mark and John. Sanders separated the two, focused on the action of overturning tables, and reinterpreted that action as a symbol of destruction. To make his case, he presented an interpretive context of other predictions of the temple’s destruction and /or restoration culled from the Gospels, from other early Christian writings, and from other early Jewish texts composed in the period to either side of Jesus’ lifetime. Sanders then argued that Jesus’ reported gesture, not the evangelists’ various redactional activity around Jesus’ speech, revealed Jesus’ actual meaning. By overturning the tables, said Sanders, Jesus symbolically proclaimed the temple’s impending destruction, to be succeeded by its rebuilding and the establishment of God’s kingdom. The content of Jesus’ prophecy cohered with and reaffirmed the message of his mission: the Kingdom was at hand. Other Jesuses followed suit. Jesus the existential Galilean hasid (Vermes), Jesus the wandering Jewish cynic peasant sage (Crossan), Jesus the antipurity activist (Borg), Jesus the angry critic of separatist, exclusivist, racialist, nationalist Judaism (Wright): all enacted a prophecy of the temple’s impending destruction. The meaning attached to that destruction varied according to the message of the particular Jesus.21 That the historical Jesus

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did enact this scene in the temple, and that he thereby prophesied the temple’s destruction, is, in current scholarship, virtually boilerplate.22 So too, in scholarly opinion, the fundamental consequence of Jesus’ action: he thereby alarmed and alienated the priests, who saw his prophecy as a threat. Their alienation in turn explains why Jesus died. The priest signaled Pilate, and Pilate (for whatever reasons—these vary, too) complied. This new historiographical paradigm has at least two consequences relevant to our present topic. First, by establishing a line that runs straight from the action in the Temple Courts to Jesus’ death on the cross, it recapitulates the defining elements of Mark’s Passion narrative. Second, and again in accord with Mark, scholars focus on an issue that Mark itself dramatically highlighted in its depiction of the Sanhedrin trial: Jesus’ identity. As with Mark, so with these scholarly reconstructions: who or what Jesus thought he was goes far toward explaining, in this view, why he died. Putting the matter between Jesus and the priests in this way foregrounds a kind of principled religious disagreement between them. Indeed, some scholars posit explicitly that such a disagreement is necessary for any plausible reconstruction. “Jesus cannot be separated from his Jewish context,” N.T. Wright has opined, “but neither can he be collapsed into it so that he is left without a sharp critique of his [Jewish] contemporaries.”23 John Meier holds the existence of such a principled disagreement as one of his five criteria of historicity: “The criterion of Jesus’ rejection and execution looks at the larger pattern of Jesus’ ministry and asks what words and deeds fit in with and explain his trial and crucifixion. A Jesus whose words and deeds did not threaten or alienate people, especially powerful people, is not the historical Jesus.”24 The temple scene not only makes Jesus conspicuous, then; it hints at the reasons for Jesus’ religious offensiveness to the priests. “A Jew from the Galilean countryside who presented himself in Jerusalem during the great feasts as a prophet possessing charismatic authority over Law and temple could be assured stiff opposition.”25 “Toward the end of his life, Jesus apparently . . . made symbolic claims to Davidic messiahship.”26 The priests, in such reconstructions, are the prime movers behind Jesus’ death. Alerted by Jesus’ gesture, they thereby divine what Jesus thinks of himself and his own authority. Offended, they arrange for his death. Wright, in this connection, explicitly distinguishes Pilate as the “sufficient cause” of

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Jesus’ crucifixion, but the priests as the “necessary cause.”27 Taking note of the pattern of killing the leader without molesting his followers, Meier refines this picture, correlating Jesus’ death to that of John the Baptist: Antipas had decided . . . that an ounce of prevention by way of execution was worth a pound of cure by way of military action. A single execution—we hear nothing of subsequent persecution, let alone execution, of John’s disciples—forestalled a possible uprising at a later date. At a certain point, after increasing tensions each time Jesus visited Jerusalem during the feasts, and especially after Jesus staged provocative, prophetic acts by his entry into Jerusalem and by his “cleansing” of the temple just before the Passover of a.d. 30, Caiaphas and Pilate adopted the “Antipas solution”: cut off the head of the movement with one swift, preemptive blow.28 The problems with Meier’s description help to clarify the problems with Wright’s. The analogue to Antipas’s execution of John—off-stage, separated from any followers, in the socially and politically controlled environment of a prison—would have been a similarly off-stage execution of Jesus. Instead, if modes of execution can be said to have opposites, Pilate did just the opposite. He executed Jesus in public, center stage, with crowds of enthusiasts in situ. His decision to execute Jesus as he did is precisely the point at which analogies to the Baptizer’s death (pace Meier) break down. Pilate’s decision not to execute but specifically to crucify remains opaque, if we try to understand it by taking the priests as our point of orientation. No amount of religious tension between Jesus and the priests can account for Pilate’s decision to kill Jesus by crucifixion. Priestly involvement on issues of religious principle—vaguely motivated by Jesus’ assertion, somehow, of an alarming religious identity—might seem to answer the question, Why did Jesus die? But it fails to answer—or even to address—the more specific question, namely, Why did Jesus die by crucifixion?29 We are so habituated to knowing that Jesus was crucified that we fail to notice how awkwardly that fact fits with the rest of what the Gospels relate. If Pilate were simply doing a favor for the priests, he could have disposed of Jesus easily and without fanfare, murdering him by simpler means. (I

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repeat: Pilate’s actually thinking that Jesus did pose a serious revolutionary threat—the simplest implication of crucifixion—is belied by Jesus’ solo death.) So too with the priests: if for whatever reason they had wanted Jesus dead, no public execution was necessary, and simpler means of achieving their end were readily available. Further, Jesus’ public death ill accords with the narrative contexts developed by Mark and John, who each insist that Jesus was so popular with the holiday crowd that he had to be arrested by stealth. What we know from Josephus further complicates the question. Both priests and prefects or, later, procurators always had a vested interest in avoiding noisy popular confrontations because, when trouble erupted, such episodes put them, and their positions, at risk.30 A slow, public execution of an extremely popular figure during a potentially turbulent holiday risked protest. For all these reasons, then, a surreptitious murder—prompted, perhaps, by the priests and effected, quite easily, by Pilate—makes sense. Instead, quite deliberately, and despite (evidently) having arrested Jesus in secret,31 Pilate chose to execute him slowly, flamboyantly, and in public. And then he made no move, at that point or later, against any of Jesus’ followers. How does thinking with John help us address these difficulties?

T h e Te m p l e ’s D e s t r u c t io n a n d J e s us’ P r op h ecy Scholarly consensus, which generally affirms Mark’s chronology, holds that: (1) Jesus predicted the temple’s coming destruction; (2) he symbolically enacted this prediction by overturning the tables in the Temple Court; (3) the priests, construing this prediction as a threat against the temple, moved to arrest and execute Jesus; and (4) on their initiative, Pilate ordered Jesus crucified. Let’s untangle these various threads. Did Jesus predict the temple’s destruction? John Meier, famously meticulous, states in his most recent volume of A Marginal Jew that Mark 11:15–17 and John 2:13–17 “narrate [emphasis in original] versions of the so-called cleansing . . . which most likely is a symbolic, prophetic action by which Jesus foretells and, in a sense, unleashes the imminent end of the present temple [emphasis added].”32 Pointing to sayings material in Mark, Q, L,

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and John wherein Jesus prophesies the end of the present temple, Meier appeals both to multiple attestation and to coherence. These multiply attested pronouncements about the temple’s destruction, he suggests, establish the historicity of the prediction. Invoking coherence, he then argues that they cast light on the scene at the temple: “The sayings about the Temple explain the otherwise puzzling prophetic action of Jesus in the Temple.” In short, he concludes, Jesus really did predict the temple’s destruction, and he specifically enacted his prediction by overturning the tables in the Temple Court. Independent attestation is an essential tool in evaluating historicity. The verses adduced by Meier are these: 1. Mark 13:2: “Do you see these great buildings? There will not be left here one stone upon another, that will not be thrown down.” 2. Mark 14:58: “We [Mark designates them as false witnesses] heard him say, ‘I will destroy this temple that is made with hands, and in three days I will build another, not made with hands.’ ” 3. Q (Matt 23:38//Luke 13:35): “Behold, your [i.e., Jerusalem’s] house is forsaken [and desolate].” 4. Luke 19:41–44: “And when he drew near and saw the city he wept over it, saying, ‘Would that even today you knew the things that make for peace! But now they are hid from your eyes. For the days shall come upon you, when your enemies will cast up a bank about you and surround you, and hem you in on every side, and dash you to the ground, you and your children within you, and they will not leave one stone upon another in you; because you did not know the time of your visitation.” 5. John 2:19: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” To these verses we might add several others: (6) the derision of passersby at the crucifixion in Mark 15:29–30: “Aha! You who would destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself and come down from the cross!” (7) the accusation against Stephen brought by “false witnesses” in Acts 6:13–14a: “This man never ceases to speak words against this holy place [= the temple] and the law; for we have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place”; and (8) the concern evinced by the chief

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priests and Pharisees gathered at their council in John 11:48: “If we let him go on thus [i.e., performing spectacular signs so that many believe in him, vv. 45–47], every one will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place [the temple] and our nation.” Undeniably, all of these taken together represent some sort of multiply attested tradition. We might note that those places that name Jesus as the agent of destruction, and that shape the prophecy like a threat, specifically disavow the prediction (numbers 2, 6, 7, all testimony from “false witnesses”), whereas the straightforward predictions simply stand (numbers 1, 3, and 4, which encompasses the entire city, not only the temple).33 John names different agents altogether, “the Jews” in one instance (number 5, where “temple” refers to Jesus’ body)34 and the Romans (number 8). How do we assess the historicity of this tradition specifically with reference to Jesus? Multiple attestation of itself demonstrates not authenticity but antiquity: a given tradition predates its various manifestations in different witnesses, if those witnesses are independent. What is attested still needs to be critically assessed. Most scholars see traditions about Mary’s virginity at the time of Jesus’ conception, for example, attested independently in both M and L, as evidence for the ways in which early Christians had begun reading the Septuagint, not as evidence about the actual sexual status of Jesus’ mother.35 Jesus raises the dead both in the Synoptics and in John. Scholars usually do not infer, on the strength of this independent attestation, that such traditions preserve historically true reminiscences of what Jesus of Nazareth actually did, but of what he was thought to have done—a big difference.36 So too here: what our evidence tells us is that traditions about Jesus’ predicting, perhaps threatening, the temple’s destruction predate their appearance in these various postdestruction Christian texts. Predate by how much? Do they go back to Jesus of Nazareth? Here again we have to sort through the individual sayings and also consider the date of composition for this literature generally. Which traditions predate the temple’s actual destruction in 70 c.e.? An appeal to criteria of authenticity helps, but only to a degree. The predictions-as-threat (numbers 2, 6, and 7) might seem to pass not multiple attestation (Luke displaced the Markan trial saying to Stephen’s trial in Acts) so much as embarrassment. Jesus was understood to have threatened the temple’s destruction. These

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post-70 writers, who for other reasons hold that Jesus will return, know full well that Jesus himself did not return in 70 to destroy the temple. Titus did that. Their disconfirmed older tradition, domesticated by being disowned, therefore might be authentic.37 Number 3, the Q saying, seems a good candidate, since Q is generally held to have been assembled earlier than Mark, and the date of Mark’s composition hovers around 70. But the saying itself, reminiscent of Jeremiah and Lamentations, comes in a context where Jesus delivers a sort of Passion prediction, linking the city’s impending rejection of him (it does not want to be gathered under his protective wings) with its own impending destruction.38 This prediction thus seems after the fact—or, rather, after two facts, that of Jesus’ death circa 30 and after the city’s “death” in 70. Number 4 seems contoured fairly obviously in light of the Jewish War, a form of prediction that Luke also uses in 21:20 (“But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation has come near”).39 Numbers 2 and 6, from Mark, by invoking “in three days,” explicitly associate the temple’s destruction and rebuilding with Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection. In Number 5, from John, minus the motif of the three days, the destruction and rebuilding of the temple symbolizes (for those who know) the central christological drama. Can we realistically set these sayings, which broadcast such pellucid knowledge of Jesus’ death or death-and-resurrection and of the city’s siege and /or destruction, within Jesus’ own lifetime?40 They state so clearly what had already happened, or what the early church believed, by the time that these texts were written: Jesus had been crucified. The temple had been destroyed. God, through Rome, had punished Jerusalem’s Jews for their rejection of Christ. The true temple, Christ’s body, had been raised in three days, and so on. Dissimilarity, too, is an imperfect criterion for establishing authenticity, but surely, at some point, it must come into play. Of those sayings on our list, then, only Mark 13:2 and John 11:48, relatively unadorned by later christological concerns, have the best chance of fitting back into a context around the year 30. The Johannine passage has the added virtue of attributing historically plausible sentiments to its characters. Indeed, like much else in John’s handling of issues around Jesus’ Passion, this scene, unlike its Synoptic counterparts, is surprisingly unfreighted by

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theological concerns. The feared agent in the potential destruction, however, is not Jesus but Rome. Mark 13:2, likewise theologically spare and untethered in any obvious way to later events or theological tropes, may be authentic. Jesus names no agent, but his pronouncement is clear. In favor of the authenticity of Mark 13:2, in a general way, there are three considerations (all carefully rehearsed and argued by Sanders). First: Jewish apocalyptic literature to either side of Jesus’ lifetime also speaks of the current temple’s destruction and occasionally of its replacement by a superior, final temple. The existence of this motif enhances the possibility that Jesus, preaching the coming Kingdom, may also have spoken in these terms. Second: in Josephus, we have secure evidence of an irrefutably genuine prophecy of the temple’s and the city’s destruction by another Jesus—Jesus son of Ananias—in the year 62 c.e. (B.J. 6.300–309).41 So, not all predictions come after the fact. Third: Mark’s prediction is not accurate in its details, in the same way that inauthentic, post facto prophecies (because they can be) often are. In point of fact, not every stone was thrown down: those of the retaining wall supporting the Temple Mount did and do continue atop each other.42 Of the longer list of sayings, few emerge as strongly plausible candidates for a pre-70 date of origin. Standard operating procedure when assessing a text’s period of composition, further, tends to diminish confidence in a predestruction date. Ordinarily, prophecies contained in an ancient text provide scholars with a rough terminus a quo, which is to say, non ante quem. Daniel’s “abomination of desolation” is the clue to his writing not earlier than Antiochus IV’s placement of his statue in the temple. By the same reasoning, the temple’s destruction—linked as it is in so many ways in these stories to Jesus’ death, or death and resurrection, and/or to the city’s devastation—would itself be the source of evangelical predictions. If the prophecy of destruction, articulated clearly in Mark 13, is indeed after the fact, then the likelihood of that same prophecy’s being encoded in Jesus’ temple action—obscured by the evangelists, revealed in our days by scholarly decoding—diminishes accordingly. So far I have framed the question of Jesus’ prediction, his action, and whether his action encoded his prediction in terms of the stories and sayings in the Gospels and Acts. Straining these texts through the mesh of our

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various criteria of authenticity, I have argued, leaves us with no residuum securely datable to pre-70—indeed, to circa pre-30. Before we leave this question, however, we still have one more source to consider: Paul. Paul’s letters antedate the Gospels by one or two generations. He is the only writer we have who unquestionably lived before the Roman destruction of Jerusalem. He knew Peter, John, and probably others of the original disciples (Gal 1:18; 2:9). His instructions to his Gentile congregations on the impending arrival of God’s Kingdom—associated, in this postresurrection phase of the movement, with Jesus’ glorious second coming—are a vivid and vital part of his Gospel. The eschatological trajectory, which we can trace from the Baptizer through Jesus to those of his followers who see Jesus raised, fundamentally propels Paul’s message. Here is the problem. If Jesus had made such a spectacular prophecy (Mark 13:2) or had enacted it at such a key moment in his mission (Mark 11:15–18, as decoded by moderns), if Paul were colleagues with the men who must themselves have known that prophecy (they had been with Jesus in Jerusalem), and if Paul himself throughout his letters proclaimed the signs of the coming Kingdom, then why does Paul evince no knowledge of Jesus’ prediction? We have only seven letters from Paul. He was an active apostle for close to thirty years. Clearly he dictated more than seven letters in all that time. The greater part of his correspondence is lost—among which, for all we know, his definitive description of Jesus’ action in the Temple Court and prediction of the temple’s destruction. Yet in the letters that we do have, Paul’s eschatological teaching represents tradition that, he himself claims, goes back to Jesus and to the earliest paradosis.43 In the extant letters, where he instructs his congregations on what to look for as they await the returning Christ, Paul easily and naturally could have mentioned Jesus’ teaching about the temple—had he known it. Somewhere after 1 Thess 4:15, “For this we declare to you by the word of the Lord,” he could have mentioned that first the temple would be destroyed as a sign that Christ is about to return (cf. Mark 13). Or he could have written at Phil 4:5: “The Lord is at hand! Once this temple is no more, as Christ Jesus said, it will be rebuilt in glory, at the End of the Age.” Or he could have done so somewhere in 1 Corinthians 15, where he reviews the sequence

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of events at the End; in Romans, for instance, in chapter 8, where he talks about the transformation of the universe and the signs that the saved await as they groan; or after chapter 11, when all Israel and the full number of the Gentiles are saved. In chapter 15, when he speaks of the offering of the Gentiles that he is about to take to Jerusalem as if he were in priestly service, he could have added, “to this earthly temple which, as you know, will soon be no more, having been replaced by the glorious final temple of God.” But Paul says nothing of the sort. Anywhere. Taken by itself, this argument, ex silentio, is pretty flimsy. Historical evidence survives through happenstance from this period of the movement, and we should not make too much of Paul’s “silence” on this particular point. But neither, I think, should we ignore it. There are plenty of things in Paul’s letters that the later Gospels do not have, and there are plenty of things that the Gospels say about Jesus that Paul does not have. But the eschatological traditions in Paul are his clearest, strongest link to the earlier movement around Jesus in both its pre and postresurrection phases. It was on the basis of his conviction that God’s Kingdom approached—which he shared with the original apostles and, mutatis mutandis, with Jesus himself—that Paul (and other Jews like him) dedicated himself to a Gentile mission. It was on the basis of the movement’s success in the Diaspora in turning Gentiles from idols to the God of Israel that Paul held Jesus to be God’s “son . . . descended from David according to the flesh” (Rom 1:3; 15:8–13).44 If Jesus had predicted the temple’s destruction as a sign of the End of the Age, and if Paul himself also speaks of such signs—including those he insists that he has “by the word of the Lord”—then it is at least odd, I think, that he evinces no knowledge whatsoever of Jesus’ prophecy. If the original context of those prophecies is post-70, of course, then it is not odd at all.

Te m p l e a n d M e s s i a h What did Jesus do on the Temple Mount, and what did it mean? Mark and John both seem to have inherited a story about Jesus’ overturning the tables of the moneychangers. They place the incident at radically different points

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in their respective stories, and each gives Jesus different lines to speak. For these reasons, I assume their independence. (That is, I do not think that John read Mark and then decided to disconnect Mark’s story about Jesus’ action from events in Jesus’ final week, bump the episode forward, change Jesus’ speech—though not Jesus’ point—and then heighten the drama by adding stampeding quadrupeds.) Mark’s Jesus quotes Isa 56:7 and Jer 7:11. John’s Jesus, stern and uncharacteristically direct, says simply, “Take these things away; you shall not make my Father’s house a house of trade.” Though each evangelist glossed Jesus’ speech differently, both saw in the gesture the same meaning: Jesus condemned this getting and spending in the temple. Sanders has argued—I think definitively—that the meaning the evangelists give to this episode is impossible to attribute to Jesus of Nazareth. We then have two historical possibilities. Either the story of Jesus’ action is authentic, and each evangelist independently misinterpreted it, with individual variations, in exactly the same way. Or the story, despite being independently attested in Mark and John, is inauthentic. That is, its origins are to be sought not in Jesus’ mission but in the aftermath of the War, when early Christians, like other Jews, attempted to explain how God could have permitted so great a catastrophe. I do not think that Jesus predicted the temple’s destruction. I doubt the authenticity of the action attributed to him in the temple. But even if the traditions of Jesus’ predicting the temple’s destruction were authentic, this still would not help us to discern and establish the meaning of Jesus’ action in the Temple Court—even if that, too, were authentic. Our evangelical witnesses make this point for us. Evidently Jesus’ action (if it happened) was so obscure that they, its most ancient publicists, completely misunderstood his meaning. Why else would they have so misconstrued it?45 If Jesus actually had overturned the temple’s tables, and if he actually had thereby intended to symbolize its destruction, then the evangelists— and the human links in the chain of transmission that brought them this story—entirely missed his point. Ostensibly inheriting two authentic predictions of destruction, they understood only one of them. They thereby also missed their opportunity to have Jesus’ action state what they otherwise put forthrightly into his mouth, namely, that the temple’s days were numbered. This prompts the question: If the significance of the gesture were so

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opaque and confusing to these later Christians—and especially to Mark, for whom the destruction of the temple is a major theme—how clearly could the crowds of Jesus’ contemporaries have understood him? And how would the priests have become involved? This connection between Jesus’ action (as a prophecy of destruction) and the priests’ reaction fuels most of the recent reconstructions of this part of Jesus’ mission. It rests on Mark. Thinking with our literary evidence, as I attempted to do above, brings us to an impasse: we cannot settle questions of authenticity. How then can we close the gap between Jesus and the priests? Let us consider these traditions within a different sort of interpretive context. What was the physical environment within which Jesus’ action putatively took place? The Temple Court, in Jesus’ day, was enormous. The wall surrounding Herod’s man-made mesa ran almost nine-tenths of a mile. It enclosed an area of approximately 169,000 square feet. Sanders, in his vivid description, translates the square footage of this space into units that can be more easily visualized: into this area twelve soccer fields, stands and all, could be fit. When necessary (as during the great pilgrimage holidays, especially Passover), it could accommodate perhaps as many as four hundred thousand pilgrims.46 Around the perimeter of the outermost courts, protected from sun or rain by the stoa or the Royal Portico, the tables of those who sold could be found. The very size of this place shrinks the significance of Jesus’ putative gesture. And the precise circumstances of that gesture—during the days of mandatory purification between the eighth and fourteenth of Nisan, in the week before the feast—makes the odds of its having a disturbing impact even less likely. Our visual imagination hampers us here. Gustav Doré set the stage for later cinematographers, and we effortlessly and customarily “see” this scene with dramatic clarity. A better visual analogy might be Bruegel’s Fall of Icarus—or Where’s Waldo? These courts, in this season, during this particular week, would have been jammed with humanity, tens of thousands of people. Imagine Jesus walking over to some of the vendors who sat at the edges of this huge area and overturning their tables. Now ask yourself: How many people would have been able to see him? Those in his retinue and those standing

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immediately around him. But in the congestion and confusion of the holiday crowd, how many could have seen what was happening, say, twenty feet away? Fifty feet? Shrunk by the size of the temple’s outer court, muffled by the density of the pilgrim crowds, Jesus’ gesture—had he made it—would simply have been swallowed up. Hermeneutically inaccessible (on the evidence of the evangelists), Jesus’ gesture would have been visually inaccessible as well. What, then, on the basis of this gesture, did the priests have to worry about? Who did Jesus think he was, and what did he think he was doing? The next point along the Markan trajectory is the questioning before the high priest. Various historians, following Mark, will argue that Jesus’ gesture provided some sort of clue (whether to the high priest, to the historian, or to both) about what Jesus thought about himself. Often, it turns out, Jesus is revealed to have thought of himself as the Messiah—a messiah with a difference, but some sort of messiah, nonetheless. Interpretations of his action in the temple are pressed into service to explain how he understands this role. Once the high priest realizes how Jesus conceives his own mission and message, Jesus’ fate is sealed: Pilate, and the cross, are the next stops on the way. The problem with any of these speculations is not their plausibility or implausibility. Some reconstructions are more plausible, others (much) less so. Trying to figure out how Jesus looked at himself is a normal and legitimate historical question, no less or more exotic than trying to answer similar questions about other figures from the past. The problem with the introduction of this question at this juncture in his story, however, is the way that it confuses and distracts from the effort to attain a plausible answer to the question, Why did Pilate have Jesus (alone) crucified? This entire historiographical construction is driven fundamentally by the chronology of Mark’s Gospel. That chronology in turn is driven by Mark’s revelation of Jesus’ christological identity—dramatically foreshadowed from chapter 8 on, expressed with high artistry in his presentation of Jesus’ Sanhedrin trial. Christology is a central and appropriate concern of Christian theology. I think, both as a historian of Christian origins and as a student of Christian theology, that historical Jesus research can and should matter to the way that modern theologians do their business.47 But Jesus’ christological self-identity—if he even ever had

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one—cannot account for his public, political crucifixion. If we want to understand why he died as he did, we have to look elsewhere—meaning that we have to free ourselves from the dramatic power of Mark’s presentation. Here, thinking with John can help. 1. John’s narrative chronology. Scholars, in a general way, have approvingly noted from time to time that John’s presentation of Jesus’ making frequent trips back and forth to Jerusalem seems more likely than his going to Jerusalem, as an adult, only once for his final Passover. Various efforts are occasionally made to combine the two chronologies, Mark’s and John’s, so that one can be accommodated to the other. Some of these efforts occasionally correspond to more ambitious arguments—famously, those of Dodd and Robinson—that urge the superiority or greater antiquity of particular traditions that John preserves. My argument here is much simpler. I have little hope that John’s chronology in its details is any more historically accurate than Mark’s. But the sort of itinerary suggested by John helps to make sense of what else we know about Jesus. Pilate killed Jesus alone, and none of his followers. This fact implies that Pilate knew that Jesus himself was not dangerous in any way that a Roman prefect would have to worry about. Jesus was not advocating armed revolt; he was not fomenting tax rebellion; he was not encouraging resistance, defiance, revolution. Jesus was not dangerous, and Pilate knew it. The men around Jesus also were not dangerous, and Pilate knew this, too. The easiest way to explain Pilate’s acquaintance with the nonthreatening quality of Jesus’ message is the way that John’s Gospel supplies. Jesus had repeatedly gone up to Jerusalem for the holidays, precisely when the prefect would have been there too. And once there, Jesus repeatedly proclaimed his message of the coming Kingdom. He did so where he (naturally) would have found the largest audience: in the precincts of the temple (see John 18:20). Thanks to Jesus’ multiple trips to Jerusalem, Pilate—and for that matter, the priests also—would have had a fairly good grasp of the content and tenor of Jesus’ message well before the trip to the city that proved to be his last. Their knowledge of his harmlessness explains why only Jesus died. But

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this also means that, when Jesus did die, neither his message nor his view of himself can have been the precipitating factor leading to his execution. 2. John’s Christology is so theologically developed, and it so monopolizes his story, that it, more than any other single factor, has prevented John’s being regarded as a valuable source for reconstructing the historical Jesus. But by offering us the story that he does, John provides us with a historiographically useful example to meditate on. On the issues of Christology and the reasons for Jesus’ death, John offers a reverse image of Mark, whose reticent, theologically closed-mouthed hero ends up dying on a cross precisely for his Christology.48 John’s christologically vocal Jesus, by contrast, dies for reasons of state. John’s chief priests fear that Rome, spurred by Jesus’ mounting popular following, will take aggressive action against the nation. John’s Jesus has no Sanhedrin trial, just a brief, even practical interview with Annas, who questions him “about his disciples and his teaching” (John 18:19). The reasons provided by the Fourth Evangelist for the priests’ anxieties, and the depiction he gives of his protagonist’s hearing are, in contrast to the Synoptics, extremely nondramatic, parsimonious, and plain. They are intrinsically more realistic. This does not make them eo ipso more historical: verisimilitude by itself does not and cannot establish historicity.49 But it does mean that, on these issues—and specifically on the irrelevance of Jesus’ theological identity to the priests’ concerns—John gives a more plausible picture. John’s hypertrophied Christology floats far above his narrative while accounting for none of it. His Jesus and his priests do not even discuss Christology; Jesus’ view of himself causes absolutely no concern to the priests. In brief: John’s Gospel demonstrates the irrelevance—or perhaps better, the sheer unnecessity—of Christology as a factor in accounting, in a historically credible manner, for the priests’ involvement in Jesus’ death. The point is made compositionally by the way that John’s very high Christology contributes so little to his plot (such as it is). And the same point is made narratively, by the way that John positions Jesus’ action in the temple in his story. We could see the same thing by looking directly at Mark. Mark uses the action in the temple to set up the Sanhedrin trial, which in turn sets up the dramatic christological confession, then Pilate, then death. By having

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John as a counter-story to think with, we see that much more clearly how plot-driven the Markan denouement is,50 how Jesus’ temple action serves basically to bring the priests on stage, and how the beautifully crafted, historically impossible Sanhedrin trial serves chiefly as a vehicle for christological proclamation. John helps us to see—if we are taken in by Mark’s artistic power—that Jesus’ own view of his messianic identity simply cannot account for his public, Roman execution, nor can it provide a realistic reason why the priests would want Jesus out of the way. What, then, of the historical Jesus? How does either of these stories, written some forty to sixty years after his death, help us to understand what happened in Jerusalem during Passover season around the year 30? Here I would turn our attention to an event in Jesus’ last week mentioned by both Mark and John: his entrance into the city not later than 8 Nisan, the week before the feast. Both evangelists present Jesus as fêted into Jerusalem, acclaimed in messianic terms by enthused pilgrims. “Blessed be he who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed be the kingdom of our father David that is coming!” (Mark 11:9–10). “Blessed be he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel!” (John 12:13). Then, again according to both Gospels, something curious happens: nothing. Why not? How could any reasonably competent prefect let such a messianic demonstration pass? Why aren’t the priests on alert? Sanders has proposed one answer. The demonstration, he conjectures, which looms large in the Gospel stories, may actually have been inconspicuous, quiet, and small. “I can only suggest that Jesus’ demonstration was quite modest”; “perhaps only a few disciples unostentatiously dropped their garments in front of an ass, while only a few quietly murmured ‘Hosanna.’”51 The demonstration is so quiet that Jesus, so to speak, slips in under the radar. For Sanders, the temple action is what alerts the priests and begins the final stages of the drama.52 Perhaps. With no better evidence, I propose a different argument.53 Once the floating story of Jesus’ overturning the tables in the Temple Court is bracketed out, the same narrative structure for Jesus’ final trip to Jerusalem emerges in both Mark and John. In both, Jesus progresses from the Triumphal Entry (where he is hailed as the harbinger of the messianic kingdom) to teaching in and around the temple in the days before the feast, to his secret arrest (he is so popular, claim the evangelists, that the priests cannot

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risk arresting him openly), and then to his death. Let us take the Triumphal Entry at face value, as the evangelists present it: a joyous, public, eminently visible demonstration of enthusiasm. The crowd of holiday pilgrims loudly endorses both the message (“the kingdom of our father David that is coming”) and its messenger, Jesus (who “comes in the name of the Lord”). Why do Pilate and Caiaphas not act? If we think with John, we can conjecture: Because they knew from all his other trips to the city that Jesus perennially proclaimed the Kingdom, and that he expected God, not armies, to establish it. In brief, Jesus is harmless, and they know it.54 So, even after the Triumphal Entry—an unprecedented show of enthusiasm (pilgrims have not acted like this before)—Jesus proceeds, as he always does, to teach to the holiday crowds in the temple. Thus far, business as usual. But within days Jesus will be dead on a cross: not business as usual. How is this particular trip up to Jerusalem different? Those who follow the Markan chronology will answer: This year Jesus performs his prophetic action in the temple, which both announces the temple’s doom and, at the same moment, tips off the priests to his religiously offensive, implicitly messianic view of himself. I have argued against this reconstruction on several grounds: (a) insecurity about whether Jesus ever predicted the temple’s destruction; (b) uncertainty about the significance and impact of the gesture at the temple, even if he had made it; (c) dissatisfaction with the major question it does not and cannot answer: Why death by crucifixion? At this point, I think that we should turn and face where the cross in any place points us to: this same holiday crowd in Jerusalem. Most scholars attribute to the authorities a fear that Jesus’ activities might result in riot: that concern accounts for his death. I agree. The precise reasons for this riot remain murky—though, again, Jesus’ perceived threat to the temple, enacted prophetically in its courts, is often mobilized to fill in the blanks. But why would such a gesture encourage or initiate riot? Because Jesus’ prophecy of destruction would upset the crowd? Offend them? Inspire them to some sort of revolt against Rome? And if the precipitating factor were Jesus’ (religiously offensive) construction of his own (messianic) identity, the priests and Pilate could have disabused him of his views simply by murdering him, thereby avoiding the attention of the labile public and, thus, any risk to their own positions.

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If we face the crowd, rather than try to peer into the heads of the priests or of Jesus himself, we will start our reconstruction not at the Temple Mount but on the road up to Jerusalem. A straight line connects the mood and acclamation of the Triumphal Entry to the titulus on the cross. The identification of Jesus as “King of Israel” unites the two. But if Jesus, whenever he came to the city, had proclaimed the coming Kingdom, why then do all these things happen now? Perhaps, this particular year, on this particular holiday, Jesus had proclaimed this Passover as the last before the coming of the Kingdom. The popular acclaim as he went into the city, the traditions about his resurrection that form immediately after his death, his apostles’ decision to remain, after all, in Jerusalem: all these point to an extreme intensity of eschatological expectation.55 They prompt the question: had Jesus, for this Passover, shifted his proclamation of the Kingdom from “soon” (Mark’s hē basileia ēggiken) to “now”? If so, who would have elided Jesus’ proclamation of the coming Kingdom to an identification of Jesus as its king? Jesus himself is one possibility, though in my opinion an unlikely one: the traditions in the Gospels, despite the evangelists’ own convictions, are too reticent on this score. His immediate followers? Again, I think this unlikely: Jesus’ charismatic mission would give them plenty of reason to think of him as a prophet, little to think of him as a king. And as Sanders has pointed out, all the evangelists thought of Jesus as “Christ”/messiah/king, each makes his claim differently, and none can cite secure tradition. Had Jesus himself or his earliest followers in his lifetime claimed the title or role, however he or they might have modified its traditional meanings, the evangelists would have had an easier time making their case.56 The most likely candidates for those who identified Jesus as a Davidic sort of messiah on his last trip to Jerusalem are the pilgrim crowds. They are the least familiar with Jesus’ movement. They are, at this penultimate hour, caught up in expectation of the Kingdom. They are also the ones least socialized to the pacifist tenor of his message. They provide the numbers for the crowds milling about the city when “sedition is most apt to break out” (B.J. 1.88). They also—and they alone—account most precisely for Jesus’ mode of death. Had Pilate just wanted to do Caiaphas a favor, a simple murder would

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have been adequate, and much easier. Had both Caiaphas and Pilate only been concerned to convince Jesus, or Jesus and his inner circle, that his messianic self-designation—wed, as they knew full well, to absolutely no sort of practical seditious intent or plan—was wrong, the same solution obtains. Had they only wanted to silence a popular figure whose preaching might lead to riot, then a quiet, offstage murder/execution—exactly like Antipas’s move against the Baptizer—would have risked less and sufficed perfectly well. But instead, Jesus was crucified. Crucifixion has a different social semiotics. Crucifixion is crowd control. It presupposes—indeed, requires— a watching crowd as its context and its political raison d’être. No audience, no reason to bother. For that very same reason, it risked riot, if Jesus were so popular (Mark 14:2; John 12:19). But it was an elegant, simple, and powerful way to disabuse the crowds gathered for the holiday of their burgeoning messianic convictions. Jesus of Nazareth, Pilate announced emphatically through the cross, was not the King of the Jews. I am clean out of evidence, and have been for a while. I offer the above reconstruction in the effort to get us to think a little more critically about the new orthodoxy regarding Jesus and the temple. I urge us to be a little more aware of the degree to which we have all introjected Mark and his concerns—specifically his concerns about Jesus’ messianic identity—into our reconstructions. And I want to argue that John is useful historically, in many different ways, when we are trying to assemble the bits and pieces that we have into a plausible picture of Jesus of Nazareth. Further, using John’s chronology—or, better, a John-like chronology— rather than that offered by the Synoptics can help us to work with all the other data we have about and from the early postresurrection movement, in ways that can lead us, obliquely, back into their prehistory in Jesus’ mission. In particular, thinking with John can help us to attain some critical purchase on the consequences of appealing to Galilean regionalism and to noneschatological kerygmas when we look at this earliest period. John’s Jerusalem-centered mission, often disregarded, has the undeniable virtue of conforming to what else we know about the postresurrection Christian movement. It too was Jerusalem-centered. Jesus and his closest followers may indeed have hailed chiefly from the Galilee, but once the community had reassembled after the trauma of Jesus’ death, convinced

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of his resurrection and of his impending return, the capitol became their home (Gal 1:18, 2:1; Acts passim; Josephus A.J. 20.199–203). Within just five years of Jesus’ death, evidence abounds for the widespread and rapid dissemination of his mission in its new phase. Ekklēsiai appear in the villages of Samaria and Judea as well as in the Galilee (Acts 8:1–4, 9:31; Gal 1:22; see John 11:18, Bethany in Judea); in Lydda and, on the coast, Joppa (Acts 9:32, 42) and Caesarea (Acts 10); farther north, in the Syrian cities of Damascus (Gal 1:17; Acts 9:10–11) and Antioch (Gal 2:11; Acts 11:20). For the movement’s first generation, Jerusalem remained the hub, and it was from Jerusalem that they fanned out to bring “the word of the Lord” to the rest of Israel, and indeed to the world (Rom 15:19). Scholars who concentrate on the (undeniably) Galilean roots of the movement see that northern region as its true matrix: chief arena of Jesus’ teaching and preaching; home to the Q communities, groups who preserved or valued primarily the social teachings of Jesus, not stories about him. The origins of the Jesus movement, they say, bear the stamp of the Galilee religiously (in its supposed indifference or even hostility to templeoriented purity rules), politically (it articulates the historic, independent Israelite identity vis-à-vis the aristocratic, priestly Jerusalem), and sociologically (formed and based in small towns, it was intrinsically peasant and rural). Jerusalem, in this light, only seems important because of the theological emphasis of Luke’s Gospel and Acts. Intensive regional studies of the Galilee are the best way, they argue, to understand the earliest—and in a sense, the most authentic—phase of the Jesus movement. This orientation reflects the current scholarly preference for the Synoptic Gospels in historical Jesus research. It has served as well to give scope to those political, economic, and social theories that articulate tensions (imperial or colonial/indigenous, aristocrat/peasant, literate/oral, city/village) that some scholars have found useful to their reconstructions. It has spurred the growth of one of the great redactional marvels of our age, the Q industry.57 It is a principled expression of the simple truth that the Galilee and Judea were two different regions with their own particular histories and traditions, with related but different political profiles, especially once Judea came under Roman rule when the Galilee retained its own Jewish ruler, client of Rome though he was.

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Yes, Jesus himself came from the north. Yes, the Galilee doubtless did play an important role in shaping his temperament, his thought, and his teaching. Yes, traditions in Mark and in Q still bear the stamp of that rural environment: in the narrative incidentals of the parables we still glimpse the world of village marketplaces and small farms. Yet acknowledging these things does not excuse us from making sense of all the data we have from the early movement that pull in a different direction—one that is not regionally specific, one that leads us, by many roads, to Jerusalem. Put simply: the whole—Jesus’ mission and message—is greater than its parts. Speculating on some sort of rural quintessence to the movement (whether pre or postcrucifixion) only makes what we know to have been the case that much harder to account for. What we know, in fact, is that Galileans routinely made the trip to Jerusalem for the holidays and that the temple (as poor Petronius discovered) was of no less concern to them than to their Judean cousins.58 What we know—implied even in Mark, stated but not recounted in Luke, broadcast by John—is that Jesus during his mission had taught in Jerusalem more than once; I think, probably repeatedly.59 What we know is that, shortly after his death, his movement settled in Jerusalem and spread quickly in both regions, Judea and the Galilee, in town and country both. Mark’s narrative chronology narrows the scope of Jesus’ mission even as it reduces his ambit. It reinforces and geographically expresses Mark’s peculiar christological theme of concealment (in the Galilee) and revelation (in Jerusalem). Looked at in this light, Jesus’ itinerary in Mark ranks least among the historically reliable data to be gleaned from that Gospel. John’s chronology, too, betrays evidence of theological shaping, especially in the ways that certain of his Jesus’ speeches or acts resonate with a setting in Jerusalem. But in presenting a Jesus who routinely preaches to all Israel from the temple during the great pilgrimage holidays, the Fourth Gospel articulates narratively what we have good reason to think was the case historically, namely, that Jesus of Nazareth had a broad conception of his own mission. Notoriously inattentive to the sequence of Jesus’ movements, monopolized by its very high, very noneschatological Christology, the Fourth Gospel allows us to glimpse a shape to Jesus’ mission that coheres precisely with those eschatological images, patterns, and behaviors still visible in so much of our other data from the Synoptics and from Paul.

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Finally, by thinking with John, we can begin to be more cautious in our use of Mark on the specific issue of Jesus’ supposed action in the temple. Mark’s version of the temple scene has been pressed into service— ingeniously, variously, all-but-universally—to explain how and why the priests became involved in Jesus’ arrest and why they called for his death. Centered on Mark’s scene, elaborate theories about Jesus’ supposed messianic identity, and about the priests’ uncanny ability to divine it from his supposed prophetic act, have been generated. The scene’s dramatic power has cloaked its own anachronism and its practical implausibility, while sponsoring the same in diverse scholarly reconstructions. And while driving us to construct some sort of primary religious disagreement over Christology between Jesus and the priests, or specifically between Jesus and Caiaphas, it has diverted us from noticing the fundamental oddness of the very event that it is mobilized to explain: Jesus’ death on the cross. Did Jesus, in the last week of his life as portrayed in the Gospel of Mark, overturn the tables in the temple? And was that the incident that fundamentally sealed his fate and led him to death on the cross? Ed Sanders made a strong and compelling argument for this reconstruction in Jesus and Judaism. It has dominated subsequent interpretations of the historical Jesus for the past twenty years. Though I was once convinced of the rightness of this reconstruction, my earlier conviction has eroded over the course of the nearly two decades since first reading Jesus and Judaism. In that time, I have learned more about the actual temple, not least from Sanders’s own later work. I have learned how to think with John as well as with Mark. I have tried to internalize Sanders’s own exhortation to think, as much as we can, with common sense. Now, working with those categories that Sanders used to organize his conclusions in Jesus and Judaism, I would sort through the elements of Markan tradition differently. The scene in the temple for me has shifted from “indisputable” past “probable”: it hovers between “conceivable” and “incredible.” The same is true of my view of Jesus’ intent through such a gesture. Did Jesus thereby mean to predict the temple’s coming destruction? It’s “conceivable,” but I think not. Did Jesus indeed predict the temple’s destruction at any point during his mission? “Possibly,” but I doubt it. The crowd’s enthusiasm for Jesus’ message is sufficient to account for his

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death by crucifixion, and Pilate’s familiarity with his message is sufficient to account for Jesus’ followers being left in peace. John’s narrative chronology best coheres with this historical reconstruction. Perhaps the Synoptic Gospels, with their dramatic scene in the Temple Court, can cede on these issues of chronology and priestly motivation to the more plausible suggestions offered by the Gospel of John.

Notes 1. By “Gospels” I mean primarily the four in the canon. Other scholars, such as John Dominic Crossan, would give much more weight to sources such as Q, and Gospels such as Peter and Thomas. For contrasting comments on sources and methods, see, for example, John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant (New York/Edinburgh: HarperCollins/T & T Clark, 1991), xxvii–xxxiv, 427–66; John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus (3 vols.; Anchor Bible Reference Library; New York: Doubleday, 1991, 1994, 2001), 1:41–55. 2. This essay draws substantially on a paper entitled, “The Historical Jesus, the Scene at the Temple, and the Gospel of John,” delivered at the Gospel of John Consultation of the Society of Biblical Literature in Toronto, 2002. That earlier essay benefited from the criticisms of Dr. John Ashton, whom I would like to thank here. 3. The priests construe Jesus’ action as a prophetic threat to the temple, and this “seals his fate”; for example, E. P. Sanders, The Historical Figure of Jesus (London: Allen Lane Penguin, 1993), 265; more vaguely, Geza Vermes, The Religion of Jesus the Jew (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), x; John Dominic Crossan, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1994), 132–33; also vague, N. T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God (Christian Origins and the Question of God 2; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996), 493–611. See Burton Mack, A Myth of Innocence: Mark and Christian Origins (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1988), 242–43, 288–96, who argues strenuously that the temple scene is Mark’s fiction; also David Seeley, “Jesus’ Temple Act,” CBQ 55 (1993): 263–83. The earliest and most comprehensive critique of Sanders’s position was offered by Craig A. Evans, “Jesus’ Action in the Temple: Cleansing or Portent of Destruction?” CBQ 51 (1989): 237–70. 4. R. J. Miller, “Historical Method and the Deeds of Jesus: Test Case of the Temple Demonstration,” Foundation & Facts Forum 8 (1992): 5–30. 5. Especially on the issues of eschatology, ethics, and paradoxa: see Paula Fredriksen, Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews: A Jewish Life and the Emergence of Christianity (New York/London: Knopf/Macmillan, 1999), 74–116.

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6. Exploration of these traditions has been the prime contribution of Geza Vermes, thanks to whom cameo appearances of other charismatic Galilean holy men—Honi the Circle-Drawer, Hanina ben Dosa, Hanan the Rainmaker—are now routinely mentioned in works on the historical Jesus. See Geza Vermes, Jesus the Jew: A Historian’s Reading of the Gospels (London: Collins, 1973). 7. Noted and objected to by Charles W. Hedrick, “The Tyranny of the Synoptic Jesus,” Semeia 44 (1988): 1–8. See further Marianne Meye Thompson, “The Historical Jesus and the Johannine Christ,” in Exploring the Gospel of John (ed. R. Alan Culpepper and C. Clifton Black; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1996), 21–42. 8. Vermes, The Religion of Jesus the Jew, 213. Vermes includes Paul in the same indictment; I will say more below on using Paul as well as John for reconstructing the historical Jesus. See further Geza Vermes, The Many Faces of God (New York: Viking, 2001), 6–54, for his more recent observations on the Gospel. 9. Sanders’s focus on Jesus’ action in the temple as the trip-switch to the Passion requires the chronology in Mark. He notes the superior plausibility of John’s description of events around the Jewish hearing before the high priest. See E. P. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism (Philadelphia/London: Fortress/SCM, 1985), chapter 1 and passim on the significance of Jesus’ action in the Temple Court; pp. 317–18 on John’s account of the Jewish trial. Q, or some redactional layer imputed to Q, serves the Jesus Seminar as the Gospel of choice for reconstructing Jesus: John, again, stands at too many removes to be useful. Crossan identifies and organizes his primary sources elaborately and creatively (see esp. Crossan, The Historical Jesus). The originality of some of his evidential choices (such as reliance on Gospels such as Thomas, Peter, and a redactional creation of his own, the Cross Gospel) notwithstanding, however, Crossan orders the chronology of his Jesus’ mission according to the Gospel of Mark. Wright, who renounces both the Jesus Seminar and all its works, likewise draws only lightly on John and says so forthrightly. He notes that the shape of current historical Jesus scholarship in part compels his selection: “The debate [on the historical Jesus] to which I wish to contribute in this book has been conducted almost entirely in terms of the synoptic tradition” (Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, xvi). Meier has advocated John as a usable historical source. See Meier, A Marginal Jew, 1:45, 53, n. 22, specifically on Johannine narrative rather than the sayings tradition. In A Marginal Jew, 3:501, however, he implies that he will hold to the Markan chronology (scene in the temple—arrests—execution) in volume 4. 10. See Moody D. Smith, John Among the Gospels (2nd ed.; Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2001). 11. I note with deepest appreciation John Meier’s calm review of these issues and the simplicity and clarity of his conclusions (another way of saying that I agree with him) in Meier, A Marginal Jew, 1:41–55.

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12. Josephus, A.J. 18.63–64; Tacitus, Annales 15.44. See discussion with copious bibliography in Meier, A Marginal Jew, 1:56–92. 13. John the Baptizer’s death does not conform to this pattern. Antipas arrested him, imprisoned him, and executed him: all fairly orderly. See Meier, A Marginal Jew, 3:625. John does not seem to have amassed a standing group of followers: people went to him, but did not linger. Other charismatics amassed large groups of followers, drawing the immediate and hostile attention of the authorities. See Sanders, Historical Figure of Jesus; also Fredriksen, Jesus of Nazareth,190–91, 244. 14. I have no reason to question that men other than Jesus were executed at the same time that he was (e.g., the two lēstai of Mark 15:27 and parallels). But these men were not part of Jesus’ circle: that is the point. 15. I am assuming that the Ioudaioi who “killed the Lord Jesus and the prophets” are (a) the priests and (b) the passage is not a post-Pauline interpolation. I do not like theories of interpolation but have yet to find a compelling response to the points raised by B. Pearson, “1 Thessalonians 2:13–16: A Deutero-Pauline Interpolation,” HTR 64 (1971): 79–94. 16. A.J. 18.64, if the “leading men” (prōtoi) are the chief priests. 17. See Meier, A Marginal Jew, 3:623: “The two leaders, civil [Pilate] and religious [Caiaphas], survived for so long in what were often revolving-door appointments apparently because they worked well together.” 18. All biblical citations in this chapter are rsv. 19. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism, 61–90. 20. On the absence of criticisms about the way the priests ran the temple in early Christian tradition, see Sanders, Historical Figure of Jesus, 255–56; though see Evans, “Jesus’ Action in the Temple,” 243–48, and 256–64. Evans’s reliance on pre- and anti-Hasmonean sources, as well as much later rabbinic ones, makes his case less persuasive to me. Both Paul and Luke confirm the earliest community’s residence in Jerusalem: Gal 1:17–2:1; Luke 24:52; Acts 1:12 and passim. Worshipping in the temple, Luke 24:53; Acts 3:1, 5:12, 5:42, 21:26ff. (Paul), 22:17 (again). Acts 9:32 mentions the Jesus movement in Lydda within a few years of the crucifixion; Josephus, in B.J. 2.515, states that at the beginning of the war Lydda fell to the Romans because the entire town had gone to Jerusalem to celebrate Sukkot: these “Christian” Jews exhibited traditional temple piety. Specifically on sacrificing, Matt 5:23–24. On the temple as God’s earthly dwelling place, Matt 23:21; Rom 9:4 (in Paul’s Jewish Greek, doxa rests on the Hebrew kavod); specifically on cult, Rom 9:4, latreia/avodah. On Paul’s entirely normative appreciation of the temple and its cult generally, see Paula Fredriksen, “Ultimate Reality in Ancient Christianity: Christ, Blood Sacrifice, and Redemption,” in Ultimate Realities: A Study of the Comparison of Religious Ideas (ed. Robert C. Neville; Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000), 61–73; esp. pp. 62–68; on that of Jesus and the early movement, see Meier, A Marginal Jew, 3:498–502.

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21. The subsequent use to which other scholars have put Sanders’s insight, and the meaning they have given to Jesus’ action as a prophetic enactment of impending destruction, alas, has let the old “cleansing” argument in the back door. See Paula Fredriksen, “What You See Is What You Get: Context and Content in Current Research on the Historical Jesus,” ThTo 52 (1995): 75–95; esp. pp. 81–82, 86–91. 22. Though not universal, see n. 3 above. 23. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, 98; emphasis added. 24. Meier, A Marginal Jew, 2:6; emphasis added. The same point is made, slightly differently, in ibid., 1:177; 3:11–12. 25. Ibid., 3:618; emphasis added. 26. Ibid., 3:634. 27. N. T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, 552. 28. Meier, A Marginal Jew, 3:625. 29. Ibid., 3:646, combines all these issues: “The precise reason(s) why Jesus’ life ended as it did, namely, by crucifixion at the hands of the Roman prefect on the charge of claiming to be King of the Jews, is the starkest, most disturbing, most central of all the enigmas Jesus posed and was.” I doubt that Jesus claimed in any way to be king, but if he did, Pilate could have disabused him of the idea by simple murder. Crucifixion aims to disabuse others. 30. On patterns of accountability: Josephus B.J. 1.648–55; A.J. 17.146–64 (Herod’s golden eagle); A.J. 18.85–89: Vitellius sacking Pilate and Caiaphas from office after Samaria; B.J. 2.232–46: a similar incident in Samaria in 50 c.e., when the legate of Syria ordered the high priest, the chief priests, and other high-ranking citizens of Jerusalem to Rome, though none had been personally involved in the violence; B.J. 2.315–25: the priests attempting to turn the crowd in Jerusalem from violent protest. See further, Sanders, Historical Figure of Jesus, 15–32, 266–67. 31. A mote of support: Paul’s use of paredidoto in 1 Cor 11:23—“handed over”? “betrayed”?—can be read as suggesting a surreptitious arrest. In the Synoptics, the priests effect an ambush with a Jewish ochlos (Mark 14:43 and parallels); see the Roman speira of John 18:3, 12, whose chain of command runs through Pilate, not the priests. 32. Meier, A Marginal Jew, 3:501. Fundamental to both Meier’s discussion and my own is Sanders, Jesus and Judaism. For varying assessments of the historicity of Jesus’ action in the temple and his predictions of its destruction and rebuilding, see also Bruce Chilton, The Temple of Jesus: His Sacrificial Program within a Cultural History of Sacrifice (University Park: Penn State University Press, 1992); Lloyd Gaston, No Stone on Another: Studies in the Significance of the Fall of Jerusalem in the Synoptic Gospels (NovTSup 23; Leiden: Brill, 1970); J. Schlosser, “La parole de Jésus sur la fin du temple,” NTS 36 (1990): 398–414; and David Seeley, “Jesus’ Temple Act Revisited: A Response to P. M. Casey,” CBQ 62 (2000): 55–63.

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33. On the “false witnesses,” and on Luke’s general tendency to distance Jesus from seeming to make threats against the temple, see Sanders, Historical Figure of Jesus, 257–58. 34. The change of agency is required by John’s using this verse as a Passion prediction. The oblique reference to resurrection as “rebuilding” also characterizes Mark’s verses, especially where he invokes “three days.” 35. Traditions about Mary’s sexual status after Jesus’ birth are examined scrupulously in Meier, A Marginal Jew, 1:316–32; the classic study is Raymond Brown, The Birth of the Messiah: A Commentary on the Infancy Narratives in Matthew and Luke (New York: Doubleday, 1977). 36. On miracles generally, Meier, A Marginal Jew, 2:509–1038; specifically on raising the dead, see pp. 773–873. The great theme of Meier’s project is rigorous critical consistency, and let the criteria of authenticity take us where they may. Thus, his chapter on miracles points out again and again that whatever problems modern Westerners may have with the category “miracle,” evidently no such problem afflicted the evangelists, the people standing between the evangelists and the original disciples, the original disciples, and even Jesus himself, on the basis of the ubiquity and broad independent attestation of traditions of Jesus as a miracle worker. Nevertheless, Meier (p. 775) carefully prescinds from pronouncing the actual historicity of traditions of Jesus’ reviving the dead: “If the story does go back in some way to Jesus’ ministry, then the possibility arises that a belief [author’s emphasis] that Jesus raised the dead already existed among his disciples during his lifetime.” On similar caution about John 11 and the raising of Lazarus, see p. 831. 37. See esp. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism, 71–76; Sanders, Historical Figure of Jesus, 265–73. I am unpersuaded. A glance at any synopticon reveals how readily Matthew and Luke altered or dropped “dominical” traditions from Mark when they needed to. I cannot see how the supposed dominical status of a tradition would compel the evangelists to repeat the tradition yet at the same time disown it. 38. “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, killing the prophets and stoning those who are sent to you! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not! Behold, your house is forsaken and desolate. For I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed be he who comes in the name of the Lord’ ” (Matt 24:37–39//Luke 13:34–35). 39. See too Sanders’s remarks in Historical Figure of Jesus, 256. 40. Scholars will sometimes observe that, since Jesus was in a dangerous line of work (prophet, critic, etc.), it would not have been extraordinary for him to think that perhaps his life were in danger and to confide this concern to his immediate followers. True enough. But these sayings, characterized by precision, follow exactly the narrative line of what, in fact, does happen in the Gospels (Jesus’ death and resurrection). And Jesus’ closest followers, even in the Gospels, act totally bewildered once the final events unwind. On the Passion predictions, see Paula

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Fredriksen, From Jesus to Christ (2nd ed.; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 107–10. 41. Fredriksen, Jesus of Nazareth, 229–30. Meier, A Marginal Jew, 3:647, n. 7, commenting on this incident, says, curiously, “By the time of Jesus ben Ananias, the situation in Judea and Jerusalem had deteriorated greatly; the final crisis and revolt were looming. Hence the tensions were much more severe.” Evidently, he means to account for why Jesus of Nazareth, supposedly making such predictions, was not arrested, while Jesus ben Ananias was. Josephus (B.J. 6.300), however, specifically says that, in 62 c.e., “the city was enjoying profound peace and prosperity.” Whatever the differences between the two Jesuses—and thus between the ways the authorities initially handled them (Jesus son of Joseph, circa 30, continued to teach after making his prophecy; Jesus son of Ananias, in 62, was arrested and flogged)—I doubt that a generalized prescience about the historical moment explains them: people in 62, again on the evidence of Josephus, did not know what awaited them four years down the line. 42. This last is Sanders’s argument. See Sanders, Historical Figure of Jesus, 257. He also notes that Mark’s prophecy—further tribute to its authenticity—fails to mention specifically fire, which features in Josephus’s description. But in B.J. 6, though fire does figure prominently, what Josephus emphasizes is total devastation. From Josephus’s eyewitness account, in other words, one still couldn’t know that the retaining walls remained; Mark, not an eyewitness, can perhaps be excused. Also, even according to Josephus’s account, Mark’s Jesus foresaw accurately: none of the buildings on the mount remained standing. 43. See esp. 1 Thess 4:13–18, which Paul has “by the word of the Lord”; also 1 Corinthians 15, which begins a list of witnesses to the risen Christ and then segues into a description of end-time events. On using Paul together with the Gospels to trace trajectories back to traditions from Jesus see Fredriksen, Jesus of Nazareth, 74–154. 44. For the full argument, see Fredriksen, Jesus of Nazareth, 119–37. 45. Others have raised the same objection; for example, P. S. Alexander, “Jesus and Judaism, by E. P. Sanders,” JJS 37 (1986): 103–6, and H. Räisänen, “Jesus in Context,” RR&T 2 (1994): 9–18. 46. These figures come from Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief, 47–145; on the size of the pilgrim crowds, see p. 127. I hope I do not appear ungracious in relying on his work to challenge his interpretation. 47. On the specific issue of historical Jesus research and modern Christologies, see William P. Loewe, “From the Humanity of Christ to the Historical Jesus,” TS 61 (2000): 314–31; John P. Meier’s concluding remarks in John P. Meier, “The Present State of the ‘Third Quest’ for the Historical Jesus: Loss and Gain,” Bib 80 (1999): 459–87; esp. 485–86; Paula Fredriksen, “What Does Jesus Have to Do with

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Christ? What Does Knowledge Have to Do with Faith? What Does History Have to Do with Theology?” in Christology: Memory, Practice, Inquiry (ed. Anne M. Clifford and Anthony J. Godzeiba; Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 2003), 3–17. 48. Keenly observed by Smith, John Among the Gospels, 218–21. 49. On verisimilitude, see ibid., 231. 50. For a similar conclusion, from an utterly different starting point, see Mack, A Myth of Innocence. 51. Sanders, Historical Figure of Jesus, 254; Sanders, Jesus and Judaism, 306–8. David Catchpole, “The ‘Triumphal’ Entry,” in Jesus and the Politics of His Day (ed. Ernst Bammel and C. D. F. Moule; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 319–34, more radically, argues that the whole story is a fabrication. 52. While Sanders, Historical Figure of Jesus, 265, insists that the most immediate cause of Jesus’ arrest by the priests was his prophetic demonstration in the temple, he leaves room as well for Caiaphas’s knowing about the messianic acclamation that accompanied his entry into the city. Sanders (p. 268) also mentions that Caiaphas and Pilate must both have known that Jesus posed no military threat (“The solitary execution of the leader shows that they feared that Jesus could rouse the mob, not that he had created a secret army”), but he does not explain how Caiaphas and Pilate could have known this; his allegiance to the Markan chronology seems to foreclose the Johannine solution. 53. This section synopsizes my full argument and reconstruction in Fredriksen, Jesus of Nazareth, 235–66. 54. Independent evidence from the Gospels and from Paul converge on and confirm this point: whatever Jesus’ eschatological message promised in terms of God’s justice ultimately being visited upon the wicked—and there is no shortage of predictions of that kind, whether in the Gospels or in Paul—in the meantime, before the Kingdom came, evil was to be met with nonresistance, the enemy loved rather than hated, injustice endured, vengeance eschewed. See Fredriksen, Jesus of Nazareth, 243–44, on the early movement’s “interim pacifism.” 55. A further index of eschatological conviction is the earliest movement’s policy on Gentiles, requiring that they give up their native cults but not convert to Judaism. See Fredriksen, Jesus of Nazareth, 125–37. 56. See Sanders, Historical Figure of Jesus, 240–43; Meier, A Marginal Jew, 3:634, announces that, in vol. 4, he will argue otherwise. 57. On closing the gap between Q and other early Christian texts and traditions, see Larry W. Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 217–57. 58. On Galilean pilgrims to Jerusalem: rioting on Šavuot, after Archelaus’s succession, A.J. 17.254; on the sit-down strike against Caligula’s statue hosted and supported by Galileans, A.J. 18.269–72; on Galilean pilgrims murdered in Samaria

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on their way to Judea and the territory-wide passions that incident inflamed, A.J. 20.118–36. 59. Jesus’ instructions to his disciples on preparation for the Passover meal presupposed previous contact with people within the city (Mark 14:12–14); Luke’s chief priests charge that Jesus “stirs up the people, teaching throughout all Judea, from Galilee even to this place [Jerusalem]” (Luke 23:5).

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FIFTEEN

The Incident at the Temple as the Occasion for Jesus’ Death Meeting Some Objections

Stephen Hultgren

Among the many contributions of E. P. Sanders to scholarship on the New Testament and on early Judaism, his writings on how things actually worked in first-century Palestine stand out for their sound historical sense, and they have helped to clear away many confusions about the historical circumstances of Jesus’ ministry. Although his full discussion of this topic appears in a later book, already in 1985 Sanders applied his initial work quite successfully to the question of the respective roles of the Jewish leadership and of the Roman governor in Jesus’ arrest, trial, and crucifixion. He made a compelling case for seeing the incident at the temple as the immediate occasion for Jesus’ death.1 Since the publication of Jesus and Judaism, the view that Jesus’ action in the temple was the immediate cause of his arrest and death has become standard in works on the historical Jesus. Recently, however, this view has been challenged by Paula Fredriksen. Taking a cue from Sanders himself, who argued that the account of Jesus’ interrogation by the Jewish officials in John 18:19–28 is historically more plausible than the trial scene in the Synoptics,2 Fredriksen (unlike Sanders) has gone one step further: the apparently causal connection that we find in the Synoptic Gospels between Jesus’ action in the temple and his arrest, trial, and crucifixion is not historical. We should prefer the Johannine chronology, which makes no such connection. 283

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In brief, Fredriksen’s argument is this:3 Jesus probably did not predict the destruction of the temple; the temple incident may or may not be historical. Even if the incident actually happened, it would not have brought much attention to Jesus among the tens of thousands of people in the temple courtyards, and so cannot explain Jesus’ death. In any case, this story was an oral tradition that floated freely and had no fixed context in Jesus’ ministry, which explains why it appears in a different place in the Synoptics and in John. To find the actual cause of Jesus’ death, we must look to the Passover crowds in Jerusalem. Following John’s chronology, we should assume that Jesus made repeated trips to Jerusalem over the course of his ministry, most likely for the pilgrimage holidays. Pilate and the Jewish authorities thus became familiar with Jesus’ message. They knew that Jesus was not a political threat, because he preached a kingdom that was to be brought about by God and not by force of arms. But on Jesus’ last trip to Jerusalem, the crowds hailed Jesus as the Messiah. This frightened Caiaphas and Pilate, who feared that the acclamations might spill over into riot. Pilate executed Jesus as a form of crowd control. This explains why Jesus was arrested, but his disciples were not. I must confess that I do not find this explanation of Jesus’ death convincing. The main purpose of this paper, however, is not to criticize Fredriksen’s proposal. Rather, I wish to offer some observations that I think meet her objections to the position that she rejects, namely, the view that there was a causal connection between the temple incident and Jesus’ death. These observations will come in two parts: (1) observations on the narrative structure of the Gospels and (2) some historical considerations.

The Narrative Structure of the Gospels Fredriksen has argued that the placement of the temple incident in Mark 11 (and in the corresponding places in Matthew and Luke) between Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem and his teaching in the city during the last week is a Markan redactional decision and has no roots in history or prior Gospel tradition: Once the floating story of Jesus’ overturning the tables in the Temple court is bracketed out, the same narrative structure for Jesus’ final trip

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to Jerusalem emerges in both Mark and John. On his way up to the city, festive crowds of pilgrims hail Jesus as the harbinger of the messianic Kingdom. . . . He enters the city like messianic royalty, riding on a donkey. . . . He goes to the Temple and teaches there daily before the holiday begins, so popular with the crowds of pilgrims that the priests decide they cannot risk arresting him openly.4 On this reading, the temple action can be bracketed out of a narrative structure common to Mark and John. Mark uses the action in the temple for his own purposes: to begin the events leading to the Passion by bringing Jesus to the hostile attention of the chief priests.5 Thus the temple incident is to be explained primarily in terms of its literary value for Mark, rather than its historical value in understanding the cause of Jesus’ death. There is evidence, however, to suggest that Mark’s narrative structure in this part of the Gospel is not his invention but has roots in older Gospel tradition.6 This can be seen when we analyze the connections between the temple incident as it occurs in all three Synoptics with material that comes before and after it. I shall first treat the material that comes after the incident. It has been suggested by other scholars that the teaching material in Mark 12–13 is a block that has been inserted into an older framework that originally connected Mark 11:15–33 (Jesus’ action in the temple and the questioning of Jesus’ authority) with 14:1 (the beginning of the Passion narrative).7 I agree with this judgment. There is evidence, apart from Mark, in Matthew and Luke that points to just such a pre-Synoptic link between the temple incident and the Passion narrative. I have discussed this matter at some length elsewhere.8 In brief, the evidence is this: in Luke 19:47–48, immediately after the action in the temple, there is a short editorial note that reads, “Every day he was teaching in the temple. The chief priests, the scribes, and the leaders of the people kept looking for a way to kill him; but they did not find anything they could do, for all the people were spellbound by what they heard.” In Luke 21:37–38 and 22:2, which come at the very end of Jesus’ teaching in Jerusalem and immediately before the Passion narrative, we find an almost identical editorial note: Every day he was teaching in the temple, and at night he would go out and spend the night on the Mount of Olives, as it was called. And all

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the people would get up early in the morning to listen to him in the temple. . . . The chief priests and the scribes were looking for a way to put Jesus to death, for they were afraid of the people.9 In other words, these two similar editorial notes bracket Jesus’ teaching in Jerusalem. I have argued that these two editorial notes represent the same material in a pre-Lukan narrative framework. In this pre-Lukan framework Jesus’ action in the temple (19:45–46) was immediately followed by Jesus’ departure for the Mount of Olives (21:37), the plot of the chief priests and scribes (22:2), and the Passion narrative (22:3ff.). The references to Jesus’ teaching in the temple by day in 19:47a and 21:37a are Luke’s redactional additions by which he brackets Jesus’ teaching in the section 20:1–21:36. The reference to Jesus’ departure and lodging (ēulizeto) on the Mount of Olives in 21:37b is the traditional datum to which was added the redactional note about Jesus teaching by day in 21:37a (which was duplicated in 19:47a).10 Support for this hypothesis comes from Matt 21:17. This verse says that immediately after the incident in the temple Jesus departed and lodged (ēulisthē) in Bethany, on the eastern side of the Mount of Olives. This verse is very close to Luke 21:37, the verse that immediately precedes the Passion narrative. The verb aulizomai appears in only these two places, Matt 21:17 and Luke 21:37, in the whole New Testament. It appears quite probable that Matthew and Luke bear witness to an older, non-Markan or (better) preMarkan narrative structure that followed the sequence: action in the temple, Jesus’ departure from Jerusalem and lodging on the Mount of Olives, plot of the chief priests and scribes, Passion narrative.11 Such a framework would explain why the plot of the chief priests appears twice in Mark and Luke, once immediately after the action in the temple and again immediately preceding the Passion narrative: the plot connects the temple incident with Jesus’ arrest, trial, and execution.12 The insertion of the teaching material in Mark 11:27–13:37//Luke 20:1–21:36 into an older framework resulted in the duplication of the notice of the plot.13 All of this provides evidence that in the Synoptic Gospel tradition, at least, there was a link between the action in the temple and the Passion narrative. This does not necessarily mean, of course, that there was also a historical connection between Jesus’ action in the temple and his arrest, trial, and crucifixion. But it does, at

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least, make it probable that from a point in the Gospel tradition earlier than our Synoptic Gospels, the temple incident and the Passion narrative were connected, and it casts some doubt on Fredriksen’s proposal that the connection between the two is simply Mark’s literary device. The temple incident is also very closely bound literarily and theologically to what comes before it, the Triumphal Entry. All four Gospels quote Ps 118:25–26 in some form, “Save us [hosanna] . . . blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.” The very next line in this psalm reads, “We bless you from the house of the Lord,” that is, from the temple. It is disputed whether there was already a messianic interpretation of Psalm 118 in the first century, but the coherence that we find between the Gospels’ use of the psalm and later Jewish interpretation suggests that the evangelists, and very likely Jesus himself, were indeed familiar with a messianic interpretation.14 We find a very interesting interpretation of this psalm in the Targum, which is highly relevant to our question. The famous verse 22 of this psalm reads: “The stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone.” The Targum takes the stone here to be David, and the builders to be the priests. With allusion to the story of David’s election to be king in 1 Samuel 16, the Targum declares: “The boy that the builders abandoned was among the sons of Jesse, and he is worthy to be appointed king and ruler.” Furthermore, the Targum interprets Ps 118:26b, “We bless you from the house of the Lord,” to mean that the priests will hail David from the temple.15 Thus Ps 118:26a (“Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord”), the crowd’s acclamation as Jesus enters Jerusalem, itself cries out for a following scene in the temple, where Jesus should be blessed by the priests. But Jesus is not so blessed by the priests. Instead, according to Matthew (21:15–16), the chief priests (and scribes) are angered. According to Luke (19:39), the Pharisees tell Jesus to silence the acclamations. But Jesus replies (Luke 19:40), “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.” This is said with irony: the priests are supposed to hail Jesus as king (Ps 118:26) but fail to do so. And if the crowd were silent, the stones of the temple themselves would cry out.16 There follows a lament over Jerusalem and the temple, ending with the declaration that not one stone will be left on another (Luke 19:44), and then comes the action in the temple (19:45–46). The entrance narrative and the action in the temple are thus bound together

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theologically by messianic ideology and literarily with the image of stones. In Matthew the chief priests’ anger is provoked when they hear children crying out, “Hosanna to the Son of David.” There may be a common tradition standing behind Matthew and Luke that contained a wordplay on ’eben/ben (stone/child [or son]). In Matthew the children cry out; in Luke the stones will cry out if the crowd does not do so. Thus the acclamation of the crowds, the children, and even the stones of the temple replaces the acclamation that should, but does not, come from the priests. Consequently Jesus performs an action against the temple symbolizing its destruction. That this connection between a messianic entrance into Jerusalem and the temple is not coincidental is confirmed by Jesus’ lament over Jerusalem (Matt 23:37–39//Luke 13:34–35): Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! See, your house is left to you, desolate. For I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.” Jesus condemns the temple. Indeed, he claims that the temple is “left to you” (presumably the priests or the city) and is “desolate.” By this he very likely means that God’s presence, the Shekinah, has left (or is about to leave) the temple; that is, the temple is about to be destroyed.17 Then Jesus declares that “you [the priests or the city] will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.’ ” Jesus is a rejected prophet, like the other prophets whom Jerusalem rejected. But Jesus declares that when he returns as the messianic Son of Man, the priests will bless him from the temple (as they ought to do according to Ps 118:26): they will properly acknowledge him as Messiah. Or, more likely, as Dale Allison has argued, Jesus’ declaration is a conditional prophecy: when the priests acknowledge Jesus as Messiah, then he will return. In other words, Jesus’ return is dependent on the priests’ confession of Jesus as Messiah. At present, however, there can be no priestly blessing of the Messiah, because the temple is forsaken.18

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Thus there is a very clear theological connection, in both the Triumphal Entry and Jesus’ lament over Jerusalem, between a messianic entrance into Jerusalem and the condemnation of the temple, all under the rubric of Ps 118:22–26. In this light, we can understand Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem as a proleptic, messianic entrance into Jerusalem that foreshadowed Jesus’ return to Jerusalem at the Parousia.19 Jesus’ action in the temple follows irresistibly upon his entrance into Jerusalem. Just as Jesus condemns the temple as forsaken in his lament over Jerusalem, so in his dramatic action in the temple he symbolically enacts the temple’s desolation and destruction. This means that we have, in effect, a double attestation, in the Triumphal Entry and in the lament over Jerusalem, for an intimate connection between the themes of a messianic arrival in Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple. Once again, this cannot prove that there was also a historical connection. But it is highly probable that there was such a historical connection. I take Jesus’ lament over Jerusalem to be authentic.20 If it is authentic, it not only offers great insight into Jesus’ self-understanding, but also, in view of its juxtaposition of messianic and temple themes, makes it highly likely that Jesus himself will indeed have intentionally enacted a double demonstration, pairing a messianic entrance into Jerusalem with a condemnation of the temple. In any case, these considerations exclude, in my view, the possibility that at the level of our Synoptic Gospels a connection between the entrance into Jerusalem and the action in the temple is merely the invention of Mark. John’s narrative framework looks distinctly secondary. John preserves the reference to Ps 118:25–26 in the Triumphal Entry (12:13), but, apparently unaware of the underlying exegetical and theological thread that linked the entry with the action in the temple, he moved the temple incident to chapter 2, thus putting asunder an original unity.21

H i s t o r ic a l C o n s i d e r a t i o n s We turn now to some comments of a more historical nature. Fredriksen has framed the problem of the historical Jesus in terms of the “crucial anomaly” that while Jesus was executed, his followers were not. Any reconstruction of who Jesus was or what he intended must explain those two

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historical facts.22 Frediksen’s solution to this anomaly is that from Jesus’ repeated trips to Jerusalem, Pilate knew about Jesus, that is, knew that neither he nor his followers were a threat. As we noted above, Fredriksen argues that it was the crowds’ acclamation of Jesus that led Pilate to act. Jesus himself never claimed royal status, nor did his disciples claim it for him. Jesus had made repeated trips to Jerusalem, always preaching the coming Kingdom of God. But on Jesus’ last trip to Jerusalem, the crowds’ intense messianic expectations led them to hail Jesus as the Messiah-king himself.23 Pilate needed to curb the crowds’ enthusiasm before it spilled over into riot. “This datum alone, from all the other traditions the Gospels offer, can explain the core historical anomaly of the Passion stories: Jesus was crucified, but his followers were not.”24 Pilate’s wish to eliminate Jesus as a form of crowd control is both a necessary and a sufficient explanation of Jesus’ death. The temple incident is neither necessary nor sufficient. There are two main difficulties with this proposal, as I see it. First, it seems unlikely to me that the crowds would hail Jesus as Messiah if neither Jesus nor his disciples had ever given the slightest hint that he or they understood Jesus in that way. That Jesus thought of himself as a future king is, it seems to me, a more likely explanation for why the crowds viewed Jesus in that way. In addition, it must be said that the “crowds,” as anonymous players in the Gospels, do not seem to be a strong factor in Jesus’ death. More importantly, however, Fredriksen’s proposal shifts the responsibility for Jesus’ death almost fully onto Pilate, which contradicts the consistent evidence of the Gospels. To be sure, a tendency is visible in the Gospel tradition to exculpate Pilate and to inculpate the Jews and the Jewish leadership of responsibility for Jesus’ death, so that we must reckon with the possibility that the Gospels have minimized Pilate’s involvement. However, I think that it is clear that the Jewish leadership in Jerusalem had the primary role in arresting Jesus and handing him over for condemnation in Roman hands. We need to take seriously the common witness of the Gospels that the chief priests and the elders, and particularly the high priest, were the prime movers behind Jesus’ arrest and death (though not, of course, the bearers of final responsibility for the death, which belongs to Pilate). All four Gospels agree that in Jesus’ last night the chief priests sent to arrest him (Matt 26:47; Mark 14:43; Luke 22:50, 52: the chief priests and elders themselves come;

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John 18:3). John includes a Roman cohort in the arresting crowd. There is some reason to doubt John’s information, although a firm decision may not be possible.25 In any case, in all four Gospels Jesus is brought to the high priest.26 The fact that the high priest or the chief priests were the prime mover(s) indicates that the offense for which Jesus was arrested was in the first instance an offense against the priesthood. Jesus was ultimately put to death for an offense (or alleged offense) against the Roman government, but we cannot view that as the only grounds for Jesus’ arrest and death. When one searches for an offensive action that would have brought Jesus to the attention of the chief priests, the incident at the temple remains, in my mind, the most obvious candidate. Fredriksen asks whether the event recorded in the Gospels would really be serious enough to warrant Jesus’ arrest.27 But as Sanders has pointed out, the prophet Jeremiah was arrested (Jer 26:8) for his preaching against the temple and prophesying its desolation and destruction (26:6, 13); he was even threatened with death (26:8, 11). Jeremiah was spared only when some officials convinced the priests and the other prophets that he was a true prophet, and when the elders cited Micah’s oracle against Jerusalem as a precedent (26:16–19).28 And Jesus son of Ananias, the remarkable prophet described by Josephus in B.J. 6.300–309, was likewise arrested and flogged for his preaching against Jerusalem and the temple in the year 62 c.e. This flogging may have been the extent of the intended punishment, but it is also possible that it came in preparation for crucifixion.29 In any case, he was spared by the governor, Albinus, who simply declared him to be a madman. These two examples show that simply preaching against the temple, let alone undertaking a violent action in it, was indeed enough to get a preacher arrested and even killed. It was also enough to bring one before a Roman governor.30 Such an explanation of Jesus’ arrest, trial, and crucifixion answers why only Jesus died and not his disciples. The disciples were not, at this point, a problem for the Sanhedrin. Later, when the church was established in Jerusalem, the disciples would become a problem (Acts 3–5). But that still lay in the future. In other words, it is undoubtedly true, as Fredriksen argues, that neither Jesus nor his disciples presented a real threat to Pilate. However, it is easy to understand how Caiaphas could have viewed Jesus as a threat. It was Jesus, and not his disciples, who threatened the temple and therefore

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threatened the order of public life that had the temple at its center. So it was only Jesus who was brought before Pilate. On all this evidence, the incident at the temple can be deemed both a necessary and a sufficient cause for Jesus’ solitary death (sufficient on the basis of historical analogies; necessary because Jesus must have done something to offend priestly interests). If it was Caiaphas who wanted Jesus out of the way as a threat to the temple and to public life, then why was Jesus crucified by Pilate? This question is easily answered. Although the point continues to be debated, I consider correct the view that at the time of Jesus’ crucifixion the Jewish leadership in Jerusalem did not have authority from the Romans to carry out capital punishment31 (see John 18:31; b. Sanh. 41a; y. Sanh. 18a [1.1]; 24b [7.2]; see also A.J. 20.200, which may imply that the Sanhedrin did not have authority to put James to death32). If that is the case, it was not an option for the high priest to put Jesus to death by stealth or through the Jewish machinery of justice.33 The high priest would have needed a charge to put Jesus to death that would stick in a Roman tribunal. All four Gospels agree that the charge given was that Jesus claimed to be “King of the Jews.” I am sympathetic to the skepticism of Fredriksen and others regarding the historicity of the synoptic Sanhedrin trial.34 It is possible that the Sanhedrin trial as we have it in the Synoptics reflects later christological controversy, especially since a (distant) parallel to the synoptic Sanhedrin trial appears in John 10:22–39. That passage appears outside of the Passion narrative but deals with the same issue as the trial scene in the Synoptics: Jesus’ blasphemous claim to be the Son of God. Nonetheless, it remains quite possible, in my view, that Caiaphas actually did hand Jesus over to Pilate on the charge that he was claiming royal (messianic) status, as the Synoptic Gospels suggest, even if that was not the real reason that Caiaphas wanted him put to death.35 Such a charge would be quite effective on the part of Caiaphas. For one thing, it very likely had a basis in Jesus’ own ministry. Whether or not Jesus ever explicitly used the title “Messiah” for himself, and I rather doubt that he did, there is plenty of evidence that he thought of himself as a future king: the call of the twelve disciples, his promise to the twelve that they would rule with him in the kingdom of God (Matt 19:28//Luke 22:30), and his entry into Jerusalem with the action in the temple.36 In addition, the

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charge that Jesus was claiming to be a king was a charge that would stick in Pilate’s tribunal. Jesus’ case was treated according to cognitio extra ordinem, the Roman procedure governing jurisdiction over provincial subjects, which allowed governors wide latitude both in determining guilt and in fixing punishment.37 The magistrates charged Jesus with sedition, and he apparently made no defense. Pilate does not seem to have been convinced of the charges against Jesus and could have released him. However, if Pilate had done so, he might risk losing the support of the Jewish leadership. They might appeal above him to Rome, and Pilate could be deposed for failure to subdue rebellion (see John 19:12). In such circumstances he understandably chose to convict and crucify.38 In conclusion, despite Fredriksen’s objections, on both literary and historical grounds the temple incident remains the most probable immediate cause for Jesus’ arrest, trial, and crucifixion.

Notes 1. E. P. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism (Philadelphia/London: Fortress/SCM, 1985), 309–18. The fuller discussion is in E. P. Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief 63 b.c.e.–66 c.e. (London/Philadelphia: SCM/Trinity Press International, 1992), esp. chapter 21, entitled “Who Ran What?” 2. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism, 296–99, 317; E. P. Sanders, The Historical Figure of Jesus (London: Allen Lane Penguin, 1993), 67. 3. Paula Fredriksen, Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews: A Jewish Life and the Emergence of Christianity (New York/London: Alfred A. Knopf/Macmillan, 1999), 220–59, 290–92. It should be noted, however, that the argument of this book represents a change from the earlier work, Paula Fredriksen, From Jesus to Christ: The Origins of the New Testament Images of Jesus (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), 111–14, 119, where she followed Sanders’s position. 4. Fredriksen, Jesus of Nazareth, 241, see also 230. 5. Ibid., 230; see also 210. 6. Contra ibid., 230–31: the temple incident “may be original to Mark, a dramatic plot device to bring his story to its climax. . . . We simply cannot know. And we have no compelling evidence either way.” 7. Joachim Jeremias, New Testament Theology: The Proclamation of Jesus (trans. John Bowden; London: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1971), 145, n. 1. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism, 304–5, endorses Jeremias’s view.

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8. See Stephen Hultgren, Narrative Elements in the Double Tradition: A Study of Their Place within the Framework of the Gospel Narrative (BZNW 113; Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2002), 246–48. 9. All biblical citations in this chapter are nrsv. 10. M.-É. Boismard also thinks that Luke 19:47 is a vestige of Luke 21:37–38, which in his hypothetical Document A (a forerunner of proto-Luke) also immediately followed the Entry into Jerusalem (in P. Benoit and M.-É. Boismard, Synopse des quatres Évangiles en français [3 vols.; Paris: Cerf, 1965–1977], 2:336). It is not necessary to accept Boismard’s source theory to agree that Luke 19:47 and 21:37–38 represent the same traditional or source material. 11. The fact that the anointing in Bethany, on the Mount of Olives (Mark 14:3–9 and parallels), comes first in the Passion narrative in Matthew and Mark might also suggest a connection between Jesus’ departure for the Mount of Olives after the temple incident and the Passion narrative. It should be noted, however, that the anointing appears before the entry into Jerusalem in John (12:1–8), and a similar but different anointing story appears at Luke 7:36–50. 12. Matthew has only the second notice of the plot (26:4). 13. It is possible, as Jeremias suggested (see n. 7 above), that Mark 11:27–33 and parallels, the Question on Jesus’ Authority, also belonged to this older framework. However, it is not certain that this pericope was historically connected with Jesus’ action in the temple. The framework evidence that we have adduced from Matthew and Luke may suggest that this pericope is also secondary. 14. For a brief discussion of this problem and references, see J. Ross Wagner, “Psalm 118 in Luke-Acts: Tracing a Narrative Thread,” in Early Christian Interpretation of the Scriptures of Israel: Investigations and Proposals (ed. Craig A. Evans and James A. Sanders; JSNTSup 148; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1997), 157–61. 15. See Craig Evans, Mark 8:27–16:20 (WBC 34B; Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2001), 229, 238. This probably agrees with the dramatic recitation of Psalm 118 in the pre-exilic enthronement ceremony, where the priests recited verse 26. See James A. Sanders, “A New Testament Hermeneutic Fabric: Psalm 118 in the Entrance Narrative,” in Early Jewish and Christian Exegesis: Studies in Memory of William Hugh Brownlee (ed. Craig A. Evans and William F. Stinespring; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1987), 177–90; esp. 182–84. 16. Sanders, “New Testament Hermeneutic Fabric,” 187–90. 17. The notion that God’s presence left the temple before its destruction, with roots in Ezekiel 10 (see also Ezekiel 43), is found in 2 Bar. 8:2 and Josephus, B.J. 6.300 (see also Tacitus, Historiae 5.13). 18. W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel according to Saint Matthew (3 vols.; ICC; Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1988–1997), 3:322; also Dale C. Allison, “Matt 23:39=Luke 13:35b as a Conditional Prophecy,” JSNT 18 (1983): 75–84; esp. 75–81.

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19. See Davies and Allison, Matthew, 3:129, and Evans, Mark, 238. The Targum to Psalm 118 can be understood to mean that while David is initially rejected by the religious establishment, he will in the future be acknowledged by the priests from the temple. So also Jesus is initially rejected but will be acknowledged when he comes again. 20. For evidence in favor of the authenticity of the lament, see Allison, “Matt 23:39=Luke 13:35b,” 84, n. 26. 21. Fredriksen, Jesus of Nazareth, 242, writes that a “straight line connects the Triumphal Entry and the Crucifixion.” I agree that a line connects them, but the line also goes through the temple. 22. Ibid., 8–9. 23. Ibid., 244–59. 24. Ibid., 255. 25. Helen K. Bond, Pontius Pilate in History and Interpretation (SNTSMS 100; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 197, argues that John’s information is likely to be accurate “since it would be unlikely that Pilate knew nothing of the prisoner before he appeared before him in his praetorium.” But Roman troops would not be necessary for Pilate to know about Jesus. Surely Caiaphas or his colleagues informed him. See further the discussion in Raymond Brown, The Gospel according to John (2 vols.; Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1966–71), 2:807–9, 815–16. Brown (p. 816) points out, correctly, that there is some tension between Pilate’s role in arresting Jesus (according to John) and the general portrait of Pilate in the trial accounts, in which Pilate is not convinced of Jesus’ guilt. Against Brown, however, the portrait of Pilate in the trial accounts, which is well attested (even if not free from apologetic exaggeration), is more likely to be historically accurate than his plotting to have Jesus arrested. 26. In John he is brought first to Annas, a former high priest and the father-inlaw of Caiaphas, and then to Caiaphas. 27. Fredriksen, Jesus of Nazareth, 231–32. 28. Chapter 26 of Jeremiah continues with the story of another prophet, Uriah, who prophesied against Jerusalem and the land of Israel. He was put to death by the king (26:23). 29. See Bond, Pontius Pilate, 116, nn. 91 and 92; A. N. Sherwin-White, Roman Law and Roman Society in the New Testament (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963), 27–28. 30. Josephus’s description of Jesus son of Ananias as a prophetic figure and of his trial and the Gospels’ accounts of the trial of Jesus of Nazareth are strikingly similar, and that argues for the general historical reliability of the Gospels’ trial and crucifixion narratives. The crucial difference between Jesus son of Ananias and Jesus of Nazareth that led to the release of the former and the crucifixion of the latter was that Jesus of Nazareth did not only preach and act against the temple but also proclaimed the coming of a kingdom.

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31. Sherwin-White, Roman Law and Roman Society, 35–43; Josef Blinzler, The Trial of Jesus (trans. Isabel and Florence McHugh; Westminster, Md.: Newman, 1959), 157–63. See Brown, John, 2:849–50, for brief discussion and further references. 32. But see on this Emil Schürer, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ (3 vols. in 4 parts; rev. and ed. Geza Vermes et al.; Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1973–1987), 2:222–23. 33. Contra Fredriksen, Jesus of Nazareth, 232: “If Caiaphas wanted Jesus out of the way for whatever offense his action encoded, and Pilate consented to do the job, why not a simple, private murder?” If Caiaphas had tried to do this, he could have been removed from office. And provincial Roman governors, though given a fair amount of latitude, were not free simply to dispatch provincials in private murders. More on this below. 34. For a concise list of objections to the historicity of the Sanhedrin trial, see Sanders, Jesus and Judaism, 297–98. 35. If Caiaphas did not hand Jesus over to Pilate on the charge of claiming to be “King of the Jews,” Pilate’s question to Jesus in Matt 27:11 and Mark 15:2, “Are you the King of the Jews?” is left unmotivated. Luke 23:2 has the Sanhedrin explicitly charge Jesus before Pilate. John 18:30 has the Jews condemn Jesus for being an “evildoer,” but they do not make any more explicit charges. 36. Sanders, Historical Figure of Jesus, 248: “Jesus thought that the twelve disciples represented the tribes of Israel, but also that they would judge them. Jesus was clearly above the disciples; a person who is above the judges of Israel is very high indeed.” 37. See Sherwin-White, Roman Law and Roman Society, 15–17, 22–23, 25–27; Bond, Pontius Pilate, 108, 198; Peter Garnsey, “The LEX IULIA and Appeal Under the Empire,” JRS 56 (1966): 175, 179; Jean-Pierre Lémonon, Pilate et le gouvernement de la Judée: Textes et monuments (Paris: J. Gabalda, 1981), 189; Martin Hengel, Crucifixion (trans. John Bowden; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977), 49; François Bovon, Les derniers jours de Jésus (Neuchatel: Delachaux et Niestlé, 1974), 60–69. 38. In general Roman governors seem not to have hesitated to use crucifixion as a means of maintaining public order. See Hengel, Crucifixion, passim.

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SIXTEEN

The Historical Jesus and the Historical Sabbath John P. Meier

E. P. Sanders has drawn together three often disparate areas of study: Judaism at the turn of the era, the quest for the historical Jesus the Jew, and the proper understanding of what Paul of Tarsus, Jew and Christian, meant to say about the Law in his letters. This trialogue, Sanders has insisted, must be conducted according to the rigorous standards of academic history. What we must take special pains to avoid is any confusion between statements of faith and statements of history that are verifiable by scholarly investigation of the past. A key intersection of Sanders’s first two concerns—early Judaism and the historical Jesus—is found in his collection of essays entitled Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah, published in 1990.1 In my opinion, this book has not received the attention it deserves, partly, I suppose, because of its technical and detailed nature and partly because, unfortunately, it is now out of print. Of special importance for this chapter is the first lengthy essay, “The Synoptic Jesus and the Law.”2 In a nutshell, the thesis of the essay is this: Even if we take all the synoptic stories of conflict between Jesus and other Jews over questions of legal observance as historical—something Sanders doesn’t really believe—but even if we suppose that they are all historical, even then it can be seen that Jesus did not seriously challenge the law as it was practiced in his day. The one exception here is Jesus’ supposed rejection of food laws, a teaching that Sanders has steadfastly branded a product of the early church.3 297

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When it comes to the particular question of the Sabbath, Sanders holds that, in all the Sabbath conflict stories, the synoptic Jesus behaves in a way that falls inside the range of early first-century debate about the Sabbath and well inside the range of permitted behavior.4 I would like to press this question of Jesus and the Sabbath a step further.5 Specifically, I would ask whether or not any of the stories in the four Gospels in which Jesus himself is accused of directly violating the Sabbath may go back to the historical Jesus. At first glance, the answer would seem to be yes. Most, if not all, of the Gospel sources, certainly Mark, special Matthew, special Luke, and John—and some would add Q—both in narratives and in sayings, present Jesus battling with opponents over Sabbath observance. Surely this multiple attestation of sources and forms proves that such substantive conflicts over the Sabbath go back to the historical Jesus. However, as questers for the historical Jesus should know by now, a quick overview of multiple sources and forms proves little or nothing. The individual cases need to be probed in detail before they can constitute a convincing argument. Here I will outline the steps of such a detailed probe and what I think its upshot would be. In view of the constraints of this essay, I will limit myself to the narrative material of the four Gospels. Step 1 involves the general but vital observation that, in all four Gospels, Jesus himself is directly accused of violating the Sabbath in only one way: namely, by healing illnesses or physical deformities on the Sabbath. His disciples are accused of plucking grain and therefore reaping on the Sabbath in Mark 2, but the Markan Jesus is not presented as joining in the action that he then defends. In John 5, the paralytic by the pool of Bethzatha is accused of carrying his mat after his healing on the Sabbath. But in both the Synoptics and John, Jesus himself is accused only of healing and therefore breaking the Sabbath, even in those cases where the healing involves no physical action on Jesus’ part whatsoever. It is amazing to see how consistently commentaries on the Gospels either take for granted or supposedly prove by a quick reference to Jewish sources that, at the time of Jesus, the act of healing was considered a violation of the Sabbath. But is that so? Let us take a look at the relevant sources. Step 2 looks at the sacred writings of Israel that in due time would be collected as Tanak.6 In the Pentateuch, the basic obligation of the Sabbath is

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to abstain from work (mĕl’ākâ). That is all; no positive act of public worship is imposed on the ordinary Israelite in Tanak. The problem is that the Pentateuch supplies only a few examples of what constitutes the type of work that is prohibited. The basic and original object of the prohibition was agricultural work (especially sowing and reaping), to which were added the gathering of wood, the kindling of fire, the preparation of food, and the undertaking of a lengthy journey. Some of the most important halakic prohibitions come not from the Mosaic Law but from the Latter Prophets, in which the prohibition is extended to urban business and the carrying of burdens in public. In postexilic Jerusalem, Nehemiah still had to struggle against the sale of merchandise and agricultural produce on the Sabbath, and this in Jerusalem! Indeed, ostraca fragments may indicate that, even in the first century c.e., some Palestinian Jews continued to ignore the ban on commerce.7 This, then, is a summary of the surprisingly sparse details of what kind of work Tanak forbids on the Sabbath. Not a word, you will notice, about healing. The deuterocanonical or apocryphal books included in some Christian Bibles add little to the list of prohibited works. Apart from the pious Judith breaking her customary fast on the Sabbath, the only new directives come from 1 and 2 Maccabees. Jewish soldiers are permitted to fight defensive battles on the Sabbath but may not initiate attacks. All Jews are to be exempt from paying duties and tolls and from appearing in court on the Sabbath. There is still no mention of healing. Step 3 brings us to new and richer halakic fields as we survey the noncanonical Jewish literature of the last two centuries b.c.e. The two most significant sources are the Book of Jubilees and the Damascus Document (CD), now supplemented by the fragments from Cave 4 at Qumran. In Jubilees we find for the first time normative lists of prohibited works, a new kind of legal literary genre. Indeed, the stringency of Jubilees’ sectarian halakah extends the list of prohibited works so widely that it encompasses such diverse and otherwise permitted activities as sexual intercourse with one’s wife and fighting a war. A still more extensive list is found in the Damascus Document, in what some scholars call “the Sabbath Codex” or “Code.” Taking for granted most of the biblical prohibitions, CD lays down punctilious rules about a wide range of matters, including the exact time on Friday when work must cease and the distance one may walk on the Sabbath. Here at last, some scholars claim, we find the very first prohibition of medical treatment on the Sabbath.

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More precisely, scholars like Lutz Doering, in his monumental work on the Sabbath around the turn of the era, see in an obscure prohibition in CD 11:9c–10a the first step in the direction of forbidding healing activity on the Sabbath.8 The passage reads: “Let no one carry sammanim on himself [i.e., on his body], to go out or to come in, on the sabbath.” Since there is no other Jewish-Palestinian text prior to the time of Jesus that explicitly prohibits acts of healing on the Sabbath, this text might understandably be seized upon as prime evidence that healing was indeed forbidden by the Sabbath halakah of at least some groups.9 However, two aspects of the text make this attempt at creating a parallel highly problematic: (1) The exact meaning of the key noun sammanim is disputed. Various scholars suggest that it means “perfume,” “fragrant powder,” “spices,” “medicine,” “healing or hurtful powder,” or “poison.” While the reference to medicine is possible, it is not certain.10 (2) In a sense, though, the precise meaning of the noun is beside the point. The context shows that the focus of the prohibition is the action of carrying objects in and out of one’s house or of lifting an object (see CD 11:7b–11a) on the Sabbath. Whatever the meaning of sammanim, the question is whether such an object can count as clothing, which one can certainly carry on one’s body in and out of one’s house, or whether it counts as some sort of “burden” that one is not allowed to transport in and out of one’s house on the Sabbath.11 Thus, while some of the material in CD and the Cave 4 fragments is quite relevant to Jesus’ sayings about drawing an animal or a human being out of a pit on the Sabbath, the silence about healing continues. And considering the long and wide-ranging lists of prohibited works in Jubilees and at Qumran, this silence is eloquent. Step 4 brings us to the Greek literature of the Jewish Diaspora around the turn of the era. Despite the fact that Sabbath observance was one of the most distinguishing features of Jewish life in the eyes of their pagan neighbors, large parts of this Jewish literature do not treat this topic. Even when an author like Aristobulus gives some philosophical consideration to the Sabbath, he never lists detailed prescriptions governing its observance. While Philo of Alexandria does not give us a single catalogue of prohibited acts like CD, he does supply, unlike so many other Diaspora authors, a good number of Sabbath prohibitions, though these are distributed among various works, notably, On the Special Laws and The Life of Moses. Most of

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these prohibitions are found in or clearly derived from the Jewish Scriptures. Josephus provides much less than Philo does by way of detailed Sabbath prohibitions, and most of them are already witnessed in earlier Jewish writings. The important point for us is that, once again, none of these authors writing in Greek around the time of Jesus ever mentions healing as one of the prohibited works. Having failed to find any background to the idea that Jesus’ healing activity violates the Sabbath in the literature before 70 c.e., our only recourse is to move ahead to step 5, that is, the Mishnah, redacted circa 200 c.e., with all the problems that the use of later rabbinic works for the time of Jesus entails. Naturally, we focus on the Mishnaic tractate Šabbat, along with the two allied tractates ‘Erubin and Yom T ̣ob. At first glance, our prospects are promising, since Šabbat offers the full flowering and legitimate offspring of all the lists in Jubilees and Qumran, namely, the famous list of thirty-nine prohibited works in m. Šabb. 7:2. But then we are chagrined to find that, in this grand list of thirty-nine works, healing is never mentioned. Nor is it mentioned in the different list in m. Yom T ̣ob 5:2. Intriguingly, one must go outside these set lists to find in the tractate Šabbat some statements of individual rabbis forbidding certain specific actions that intend to supply healing or comfort to a sick person. Even here, the decisions are hedged around with considerations of intention and the amount of activity involved, and, in true rabbinic fashion, dissenting voices are heard (m. Šabb. 14:2–4). One gets the impression that the prohibition of curative actions on the Sabbath is a relatively new and not undisputed arrival on the scene. This impression is reinforced by the curious provision in m. Šabb. 6:2: a man is allowed to carry an amulet out of his house on the Sabbath only if the amulet has proven curative power. An amulet without such proven ability is not permitted to be carried out of the house. This is the last thing one would have expected if healing per se were an activity always, everywhere, and in all its forms forbidden on the Sabbath. If this were the case, one would expect the ineffective amulet to be permitted and the effective amulet to be banned. Thus, even in the Mishnah, healing in itself does not have the aura of an age-old prohibition accepted by everyone under all circumstances. Bolstering this impression further is the related text in the Mishnaic tractate Yoma 8:6, which allows medicine to be dropped into a

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sore throat on the Sabbath when there is a doubt as to whether the person’s life is in danger. The overall impression one gets from these and other rabbinic texts, when viewed in the context of the total absence of any prohibition of healing on the Sabbath in the pre-70 period, is that the post-70 rabbis had developed a new type of Sabbath prohibition concerning healing. This prohibition is enshrined literarily for the first time in the Mishnah. Even with the prohibitions in the Mishnah, we should remember that these texts represent the views of the scholarly elite and did not always find a ready reception among the common people. What Jewish peasants actually did in their own houses and settlements scattered throughout the Palestinian countryside when a member of their household became ill on the Sabbath is a different question from what the rabbis taught their disciples. To use a very rough analogy: one would not want to take the Code of Canon Law or the catechism of the Catholic Church as a sober historical report or sociological description of how most American Catholics actually live their daily lives or practice their faith. It is not for nothing that the rabbinic texts complain at times about “the people of the land,” who neither know nor practice the detailed rulings of the experts expounding halakah in their academies.12 It is with the insights we have gained from this rapid tour through Jewish literature before, during, and after the time of Jesus that we take step 6, a brief consideration of the Gospel stories of healing on the Sabbath. In my opinion, the two stories in John’s Gospel can both be dismissed without further ado, because form and tradition criticism confirm what any intelligent reader should notice immediately. Unlike the synoptic stories, where the Sabbath is mentioned early on and repeatedly in the stories of healing, neither the healing of the paralytic in John 5 nor the healing of the man born blind in John 9 contains any reference to the Sabbath. It is only after the miracle story proper is finished and the polemical dialogue begins that the evangelist, almost as an afterthought, mentions that the healing took place on the Sabbath. What we have here is a clear case of the redactional technique of John as he goes about building his huge literary structures that take up whole chapters. In both chapter 5 and chapter 9 we have John’s characteristic pattern of a sign leading to a polemical dialogue, which in turn leads to a christological monologue. It is telling that, in chapters 5 and 9, neither the sign nor the lengthy monologue contains any mention of the Sabbath. Only in the polemical dialogue

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that acts as the bridge forging a connection between sign and monologue is the Sabbath brought up, precisely to provide the springboard for the dispute and then the christological sermon. Thus, when isolated as discrete units of the Jesus tradition, which possibly go back to events in Jesus’ ministry, the healings in chapters 5 and 9 have nothing to do with the Sabbath and in themselves do not really count as Sabbath healings.13 We are left, then, with the Sabbath healings in the Synoptics that caused a dispute. Apart from parallel texts, there are only three such miracles-plusdisputes on the Sabbath. Indeed, there is only one Sabbath-healing-plusdispute in the whole of Mark: the man with the withered hand in 3:1–6. Although Matthew takes over and adds to this Markan story, he has no similar story from his own tradition. In contrast, besides taking over the Markan story, Luke provides two of his own: the woman bent over for eighteen years in 13:10–17 and the man with dropsy in 14:1–6. When in A Marginal Jew I treated these stories under the rubric of miracle stories (and not Sabbath dispute stories), I judged that none of them sufficiently satisfied the criteria of historicity to ground a judgment of “probably historical.” Each time, my judgment was the frustrating but frank non liquet (not clear either way).14 When one adds to that initial judgment what we have seen in this quick survey, the judgment finally must tip decidedly in the direction of “not historical.” Before 70 c.e., no Jewish source of any stripe—sectarian or mainstream, canonical or noncanonical, Palestinian or Diaspora—states that healing activity is a violation of the Sabbath. When such a judgment finally appears in the Mishnah, it gives every indication of being a relatively new halakic position. It is therefore highly unlikely that a Palestinian Jewish faith-healer called Jesus, active around the years 28–30 c.e., would have met repeated objections to his supposedly curative actions on the grounds that they violated the Sabbath. What, then, is the origin of these stories? I would suggest that one possible origin lies in the apologetic and polemical activity of Palestinian Jews-for-Jesus in the time frame from 30 to 70 c.e. One should remember that a great deal of religious apologetics and polemics is not actually aimed outward at opponents. Such opponents would never read or listen to such material anyway. Rather, quite often religious apologetics and polemics are in reality aimed inward, to bolster the faith, cohesion, and self-identity of a group that feels besieged by the larger, surrounding society. Granted this function of apologetics and polemics, one need not be surprised that it

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indulges in exaggeration, caricatures, and stereotypes rather than in sober reporting of opponents’ views. Behind a great deal of popular apologetic religious literature is the unspoken presupposition: “We’re right, and they’re wrong. Now let’s think up some reasons why they’re wrong.” Perhaps we might even extend this hypothesis a step further. We have noticed already that there is only one Sabbath-plus-dispute in the Markan tradition, while we find two in Luke and two more in John.15 It may be that the growth of such disputes about healing on the Sabbath in the later post70 Gospels may be the first hint and polemical echo of the emergence in early rabbinic thought of an opinion that healing activity did indeed violate the Sabbath. In fact, it may be that, in a number of cases of halakic dispute, the first manifestations of a rabbinic position may actually be enshrined in a passage in the New Testament. We are only at the beginning of the process of mining New Testament material in a critical rather than a StrackBillerbeck fashion to create a fuller and more accurate history of the development of Jewish halakah at the turn of the era. Be that as it may—and I purposely have been launching a number of debatable hypotheses for further discussion—in my opinion, the result of this brief, programmatic probe is that none of the Gospel stories of Jesus being accused of violating the Sabbath by healing goes back to the historical Jesus. Thus, a good deal of the material that has been traditionally used to define the attitude of the historical Jesus toward the Sabbath disappears. This does not necessarily mean, however, that Jesus did not engage at all in halakic disputes about Sabbath observance. I think it can be argued that a number of the sayings now embedded in the Sabbath narratives do reflect the views of the historical Jesus; for instance, he tried to persuade ordinary Jewish peasants not to be attracted to and adopt the stringent Sabbath halakah of the more rigorous Jewish parties or sectarian movements of his time. But that thesis would require another essay. To paraphrase Matthew in the Sermon on the Mount: sufficient for the day is the essay thereof.

Notes 1. E. P. Sanders, Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah: Five Studies (London/ Philadelphia: SCM/Trinity Press International, 1990).

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2. Ibid., 1–96. 3. Ibid., 96. 4. Ibid., 23. 5. For an extensive bibliography on the Sabbath and related topics, see Lutz Doering, Schabbat: Sabbathalacha und -Praxis im antiken Judentum (TS 78; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1999), 589–639. For further bibliography on and general treatments of the Sabbath, see the dictionary and encyclopedia articles of Julian Morgenstern, “Sabbath,” in IDB, 4:135–41; Eduard Lohse, “Sabbaton, Etc.,” in TDNT, 7:1–35; Gerhard F. Hasel, “Sabbath,” in ABD, 5:849–56; E. Haag, “Šabbāt,” in ThWAT vol. 7, fas. 8, 1047–57. Relevant monographs include Niels-Erik A. Andreasen, The Old Testament Sabbath: A Tradition-Historical Investigation (SBLDS 7; Missoula: Society of Biblical Literature, 1972); Kenneth A. Strand, ed., The Sabbath in Scripture and History (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1982); Eric Spier, Der Sabbat (Das Judentum 1; Berlin: Institut Kirche und Judentum, 1989); Heather A. McKay, Sabbath and Synagogue: The Question of Sabbath Worship in Ancient Judaism (Religions in the Graeco-Roman World 122; Leiden: Brill, 1994); Sven-Olav Bäck, Jesus of Nazareth and the Sabbath Commandment (Åbo: Åbo Akademi University Press, 1995); Yong-Eui Yang, Jesus and the Sabbath in Matthew’s Gospel (JSNTSup 139; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1997). For the range of scholarly views on whether and to what degree Jesus opposed or rejected the Sabbath, see the survey of research in Bäck, Jesus of Nazareth, 2–13. Opinions range from the view that there was no substantial conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees on the Sabbath (so E. P. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism [Philadelphia/London: Fortress/ SCM, 1985], 264–69; see Sanders, Jewish Law, 6–23) through the view that what Jesus rejected in a radical way was the Pharisaic or rabbinic halakah on the Sabbath (so Joachim Jeremias, New Testament Theology: The Proclamation of Jesus [trans. John Bowden; London: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1971], 208) to the view that Jesus called into question not only the “casuistic hair-splitting of the Pharisees” but also the Sabbath commandment, “which enslaved human beings” (so Willy Rordorf, Der Sonntag [ATANT 43; Zurich: Zwingli, 1962], 63). Sometimes Christian scholars are not entirely consistent in their presentations; Bäck, Jesus of Nazareth, 3–4, claims that this is the case with Lohse’s article on the Sabbath in the TDNT. 6. For surveys of the texts of the Jewish Scriptures (Tanak) that deal with the Sabbath, see McKay, Sabbath and Synagogue, 15–42; Yang, Jesus and the Sabbath, 22–50; Haag, “Šabbāt,” 1051–55; Hasel, “Sabbath,” 851–53; Morgenstern, “Sabbath,” 137–40. A survey of the Sabbath texts in the Pentateuch can be found in Andreasen, Old Testament Sabbath, 62–92. 7. Doering, Schabbat, 386–97, argues that fragments of Jewish-Aramaic ostraca from Palestine (Ostraca Y 1, 2, and 3, dated from around the first half of the first century c.e.) indicate that at least some Palestinian Jews engaged in commercial activity (e.g., the delivery of merchandise) on the Sabbath. While Doering’s

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interpretation of the fragmentary texts is certainly possible, perhaps even probable, one must sympathize with the hesitation of the original editor, Ada Yardeni, over a definitive judgment; see Ada Yardeni, “New Jewish Ostraca,” IEJ 40 (1990): 130–52, with a summary expressing the author’s hesitation on 151–52. 8. Doering, Schabbat, 183–86. 9. For example, Sanders, Jewish Law, 13, lists CD 11:10 alongside m. Šabb. 14:3–4 as an example of opposition to “minor cures on the sabbath,” but he neither gives the wording of CD 11:10 nor discusses its content. 10. Joseph Baumgarten, Damascus Document, War Scroll, and Related Documents (ed. James H. Charlesworth; vol. 2 of The Dead Sea Scrolls; Princeton Theological Seminary Dead Sea Scrolls Project; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1995), 48–49 and n. 168, translates sammanim in CD 11:10 as “spices.” Apparently he sees no reference to medicine or healing in the text. Florentino García-Martínez and Eibert Tigchelaar, The Dead Sea Scrolls Study Edition (2 vols.; Leiden: Brill, 1997–1998), 1:568–69, translate the disputed noun as “perfumes”; again, medicine does not seem to be in view. 11. The presence of the verb ys ̣’ (“go out,” in hiphil “bring out”), the verb nś’ (“carry,” “lift up”), and phrases like “from one’s house to outside and from outside to one’s house” in the immediate context indicates that the question at hand concerns the carrying of objects from place to place rather than acts of healing. This is the view of Baumgarten, Damascus Document, 49, n. 168, who states that “spices and perfume bottles were not considered part of the attire [by the community behind the Damascus Document] and were therefore subject to the prohibition of carrying in and out.” As is usually the case, the Damascus Document is more stringent on this point than most of the later rabbis. In m. Šabb. 6:3, Rabbi Meir forbids a woman to go out of her house on the Sabbath wearing a perfume amulet or a flask containing ointment. But the “sages” permit it, and their view in the Mishnah is considered determinative. (In the Tosefta, Rabbi Eliezer permits a woman to wear a perfume box, and the “sages” also permit a balsam vial when there is perfume in it [t. Šabb. 4:11].) More intriguing still is the preceding Mishnah in m. Šabb. 6:2, which prohibits a man from going out of his house on the Sabbath wearing an amulet (a charm thought to have curative powers) if the amulet has not been put together by an expert with the necessary skills to make a truly curative amulet. (For the criteria for a genuine amulet made by an expert, see t. Šabb. 4:9.) The interesting point here is that carrying the amulet out of one’s house on the Sabbath is permissible only if it truly has healing powers—the opposite of what one would expect if all healing active were ipso facto forbidden on the Sabbath. On all this, see later in this essay the section on the Mishnah. 12. On “the people of the land,” see John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus (3 vols.; Anchor Bible Reference Library; New York: Doubleday, 1991/1994/2001), 3:28–29; see m. ’Abot 2:5. 13. On these two miracle stories, see Meier, A Marginal Jew, 2:680–81, 694–98.

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14. Ibid., 2:681–85, 710–11. 15. Intriguingly, John apparently tries to make the Sabbath disputes more plausible by having the healed paralytic in chapter 5 carry his mat in public on the Sabbath and by having Jesus in chapter 9 make clay after spitting on the ground (thus engaging in an activity similar to kneading).

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PART FO UR Paul

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SEVENTEEN

On the Source of Paul’s Problem with Judaism Craig C. Hill

Many scholarly works elicit a wide response, but few have drawn or deserve attention on the scale of, in particular, Sanders’s Paul and Palestinian Judaism, which for nearly three decades has been both continuously acclaimed and constantly resisted. It is the face of Pauline studies that launched a thousand texts.1 In that book and subsequent works, Sanders powerfully challenged traditional Protestant assessments of Pauline theology and Judaism. As one would expect, traditionalist Protestant scholars have not stood idly by; corps of volunteers have joined battle for this (in their perspective, at least) most sacred ground. As in the American Civil War, some of the most heated engagements have come later in the conflict, as armies grew, allegiances hardened, and it became clear that nothing would be settled speedily or without loss. One line of attack focuses on Sanders’s famous characterization of early Judaism as “covenantal nomism.” Critics have scoured the ancient literary world in pursuit of exceptions. In particular, they have sought Jewish legalists the way a lifeboat seeks shore, any shore at all. The assumption is that such negative exemplars prove that (what they assume to be) Paul’s characterization of Judaism is right and Sanders’s characterization of Paul is wrong. The degree to which scholars have succeeded in locating such counterexamples is debatable, but that is actually beside the point. In fact, the burden of proof falls the other way. All Jews, or at least all Jews known to Paul, 311

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would have to have been full-bore, saved-by-my-own-bootstraps legalists to justify the logic of Paul’s argument concerning the necessity of Christ. So long as there was a nonlegalistic (i.e., “gracious”) option available within contemporary Judaism, Paul could sensibly have chosen that option. So it is not enough to claim that Paul opposed only a particular sort of Judaism. His argument requires that no alternative might be found apart from Christ. Otherwise, Paul could simply have instructed Jews to behave more Jewishly. So the difficulty in Paul’s thinking marked by Sanders cannot be unmarked so easily. A cornerstone of Sanders’s argument is the assertion that a religion—in this case, early Judaism—needs to be understood through the study of its own sources and on its own terms.2 A number of scholars have rejoined that Paul himself was a Jew who knew other first-century Jews; therefore, it stands to reason that Paul’s epistles provide vital firsthand evidence of Jewish practice: “Should 20th-century reconstructions of 1st-century Jewish thought based on reading ancient documents be preferred to the witness of a perceptive observer like Paul, who lived as an observant Jew in that century?”3 But Paul is no more a disinterested observer of the law than Matthew is of the Pharisees or John “the Jews.” Paul did not write about the law in Galatians and Romans from the perspective of an “observant Jew” writing in a Jewish context for the benefit of other Jews. Paul had long since demonstrated a willingness to live “outside the law” (anomos; 1 Cor 9:21), and he wrote in the midst of a Gentile mission concerning controversies within predominantly Gentile churches. It may be a mistake to ignore Paul on the subject of Judaism, but it is an even greater error to read all early Jewish texts through a Pauline (not to mention a Protestant) lens.4 A further approach is to claim, in effect, that we can have our cake and eat it, too: Sanders is right, but so is Paul. Specifically, Sanders is accurate in claiming that Judaism is a religion of grace as well as law. Paul’s argument is correct because, contrary to popular interpretation, it does not target “Jewish works righteousness.” Instead, the fault against which Paul rails is “Jewish national [self-]righteousness,” or some similar notion.5 So Paul is still right about what is wrong about Judaism. One could quarrel about whether this is a fair characterization of Paul’s reasoning, but, once again, such contention misses the point. In fact, this argument simply creates a new straw man, a new bad Judaism to replace the now discredited legalistic Judaism of

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traditional interpretation. But the problem is not in our faulty identification of Judaism’s deficiency; the problem is in Paul’s either/or logic that requires that Judaism be negated for Christ to be necessitated. Were the problem Jewish pride, the solution would be Jewish humility. Instead, for Paul the only adequate remedy is Jewish acceptance of Christ. What confuses are the numerous ways that Jewish rejection can be characterized (as disobedience, unbelief, works righteousness, etc.) and the numerous motives to which it can be attributed (hard-heartedness, pride, self-assertion, etc.). “Apart from faith in Christ, no amount of Jewish obedience, faith, or humility is going to satisfy. However it is described, this by definition is a problem that cannot have a (non-Christian) Jewish solution.”6 Another objection, and the point on which I shall focus, is that Sanders did not provide a sufficient account for the sense of immediacy and genuineness conveyed by Paul’s critique of Judaism. Surely, critics reason, there must be something in Paul’s Jewish history that explains his impassioned negativity. Where there is smoke, there must be fire. While such a connection with Paul’s distant past cannot be ruled out in principle, it is more sensible to begin the search for explanations in Paul’s more recent history, especially since criticism of the law is not a feature of his early correspondence. Indeed, the extent to which developments in Paul’s thinking may be explained by events in Paul’s ministry is frequently overlooked.7 For our purposes, the key episode is the crisis at Galatia. How is it that Paul can equate Judaism and works righteousness? Probably it is because Paul is not describing Judaism as non-Christian Jews (including the pre-Christian Paul) knew it but Judaism as it would be experienced by his Gentile-Christian converts at Galatia. For males, circumcision was the sign of participation in God’s already-existing covenant. The situation is different, however, if the subject is an adult Gentile Christian—that is, one who already is thought to be “in” the people of God. To compel such a one to be circumcised is, in effect, to say to him that his faith in Christ is insufficient to save, that he is presently outside the covenant. For this person, circumcision becomes an entrance requirement, an indispensable “work,” and Judaism, at least functionally, a religion of works righteousness. Viewed from this angle, Paul’s tendency to oppose the law and Christian faith as antithetical systems of religion makes a good deal more sense.8

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Several years ago, I taught at a college in South Carolina affiliated with the Presbyterian Church (USA), or PC (USA), a mainline denomination that was represented locally by a large old church in the heart of town. Out on the edge of the community, literally and metaphorically, stood the PCA (Presbyterian Church in America) church, a fundamentalist offshoot, many of whose members had formerly belonged to and then, in good South Carolina fashion, seceded from the PC (USA). I had students from both congregations. Listening to the PCA students talk about the PC (USA) was eerily similar to reading Paul on the subject of Judaism. Who is the true Presbyterian? To hear the breakaway PCAers talk, they—not the PC (USA) members—were the ones faithful to God’s covenant with John Knox. It turns out that true Presbyterianism, like true Judaism, is very much in the eye of the beholder. The rhetoric of the PCA students was instructive in other ways. For example, they would say, “We have a relationship with God, but they [the PC (USA) members] have religion.” Now, I know for a fact that the PCA church in that town had pews, hymnals, and a large and very expensive organ, and if that’s not religion, I don’t know what is. It seems that a difference in emphasis—in this case, an emphasis on conversion and personal experience—had been turned into a dichotomy, a move common in religious polemic. So it is, I think, that Paul can polarize faith and works and John grace and law (John 1:17). I might add that the students to whom I was referring seemed utterly convinced of the truthfulness of the religion/ relationship dichotomy, despite the fact that it was contradicted by the lives of many of their fellow students, which provided at least equal evidence of a relationship with God. It seems that extravagantly drawn distinctions between religious insiders and outsiders do not require empirical verification. I’ll leave it to the reader to connect the dots in Paul. Another piece of Pauline history that has not been given its due is Paul’s persecution of Christians. It is easy enough to speculate about why Paul did not at first believe in Jesus. Much harder to get at are the reasons he became the church’s violent opponent. One intriguing suggestion is that Paul persecuted the church, at least in part, because of its admission of uncircumcised Gentiles.9 If this is true, it accounts for a lot. First, it would provide a compelling explanation for the fact that Paul’s commission as apostle to

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the Gentiles is linked repeatedly and consistently to his conversion (e.g., in Gal 1:16, where Paul writes that the risen Christ was revealed to him “that I might proclaim him among the Gentiles”). This is much easier to explain if the question of Gentile admission was already on the table. In that case, the issue that defined Paul’s role, as Christianity’s persecutor and later as its advocate, would have remained the same.10 Second, it would give us an adequate account for the strategic location of Gentile equality in Paul’s thinking, demonstrated, for example, in Paul’s taking sides against Peter, the “men from James,” and “even Barnabas” in the so-called Antioch Incident (Gal 2:11–14). Admittedly, the evidence is not all that one might hope for. Paul nowhere details his reasons for having persecuted the church (but at Damascus, let us not forget). Nevertheless, he does offer a reason for the persecution of Christians, and that presumably by Jews, in two places, which link opposition explicitly to the preaching of the circumcision-free Gospel to the Gentiles. Gal 5:11: But if I . . . still preach circumcision, why am I still persecuted? In that case the stumbling block of the cross has been removed. 6:12: It is those who want to make a good showing in the flesh that would compel you to be circumcised, and only in order that they may not be persecuted for the cross of Christ. Gentiles who took the name of the God of Israel and called themselves “children of Abraham” might well have been regarded as an affront to Judaism. What’s more, their presence could have been seen as a challenge to group identity. (Boundary disputes are among the most heated of religious controversies). Fellow Jews who encouraged such behavior might well have been subject to punishment. Concerns might also have been raised regarding Jewish practice in the context of mixed Christian fellowship, the very issue that later arose in the church at Antioch (Gal 2:11–14). Against this view, it has been suggested that non-Christian Diaspora Jews persecuted Jewish Christians because they had taught Gentiles not to sacrifice to idols, which raised the ire of some Roman officials. In other words, hostility within the synagogue arose for practical, not theological,

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reasons, and no internal persecution would have existed had there been no external pressure: “The problem for Paul’s fellow Jews lay in the hostile reaction to the conversion of gentiles to Christianity to be expected from unconverted gentiles, in particular the civic and Roman authorities, and the possibility that, because Paul portrayed himself as a Jew, they as Jews might be blamed for his behavior.”11 Whatever the merits of this theory, its application to Paul’s own persecution of the church is unconvincing. That Paul himself, “zealous for the traditions of my ancestors,” had “violently” persecuted the church (Gal 1:13) because some of its members encouraged Gentiles not to sacrifice to idols seems improbable in the extreme. Did Paul attack the church “to destroy it” because of its Judaizing tendencies? It makes far more sense to think that the potential “Gentilizing” of Jews was the problem. Moreover, if clear and wholesale disassociation from paganism was a primary goal, achievement, and marker of Paul’s Christian ministry (not to mention the main reason for the troubles faced by both him and his churches), what are we to make of passages like 1 Corinthians 8 and Romans 14, which are remarkably ambiguous on this very point? Finally, I see nothing in Paul’s makeup to suggest that he would engage in persecution for the sake of avoiding persecution. Whatever we make of the pre-Christian Paul’s motives, it is clear that his Christian apostleship was defined by his relationship to Gentiles. In itself this fact helps us to understand other key aspects of his thought. It is essential to recognize that the full incorporation of Gentiles into the people of God is an eschatological hope, expressed in passages such as Isaiah 66, which Paul himself quotes in Rom 15:25–26 with reference to his own ministry. This is realized eschatology. If Jewish and Gentile believers are now one people without distinction, as Paul’s own experience confirms, then the church exists in a radically new age, from which one can radically critique what went before—especially the law, whose very stipulations drew the boundaries between Jew and Gentile. . . . The categories of Paul’s thought that are derivative of the “Gentile issue” share in the same logic, e.g., Paul’s idealized Christian anthropology, according to which believers are essentially different from other people: they “walk in the Spirit” and so fulfill the “just requirements of the law” (Rom 8:4).12

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Realized eschatologies accentuate the perceived theological distance between insiders and outsiders. The more that Christ already has done on behalf of believers—for example, released them from slavery, given them victory over sin and power over the flesh (Romans 8)—the more unlike nonbelievers, including non-Christian Jews, they must be. This simple insight helps us to explain several of the more difficult aspects of Paul’s thought, such as his moral perfectionism and his negative characterizations of those living under the law. Again, one finds analogies in some forms of contemporary Christianity. The more the haves have, the more the have nots have not. Often a good deal of what Sanders termed “backwards reasoning” is in evidence: “I didn’t know how lost I was until Christ found me.” In sum, it is reasonable to think that Paul’s problem with Judaism originated in and as a consequence of his Christian experience, especially his experience as apostle to the Gentiles. One does not have to imagine a Jewish deficiency equal to every Pauline criticism, nor does one have to invent an early Jewish experience the photo-negative of Paul’s every Christian conclusion. Of course, this is not the final word. The debate generated by Sanders’s works is wonderfully stimulating and fruitful, and it doubtless will continue, providing legions of scholars, admirers and detractors alike, with many more years of both employment and enjoyment.

Notes 1. For example, the 619-page response by D. A. Carson, et al., Justification and Variegated Nomism: The Complexities of Second Temple Judaism (Vol. 1; WUNT 140; Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2001). 2. E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison of Patterns of Religion (Philadelphia/London: Fortress/SCM, 1977), 12. 3. Raymond Brown, An Introduction to the New Testament (New York: Doubleday, 1997), 597. 4. The extent to which Paul is responding to circumstances in his churches and not to Judaism per se is discussed below. 5. E.g., James D. G. Dunn, Romans 1–8 (WBC 38A; Dallas: Word Books, 1988), lxxi–lxxii, 42–43, and passim.

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6. Craig C. Hill, “Romans,” in The Oxford Bible Commentary (ed. John Barton and John Muddiman; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 1092. I have paraphrased the argument of my Romans commentary extensively in this portion of the essay. 7. Perhaps this tendency reflects the modern fascination with psychology. What lives deep in Paul’s psyche, born of some childhood disappointment or adolescent dysfunction, that steers the turn of his mind? Since we know little about Paul’s upbringing, we may speculate freely. 8. See Fabian E. Udoh, “Paul’s Views on the Law: Questions about Origin (Gal. 1:6–2:21; Phil. 3:2–11),” NovT 42, no. 3 (2000): 214–37. 9. It is a common error to assert that the admission of Gentiles was Paul’s idea and, thus, without Paul there would have been no Gentile Christianity. According to Acts 11:20 (not to mention Acts 10:1–11:18), the practice of admitting Gentiles began before Paul’s arrival at Antioch. Prior to his work as an independent missionary, Paul participated for several years in this same Antioch church, whose views on the Gentile question he represented together with his mentor Barnabas at the famous Jerusalem Conference (Acts 15:1–29; Gal 2:1–10). From Paul’s letters and Acts, we know of several dozen other Christian missionaries active in the GrecoRoman churches, only a handful of whom operated under Paul’s supervision. We also know that Paul had nothing to do with the founding (in the 40s, at the latest) of the mixed church in Rome, nor anything to do with the spread of Gentile Christianity in several other parts of the empire. Paul was an important figure, to be sure, but not in every way popularly imagined. Wrote Wayne A. Meeks, The Writings of St. Paul (New York: Norton, 1972), 440: Perhaps the most significant discovery about Paul in this century’s scholarship has been the recognition of his Christian precedents. Paul cannot be called the “second founder of Christianity,” as Wrede named him less than seventy years ago. Christianity in the “Pauline” form—with sacraments, cultic worship of Jesus as Lord, Gentile members, and the doctrines of pre-existence and atoning death of the Christ—had already been “founded” before Paul became first its persecutor and then its missionary. 10. This subject is discussed more fully in chapter 7 of Craig C. Hill, In God’s Time: The Bible and the Future (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002). 11. Martin Goodman, “The Persecution of Paul by Diaspora Jews,” in The Beginnings of Christianity: A Collection of Articles (ed. Jack Pastor and Menachem Mor; Jerusalem: Yad ben-Zvi, 2005), 379–87, here 384. 12. Hill, “Romans,” 1092.

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EIGHTEEN

A Controversial Jew and His Conflicting Convictions Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People Twenty Years After

Heikki Räisänen

After Paul and Palestinian Judaism, Ed Sanders continued with the discussion in 1983 in Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People, giving sharper contours to Paul’s thought as he saw it.1 I shall consider three key points in that picture in light of some subsequent contributions to the ongoing debate: (1) that Paul broke, in effect, with Judaism; (2) that he held conflicting convictions; (3) that he thought backwards—“from solution to plight.” Each point has remained controversial, but I think that all three are largely on target.

T h e B r e a k w i t h J u d a is m Paul’s break with Judaism may not have been fully conscious. Sanders does speak of Paul’s conscious denial of the basis of Judaism,2 but he also states that Paul “seems not to have perceived that his gospel and his missionary activity imply a break with Judaism.”3 This oscillation seems to correspond to an ambiguity in Paul’s own position. In any case, Sanders insists that “in effect” Paul broke with Judaism. Although he does attribute a radical position to Paul, it is wrong, however, to claim that he “explicitly” regards Paul as an “apostate.”4 Apart from some expositors firmly rooted in 319

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the Lutheran tradition,5 few today would ascribe “apostasy” to Paul.6 Paradoxically, Paul is unequivocally called an apostate—even by intention, not just in effect—by an interpreter who thinks that Paul never denied Judaism as a way of salvation.7 Some scholars claim, by contrast, that Paul was a practicing “good Jew,”8 so much so that one should speak of his “law-respectful” gospel.9 According to Mark Nanos, Paul held that Christian Gentiles were obliged to follow the purity rules of the law as reformulated in the apostolic decree when they were associated with Jews. Yet to maintain this view he has to resort to tortuous interpretations of a number of passages,10 not least among these the “Antiochian incident.”11 This view also leaves unexplained why Paul actually got the reputation of teaching Jews “to forsake Moses” and “not to circumcise their children,” as Acts 21 shows. Second-century Jewish Christians also considered Paul an enemy; in fact, they considered him the enemy. Therefore, most scholars agree that Paul did not observe all of the law all of the time, as several passages make clear: Paul, “being all things to all men,” lives among Jews “as if he were a Jew” (1 Corinthians 9); he has become as one of the Galatians (Gal 4:12);12 and so on. Yet the significance of this is often not taken seriously. Many Christian interpreters still seem to think that circumcision and food laws were minor issues anyway; Paul, therefore, was plainly right in suggesting that the whole law is fulfilled if only the command of mutual love is observed.13 According to James Dunn, Paul presents (in Romans) a “powerful restatement of Jewish covenantal theology in the light of Christ.”14 Paul did challenge “the understanding of Israel then dominant among his fellow Jews,” but he did not abandon the thought of Israel’s election.15 Even in Galatians, Paul “wrote as a Jew anxious to fulfil the covenant obligations of his people.”16 Dunn claims that “within the context of the much broader [than rabbinic] stream of pre-70 Judaism, . . . Paul’s interpretation of covenant and promise was a legitimate option for Jews (and Judaism).”17 Unlike Sanders, Dunn emphatically denies any break, explicit or implicit, with Judaism on Paul’s part, and he has a large following among scholars today. It is recognized today that Paul’s debate with other Jews was “an innerJewish controversy”; this is pointed out by Jewish scholars.18 But it does not automatically follow that Paul therefore truly maintains continuity with Judaism (or with “biblical” Israel). There is no controversy about Paul’s

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theory; he thought of himself as a true heir of Israel. But how did other Jews judge him, and why? John Barclay provides a nuanced discussion of the question “Was Paul an apostate?”19 Apostasy, like heresy, is a matter of perspective: “apostasy” in whose eyes? Barclay distinguishes between different kinds of hellenization. Compared to other Diaspora Jews, Paul does not rank high in terms of acculturation (use of the Greek language and literary heritage); regarding accommodation he even stands near the bottom of the scale (his moral values were Jewish). But Paul is placed high up on the assimilation scale, which has to do with customs and social integration, and this is decisive. Paul would not have been judged on the basis of theological niceties,20 but on the basis of his personal practice and his recommendations for others.21 “In most of the Diaspora it mattered a thousand times more if a Jewish man was Hellenized in respect of his genitals than if he was Hellenized in respect of his speech.”22 It is a mistake to pay too much heed to what Paul claims about himself. We should not be “over-impressed by the traditional and scriptural content” of his theology,23 or even by possible “halakic” concerns in his ethics.24 What counted was how other Jews regarded his practice. The thirty-nine lashes Paul received five times show that Paul kept returning to the synagogue and that he was not considered an outsider. Had he been so considered, he would not have been punished. On the other hand, someone thus punished was certainly not regarded as a “good Jew” either. “There were limits to the diversity of Judaism and Paul encountered them in the form of the synagogue lash.”25 Dunn’s claim concerning “a legitimate option” is untenable; “the vast majority of Paul’s contemporaries appear to have considered [his practice] illegitimate! . . . To reinstate Paul in hindsight as a ‘legitimate’ Jew would be to impose a theological judgment over historical reality, and if this is practised by Christians it is in danger of becoming a form of Christian supersessionism.”26 Sanders argued forcefully that Paul’s mission strategy entailed that even Jews had to enter (a new community); they had to be “won.”27 Paul applied the entrance requirement of faith in Jesus Christ to Jews as well as to Gentiles. Gentiles did not join Israel, for church and synagogue were socially distinct. “In Pauline theory, Jews who enter[ed] the Christian movement

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renounce[d] nothing.” In practice, “Christian Jews would have to give up aspects of the law if they were to associate with Gentile Christians.”28 I don’t see that subsequent discussion has done anything to shatter this argument. Yet even Paul’s theory is ambiguous, to say the least; at points, it too comes “painfully close to apostasy.”29 It cannot be said that Paul merely extends Israel’s covenant to embrace Gentiles as well (as Dunn and others claim). In Galatians, there is no salvific covenant previously established into which Gentiles could be included. The notion of an expanded covenant fits the position of Paul’s Galatian opponents better. This has been convincingly argued by J. L. Martyn and, following him, Kari Kuula.30 “Traditional Jewish terms, motives and approaches . . . are reinterpreted in such a manner that the continuity remains only nominal.”31 “When Paul contemplates [in Galatians 4] Gentile entry into the Sinai covenant, he sees only enslavement under the power of the Law.” “The farthest thing from his mind is to argue for the Gentiles’ right to claim ‘a share in the benefits of God’s covenant with Israel.’”32 In Romans Paul does make an effort to be more “positive.” Yet Rom 9:6ff. is no less negative toward Israel than is Galatians.33 Much is made of the parable of the olive tree in Romans 11 by those who emphasize Paul’s continuity with Judaism. But this parable does not reflect Paul’s usual “ecclesiology” (which is that of the body of Christ). Paul’s all-important “in Christ” language is missing in Romans 9–11 altogether. Paul’s normal position is, in Sanders’s words, that both Jews and Gentiles had to “join what was, in effect, a third entity”;34 on that basis, Paul could have devised a parable about a third olive tree into which faithful Jews and converting Gentiles were “grafted.” Again, the idea of the salvation of “all Israel”—in whatever way this is conceived to happen—is at odds with Paul’s other statements, and it has rightly been called a “desperate idea.”35 Moreover, it implies that Jews will be saved, since they will eventually become Christians. This is at bottom a supersessionist idea,36 and it may have done a lot of harm to Jews, since it has kindled Christian hopes for their grand-scale conversion. This has not happened, resulting in great disappointment (playing a part in the hardening of Martin Luther’s attitude, for instance). In resorting to deceptively positive-sounding language in parts of Romans, Paul is involved in the usual strategy of sectarian movements, which tend to justify novel practices and ideas by claiming that they are in full agreement with the tradition, if only the tradition is understood properly.

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C o n f li c t i n g C o n v ic t i o n s When Sanders wrote in 1977 that Paul is coherent but not systematic, he said he was taking the standard position.37 But when in 1983 he took a closer look and discerned a lack of “inner unity” in Paul’s thought,38 he set off a storm of controversy. At the same time I claimed that inconsistencies should be accepted as constant features of Paul’s treatment of the law.39 Regarding this issue, Sanders and I are time and again singled out as a pair of villains—some contending that I am the worse one, others content with lumping us together.40 I think that Sanders41 correctly explained that we disagreed only about terminology.42 It is not just a question of a “psychological explanation” of Paul’s problems.43 Sanders did acknowledge Paul’s emotions, such as anguish, but he also made it clear that Paul was faced with a real (salvation-historical) dilemma: God gave the law, and yet its role was largely negative.44 Paul wrestled with the resulting problem of discontinuity, trying to hold together conflicting convictions: salvation is by faith (in Jesus); God’s promise to Israel is irrevocable.45 I emphasized psychological factors more, but later on I underlined the theological dilemma as well,46 also pointing out that the problem is one Paul shares with early Christianity at large (though he brings it to a head). The inconsistency thesis does not enjoy great popularity. It is said to attribute nonsense to Paul47 and to be based on an “atomistic” analysis.48 It is found to be “extreme”;49 claims of inconsistency, it is asserted, should be an interpreter’s “last resort.”50 The polemical tone in much of this criticism seems, however, disproportionate in view of the general agreement that Paul’s thoughts on the law are very difficult to grasp.51 Attempts to deny inconsistency largely boil down to giving it a different name. Such attempts include: development theories (which openly assume contradictions between different letters, e.g., Hans Hübner); a distinction between the coherent theme of Paul’s gospel and its contingent application (Johan Christiaan Beker); a differentiation between a convictional level and a theological level (Daniel Patte); a separation between intentions and objectifications (Günther Klein); and a distinction between practical aims and argumentative strategies (Francis Watson).52 The effect is the same, sometimes against the intention of the interpreter: Paul is found consistent only if the interpreter knows how to tell the coherent kernel from the unimportant husk.

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Alternatively, critics—often including practitioners of rhetorical criticism—produce consistency by putting forward idiosyncratic readings of individual passages. In this vein, T. van Spanje devoted a whole dissertation to the refutation of my claim that Paul is inconsistent.53 While the description of my position in the first part of the book is fair enough,54 the refutation itself is, in my view, full of problems.55 At times van Spanje is content with discussing minor points;56 he can also refute at length a position that he attributes to me but that I explicitly reject.57 Moreover, he often puts forward idiosyncratic interpretations of his own; were they correct, they would refute not only my interpretations but also those of almost everybody else.58 The amount of ingenuity needed by those who plead for consistency is noteworthy.59 The strength of the inconsistency thesis is that it is based on standard options in the interpretation of individual passages. To be sure, serious attempts to see Paul as a coherent systematic theologian after all have been undertaken recently by Daniel Boyarin and Troels Engberg-Pedersen, who in their own ways also swim against the current. For Boyarin, a “hermeneutical” understanding of the law can eliminate the assumption of contradictions. What Paul affirms is the “spiritual sense” of the Torah; what he denies is its literal sense.60 Engberg-Pedersen claims that Paul’s thought “makes coherent sense once it is seen in the light of . . . the ancient ethical tradition” (of the Stoics in particular). It seems to me, however, that even in these cases the systematic unity is bought at the price of playing down Paul’s most negative statements.61 Moreover, Engberg-Pedersen constructs Paul’s Stoic-like philosophy on a very abstract level, and Boyarin actually accepts that Paul did have conflicting convictions with regard to the election of Israel62—which would seem to undermine his case. Some prominent scholars (often scholars who are looking at the debate in question from some distance) have no problem at all in attributing inconsistency to Paul. Michael Goulder is outspoken: Paul believed contradictory things; he was “in an impossible position” and was “reduced to offering a series of arguments which were weak and contradictory.”63 Gerd Theissen states that Paul’s “thought is full of contradictions. One does more justice to him, when one does not explain them away, but interprets them historically and psychologically.”64 The most unexpected support for us comes from Durham, however. David Brown, a systematic theologian and a colleague of

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Dunn’s, looking at the biblical tradition from a larger theological perspective, comments that Paul “resorts to a bewildering variety of arguments against the law,” the “more natural interpretation” being “that Paul is desperately floundering in his attempt to find suitable arguments to undermine its central role, rather than that he has a coherent theology about its significance.”65 Why should finding inconsistency be a “last resort” in the first place? In general, theologians (or their critics) are not overly reluctant to find inconsistency or self-contradictions even in “good” thinkers. Consider Boyarin’s section “Bultmann against Bultmann.”66 On a central point, Bultmann “contradicts his own view,” “Bultmann the exegete contradicting Bultmann the systematic theologian.” I am reminded of my own occasional distinction between “Paul the man” and “Paul the theologian.”67 Or take Paul Tillich, as assessed by some scholars who have delved into his thought.68 One of them (Pan-Chiu Lai) writes that Tillich’s Systematic Theology “should not be assumed uncritically as a coherent and consistent system.”69 Another (John Powell Clayton) “sees a difference between Tillich’s cultural theology and church theology” and asks if his vision is unified “or does he perhaps ‘see double’?” Tillich’s two programs “would seem to have different aims and to serve different ends”70 (one is reminded of Sanders’s chapter on “Different Questions, Different Answers”). A third critic (Donald R. Ferrell) notes that since Tillich tried to “graft existentialist concerns into a substantially classical structure of thought, his conception . . . is plagued by an ultimately unsatisfying ambiguity and inconsistency.”71 Yet another (Lewis S. Ford) finds that Tillich uses crucial concepts inconsistently, such that there are all the time two opposing tendencies in his thought.72 It seems to me that both Paul of Tarsus and Paul of Chicago got caught in inconsistencies precisely because they bravely attempted to combine new insights with their respective classic traditions. The author of the dissertation who collected these criticisms of Tillich agrees with them73 but nevertheless appreciates Tillich’s theology “as one of the outstanding interpretations of the Christian message in the last century.”74 Sanders too can express great appreciation of Paul: though not a systematic theologian, Paul was “a serious and compelling theological thinker.”75 A glance at a different problem in Paul might be of some help. Did Paul expect that in the end all humans would be saved, or only some? There

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are indications of both possibilities in his letters, and Eugene Boring has argued that Paul affirms both limited and universal salvation, whereby the differences depend on Paul’s using different “encompassing images” of God as judge and as king respectively. Because limited salvation and universal salvation “are affirmed together, the ultimate logical inferences belonging to each are never drawn. Paul affirms both human responsibility and the universal victory of God’s grace. As propositions, they can only contradict each other. As pictures, they can both be held up. . . .”76 Sven Hillert develops Boring’s thoughts in an Uppsala dissertation, finding that Paul separates two “perspectives”; therefore, “a Pauline theology should . . . be open to tensions and multidimensionality.”77 Using expressions reminiscent of those often found in discussions of Paul and the law, Hillert concludes, “To recognize both eschatological perspectives would be to emphasize both limited and universal salvation, used to solve various problems and illuminate various situations, but still within the same theology. This would be to emphasize the dynamic qualities of a Pauline theology, as well as its ability to take different shapes in different situations, being viewed from different sides, and being used not only for information, but also for evaluation and influence of behaviour.”78 So far so good. In the end, however, it seems to me that “multidimensionality” is just a nicer name for inconsistency. From a cognitive point of view (which should not be abandoned even when other aspects are properly taken into account), it is impossible that both perspectives are true: it is not possible that all humans are saved and that some are not saved (though it is of course possible that both perspectives are untrue). Calling attention to different perspectives may help to explain the contradictions, but they are not thereby done away with. The law is thus not at all an isolated problem as regards consistency. Paul was a man of many conflicting convictions.

F r o m S o lu t io n t o P li g h t Sanders emphasized that Paul thought “backwards,” that is, “from the solution to the plight.”79 His starting point was God’s new action in Jesus: God sent Jesus to provide salvation for all humans. From this everything

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else follows. Since only Jesus saves, the law cannot. This thesis has been criticized, but it makes a lot of sense. Even some scholars who criticize this thesis present interpretations that come quite close to it, likewise starting from the crucial significance of the “Christ event” for Paul.80 Boyarin concedes that Sanders is right in holding that the only flaw of the Jews in Paul’s eyes is that they are not Christians. Yet Boyarin still understands Paul “as moving from plight to solution,” namely “from the theological plight of a tension between the universalistic claims of Jewish theology . . . and the particularistic nature of its prescribed practices.” “We can account for Paul’s putting everyone in the same situation by assuming that this was exactly what was bothering him about Judaism. . . .”81 It seems to me that Boyarin has a point. Sanders is certainly correct in that Paul did not start by thinking through humanity’s miserable situation under sin, let alone under the law. But is it not reasonable to think that Paul may have had some problems with his religion even before his conversion, even if we can only try to guess what they were? The first chapter of Galatians testifies that, in his encounter with the Risen One, Paul immediately realized that it was his calling to go to the Gentiles. This suggests, as Sanders himself has pointed out,82 that the inclusion of uncircumcised Gentiles by Hellenist Christians may have been the bone of contention between them and Paul. In his conversion Paul became convinced that the Christians were right after all and that Gentiles could participate in the body of Christ just as Gentiles. It followed that the law was not essential.83

P u t t in g P a u l i n P l a c e Behind many criticisms (of all three points) that have been put forward there lurks religious anxiety.84 As one commentator states, it is important to find “coherence in Paul’s argument if his theology is ultimately to inform our own perspectives and behavior.” He asks, “Why should I take seriously the opinions of someone who is himself so confused that he contradicts himself in the space of fifteen hundred words [Romans 9–11] on a matter central to these chapters . . . ?”85

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It is difficult not to see in such concerns a residue of the old doctrine of inspiration, if not of inerrancy. Is there not even a “docetic” tendency in the attempts to find in Paul coherence at all costs? Real humans (including theologians of the caliber of Bultmann and Tillich) are inconsistent and may well contradict themselves! Sanders’s work has the great merit of making Paul a being of flesh and blood. Paul wrestled “desperately” with his dilemmas; Sanders speaks of his “passion of expression,”86 “torment and passion,”87 anguish, fear, even doubt.88 There are different ways of taking a person seriously. The religious problem is somewhat mitigated, if we can take Paul as a discussion partner rather than as an authority. Why couldn’t even a Christian join Boyarin when he states, “I am wrestling alongside [Paul] with the cultural issues with which he was wrestling, and I am also wrestling against him in protest against some of the answers he came up with”?89 The complaint is also made that if the “positive” attitude in Romans 11 is an anomaly in Paul, then it becomes difficult to use that chapter as a Christian foundation for dialogue with Jews.90 I am afraid that this is indeed the case and that we should face it. One should not try excessively hard to understand Paul, for his is one stance in a conflict-filled situation. If one presses equally hard to make sense of positions other than, or opposing, Paul’s, one may be forced to admit that there are problems in Paul’s position. I find fair play all-important in biblical study, that is, taking seriously the fact that we are listening to one party in a conflict in which the other side remains mute. Responsible scholarship must try to do justice both to Paul and to those Jews and Christians who disagreed with him or opposed him.91 Probably every side had a point and some understandable concerns, and we should try to do justice to this diversity. Nascent Christianity was a religion with conflicting convictions. Not only were persons and groups engaged in conflict in the visible world, but the struggle between tradition and innovation also took place in the microcosm of the mind and heart of Paul, a controversial Jew with conflicting convictions. We are left with the question that Sanders, turning the tables on his critics, raises at the end of his more recent popular book on Paul: “[Paul] forces us . . . to pose an extremely serious question: must a religion, in addressing diverse problems, offer answers that are completely consistent with

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one another? Is it not good to have passionate hopes and commitments which cannot all be reduced to a scheme in which they are arranged in a hierarchical relationship?”92

Notes 1. E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison of Patterns of Religion (Philadelphia/London: Fortress/SCM, 1977); E. P. Sanders, Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983; repr., 1985). 2. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 551; see also Sanders, Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People, 3: “His break with it (the law) was self-conscious”; further 46, 78. 3. Sanders, Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People, 178; emphasis added. 4. Thus Mark D. Nanos, The Mystery of Romans: The Jewish Context of Paul’s Letter (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996), 5 with n. 6. He makes the same claim (with no more justification) concerning my position. More interestingly, Nanos thinks that the view that Paul is an apostate is implicit even in James Dunn’s work, though Dunn is an eloquent proponent of the view that Paul is really a good Jew (see below). 5. Jürgen Becker, Paulus: Der Apostel der Völker (Tübingen: Mohr, 1989), 80–81, does call Paul an apostate from Judaism. He (pp. 418–23) also draws a totally negative picture of Paul’s view of the law. See also Georg Strecker, Theologie des Neuen Testaments (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1996), 216, with reference to Phil 3:7: “Der Bruch mit dem Judentum kann kaum radikaler ausgesagt werden” (It is hardly possible to state the break with Judaism in more radical terms). 6. The subtitle of the work by Alan Segal, Paul the Convert: The Apostolate and Apostasy of Saul the Pharisee (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), has the term in it, but this is only partially justified by the contents of the book, and Segal makes it very clear that terms like “apostasy” are matters of perspective. 7. John G. Gager, The Origins of Anti-Semitism: Attitudes toward Judaism in Pagan and Christian Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), representing the theory of separate covenants for Jews and Gentiles in Paul’s thought. John G. Gager, Reinventing Paul (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 86, repeats this view. He leans on Lloyd Gaston, Paul and the Torah (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1987). See also Stanley K. Stowers, A Rereading of Romans: Justice, Jews, and Gentiles (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 156. 8. Thus, Nanos, Mystery of Romans, 9. 9. Nanos, Mystery of Romans, 23, n. 5. Gager, building on the work of Gaston and Stowers, passionately argues that Paul presented no criticism at all of the Torah. All critical points about curse, condemnation, and death concern the Torah only in

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the case that it is imposed on Gentiles: “when Paul appears to say something (e.g., about the law and Jews) that is unthinkable from a Jewish perspective, it is probably true that he is not talking about Jews at all. Instead we may assume that the apostle to the Gentiles is talking about the law and Gentiles.” See Gager, Reinventing Paul, 58 (italicized in the original). This “new Paul” is a highly unlikely creation. 10. For Nanos, Mystery of Romans, 218–22, 237–38, the expression “obedience of faith” (Rom 1:5) as well as the passage in Rom 6:16–18 refer to the Apostolic decree. Romans 11:26 refers to Paul himself, coming from Jerusalem (278–79)! Romans 3:27 refers to the “Torah of faith” (186), and Rom 13:1–7 to synagogue authorities (289–336). 11. Nanos, Mystery of Romans, 344, admits that if the traditional reading of the Antiochian incident is correct, then Paul compromised, and faith indeed nullified the Torah. Consequently, he presents a long and tortuous exegesis; see the conclusions on pp. 362–66. See also Tomson’s problems with the same passage in Peter J. Tomson, Paul and the Jewish Law (CRINT 3; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990), 222–30. 12. See Daniel Boyarin, A Radical Jew: Paul and the Politics of Identity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 155–56, on Gal 4:12(ff.): Paul “has given up his specific Jewish identity in order to . . . create the new spiritual People of God. . . . It is difficult for me to understand how scholars can assume that Paul remained Law-observant given this verse.” Also on Paul’s flexibility vis-à-vis food laws: it “thoroughly undermines any argument that Paul intended Jews to remain Jewish, although Paul . . . would probably argue that he was redefining Jewishness in such a way that everyone could be Jewish” (10). 13. Lauri Thurén even writes that “if obedience is counted as circumcision [as is the case in Rom 2:26], then the ritual requirements of the law are met expressis verbis”; interpreting Gal 6:15 he calls circumcision “a minor surgical operation,” which “as such means nothing.” See Lauri Thurén, Derhetorizing Paul: A Dynamic Perspective on Pauline Theology and the Law (WUNT 124; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000), 109, 171. 14. James D. G. Dunn, Romans 1–8 (WBC 38A; Dallas: Word Books, 1988), lxxii. 15. James D. G. Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 719. Dunn refers to Rom 9:6–13, which he interprets not as negating Israel’s election (which is a natural reading of the passage) but as recalling Israel to a “fresh realization” of what their calling must mean. 16. James D. G. Dunn, Galatians (BNTC; London: A & C Black, 1993), 291. 17. James D. G. Dunn, Jesus, Paul and the Law (London: SPCK, 1990), 208; emphasis added. 18. For example, Boyarin, Radical Jew, 205. 19. John M. G. Barclay, “Paul among Diaspora Jews: Anomaly or Apostate?” JSNT 60 (1995): 89–120. 20. Gager’s picture of Paul is, I am afraid, wholly based on such niceties.

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21. Segal, Paul the Convert, 133. 22. Barclay, “Paul among Diaspora Jews,” 93. 23. Ibid., 114. 24. Contra Tomson, Paul and the Jewish Law, passim. 25. Barclay, “Paul among Diaspora Jews,” 119. 26. Ibid., 118–19. 27. Sanders, Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People, 171–79. 28. Sanders, Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People, 178. Gager, Reinventing Paul, 84–86, 146–48, seems blind to this crucial implication of, for example, Gal 2:11–21 (relying on the idiosyncratic reading of the passage by Gaston). Much is made by Gager, Reinventing Paul, 48–49, and others of the fact that Paul’s opponents in Galatians are followers of Jesus and not non-Christian Jews. Yet it does not follow that Paul’s “critique has nothing at all to do with Judaism,” for precisely the Jewish identity of Paul’s “opponents” (or of his dissenting coworkers like Peter or Barnabas) is at stake. 29. Segal, Paul the Convert, 277 (with reference to Rom 9:6ff.). 30. J. Louis Martyn, “Events in Galatia,” in Pauline Theology (Vol. 1; ed. Jouette M. Bassler; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991), 160–79; Kari Kuula, Paul’s Polemical Treatment of the Law in Galatians (vol. 1 of The Law, the Covenant and God’s Plan; Publications of the Finnish Exegetical Society 72; Helsinki: Finnish Exegetical Society, 1999). 31. Kuula, Paul’s Polemical Treatment, 94. 32. Martyn, “Events in Galatia,” 175, critically quoting Dunn. 33. See my analysis in Heikki Räisänen, “Paul, God, and Israel: Romans 9–11 in Recent Research,” in The Social World of Formative Christianity and Judaism: Essays in Tribute to H. C. Kee (ed. Jacob Neusner; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1988), 178–206; also Heikki Räisänen, Marcion, Muhammad and the Mahatma: An Exegetical Perspective on the Encounter of Cultures and Faiths (London: SCM, 1997), 17–32, chapter 2: “Saving God’s Integrity: Paul’s Struggle in Romans 9–11.” 34. Sanders, Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People, 172. 35. Kari Kuula, Paul’s Treatment of the Law in Romans (vol. 2 of The Law, the Covenant and God’s Plan; Publications of the Finnish Exegetical Society 85; Helsinki/ Göttingen: Finnish Exegetical Society/Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2003), 344. 36. See Boyarin, Radical Jew, 202. He correctly adds, however, that “Paul’s doctrine is not anti-Judaic” (205). 37. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 518. 38. Sanders, Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People, 147. 39. Heikki Räisänen, Paul and the Law (2nd ed.; WUNT 29; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1987), 11 and passim. 40. For example, Dunn, Theology of Paul, 131 with n. 16, singles out Sanders and myself as interpreters “content to find and to leave Paul’s teaching inconsistent and irreconcilable in its contradictions.”

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41. Sanders, Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People, 148. 42. See Räisänen, Paul and the Law, xxiii, n. 46. 43. Thus Troels Engberg-Pedersen, Paul and the Stoics (Edinburgh/Louisville, Ky.: T & T Clark/Westminster John Knox, 2000), 15; see also p. 341, n. 11. 44. Sanders, Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People, 68, etc. 45. Ibid., 198. 46. Räisänen, Paul and the Law, xxv–xxvi; Räisänen, “Paul, God, and Israel,” 196, etc. 47. E. Elizabeth Johnson, “Romans 9–11: The Faithfulness and Impartiality of God,” in Pauline Theology (4 vols.; ed. David M. Hay and E. Elizabeth Johnson; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995), 3:214. 48. Dunn repeatedly puts this allegation forward—for example, in 1998 in his Theology of Paul, 159, n. 160. Whatever justification the accusation may have had twenty years ago, repeating it after I have published some one hundred pages of contextual analysis of Romans 9–11 borders on the ridiculous. I have the same feeling when reading in Dunn’s book that Sanders’s interpretations are “superficial.” 49. Boyarin, Radical Jew, 294, n. 23. 50. Dunn, Jesus, Paul, 215. 51. Sven Hillert is justified in pointing out that the discussion on “the radical positions taken by Räisänen and Sanders” (on contradictions) “may give the impression that scholars disagree more than they actually do. A closer look reveals that there is an almost general agreement that ‘Paul was not a systematic theologian.’ ” See Sven Hillert, Limited and Universal Salvation: A Text-Oriented and Hermeneutical Study of Two Perspectives in Paul (ConBNT 31; Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1999), 238–39; also David Brown, Tradition and Imagination: Revelation and Change (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 307–8, referring to Dunn: “even those most well disposed to Paul find themselves remarking on the oddity of his arguments.” This is not just a modern sentiment; see my comments on Porphyry in Paul and the Law, 2–3, as well as Margaret Mitchell’s perceptive discussion of John Chrysostom’s view of Paul in Margaret Mitchell, “ ‘A Variable and Many-Sorted Man’: John Chrysostom’s Treatment of Pauline Inconsistency,” JECS 6 (1998): 93–111. 52. See Hans Hübner, The Law in Paul’s Thought (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1984); Johan Christiaan Beker, Paul the Apostle: The Triumph of God in Life and Thought (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984); Daniel Patte, Paul’s Faith and the Power of the Gospel: A Structural Introduction to the Pauline Letters (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983); Günther Klein, “Gesetz III: Neues Testament,” TRE 13 (1984): 58–75; Francis Watson, Paul, Judaism, and the Gentiles: A Sociological Approach (SNTSMS 56; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). 53. T. E. van Spanje, Inconsistency in Paul?: A Critique of the Work of Heikki Räisänen (WUNT 2; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1999).

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54. There is one incomprehensible formulation, however: he asserts that “according to Räisänen, one should not separate Judaism and Christianity from each other” (ibid., 129) or “Christianity from Judaism” (133); both sentences are italicized in van Spanje’s work. 55. See Barry Matlock, “Review of T. Van Spanje, Inconsistency in Paul?” RBL (2000), www.bookreviews.org. 56. Van Spanje, Inconsistency in Paul? 173–80. 57. Ibid., 180–88, uses a number of pages to refute an opinion I do not actually hold; see Räisänen, Paul and the Law, 184. Van Spanje’s quotation (180) is quite misleading, as he disregards the sentence after the quotation in Paul and the Law, 186. 58. See van Spanje, Inconsistency in Paul? 208–10 (on Gal 3:10–13; van Spanje himself presents a quite idiosyncratic interpretation); 222 (an odd exposition of Rom 7:1–6); 227 (a strange distinction between the law per se and the law in God’s overall plan of salvation), etc. 59. See, for example, N. T. Wright, The Climax of the Covenant: Christ and Law in Pauline Theology (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1991), 251 on Romans 9–11. 60. Boyarin, Radical Jew, 132. “The letter that kills” is, according to Boyarin (56), the literal meaning. Boyarin holds that Paul had a conscious “hermeneutical” law theory, but his systematic reading of Paul fails to convince. For example, Paul’s assertion that through the Torah he died to the Torah (Gal 2:19) means, according to Boyarin (p. 122), that Paul discovered the opposition of the true (allegorical) Torah to that which is understood as Torah by other Jews. That Paul does not make conscious distinctions within the law was correctly seen by Sanders, Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People, 83, 86. 61. Engberg-Pedersen, Paul and the Stoics, 171–72, 348–50, takes Gal 3:19 as a reference to the law’s “curbing transgressions”; against this, see Kuula, Paul’s Polemical Treatment, 145–47, 153, 155–56, 174–75. Engberg-Pedersen, Paul and the Stoics, 173, practically ignores the very negative verse Gal 3:20, and he tries to improve the problematic argument of Rom 1:18–3:20 by claiming that according to this passage Jews and Gentiles merely risk sinning (207–8, 218). 62. See Boyarin, Radical Jew, 323, n. 1, where he says that he agrees with Sanders’s interpretation of Paul “on the Jewish people”: “I find the second section of Sanders’s book [i.e., Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People] on the Jews uniformly successful while . . . I have some problems with the first part on the Law.” Yet in this second part Sanders makes even more forcefully the point concerning “conflicting convictions.” Unfortunately, Boyarin does not discuss Romans 9 at all in his book. 63. Michael Goulder, A Tale of Two Missions (London: SCM, 1994), 33–34. 64. Gerd Theissen, “Röm 9–11: Eine Auseinandersetzung des Paulus mit Israel und mit sich selbst,” in Fair Play: Diversity and Conflicts in Early Christianity: Essays in Honour of H. Räisänen (ed. Ismo Dunderberg, Christopher Tuckett, and

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Kari Syreeni; SNT 103; Leiden: Brill, 2002), 311. Referring to my writing, Theissen states that “Paul is in his theology concerned to legitimize new experience with old traditions. One who pours new wine in old wineskins must run the risk that the wineskins burst or that the new wine within them remains hidden.” See, moreover, Dieter Mitternacht, Forum für Sprachlose: Eine kommunikationspsychologische und epistolär-rhetorische Untersuchung des Galaterbriefs (ConBNT 30; Stockholm: Almquist & Wiksell, 1999), who regards my work both as decisive stimulus for his own study and as a convincing refutation of the notion that Paul was a great thinker or even a philosopher (55–56); he mentions that he had to totally change his view of this matter in the course of his research. 65. Brown, Tradition and Imagination, 307 with n. 103. 66. Boyarin, Radical Jew, 82–85. On a given (central) point “Bultmann’s exegesis and his theology are divided against themselves” (82: “brilliant exegesis,” “totally arbitrary theologizing”); there is a “split between the exegete and the theologian” (84). What Boyarin allows in Bultmann, he would not allow in Paul. 67. Heikki Räisänen, The Torah and Christ: Essays in German and English on the Problem of the Law in Early Christianity (Publications of the Finnish Exegetical Society 45; Helsinki: Finnish Exegetical Society, 1986), 16. 68. See Lasse Halme, The Polarity of Dynamics and Form: The Basic Tension in Paul Tillich’s Thinking (Tillich-Studien, Beihefte 4; Munich: LIT Verlag, 2003). 69. Ibid., 15. 70. Ibid., 13. 71. Ibid., 16. 72. Ibid., 31. 73. See ibid., 145–46. 74. Ibid., 5. 75. E. P. Sanders, Paul: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 149. 76. M. Eugene Boring, “The Language of Universal Salvation in Paul,” Journal of Biblical Literature 105 (1986): 269–92, here 292. 77. Hillert, Limited and Universal Salvation, 240. 78. Ibid., 247. 79. This explains many of his contradictions; see Kuula, Paul’s Polemical Treatment, 56. 80. A case in point is Timo Eskola, Theodicy and Predestination in Paul’s Soteriology (WUNT 2; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1998), for example, 262–63: christological soteriology served as a justification for the radicalization of the concept of predestination (as Eskola understands it); also 284–85. 81. Boyarin, Radical Jew, 44–47. 82. Sanders, Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People, 191–92.

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83. See Gager, Reinventing Paul, 27 (though his conclusion that Paul’s view of the law did not change at all is a non sequitur). 84. Many criticisms, but not all! The criticism made here cannot be applied, for example, to the contributions of Engberg-Pedersen or Gager (or, of course, Jewish expositors of Paul). 85. Douglas J. Moo, “The Theology of Romans 9–11,” in Pauline Theology (4 vols.; ed. David. M. Hay and E. Elizabeth Johnson; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995), 3:240–58, here 240. 86. Sanders, Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People, 79. 87. Ibid., 76. 88. Ibid., 197–98. 89. Boyarin, Radical Jew, 3. See also Engberg-Pedersen, Paul and the Stoics, 304. 90. Moo, “Theology of Romans 9–11,” 240. 91. See Mitternacht, Forum Für Sprachlose. 92. Sanders, Paul: A Very Short Introduction, 149.

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NINETEEN

What Is “Real Participation in Christ”? A Dialogue with E. P. Sanders on Pauline Soteriology

Richard B. Hays

W h a t D o e s P a r t ic ip a t io n i n C h r i st Act ua l l y Mea n ? One of the principal contributions of E. P. Sanders’s Paul and Palestinian Judaism was its rigorous argument that “the main theme of Paul’s theology is found in his participationist language rather than in the theme of righteousness by faith.”1 That is to say, Paul’s soteriology focuses on themes of union with Christ rather than on juridical conceptions of atonement. In contending for this position, Sanders was, of course, recovering and refining a central thesis of Albert Schweitzer’s The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle.2 Although some scholars have challenged Sanders on this point and defended the classic view of the Reformers that justification is the center of Paul’s thought, I shall assume, for the purposes of the present essay, the basic correctness of Sanders’s argument. I will therefore press forward to ask the question of what “participation in Christ” might actually mean—a question that Sanders himself poses but does not answer.3 This essay, then, should be understood as an effort to reopen and advance a discussion that Sanders’s work initiated.4 Paul and Palestinian Judaism (PPJ) was published in 1977, the year I began my doctoral studies. The book had a major impact on my early attempts to come to grips with Paul’s thought. Having read Krister Stendahl’s “The Apostle Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West,”5 I had already begun to realize that the Reformation’s characteristic understand336

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ing of justification by faith had produced a skewed reading of Paul’s letters, and that Paul was far more concerned about the extension of God’s grace to the Gentiles than about the problem of how to find a gracious God. Sanders’s book pushed the discussion forward by exploding certain false stereotypes about the Judaism of Paul’s day and proposed stimulating new ways of thinking about the pattern of Paul’s soteriology. Sanders describes Paul’s thought within the framework of what he calls “participationist eschatology.” In the concluding pages of the book, we find a definitive summary of Sanders’s reading of Paul: The sequence of thought, and thus the pattern of Paul’s religious thought, is this: God has sent Christ to be the saviour of all, both Jew and Gentile (and has called Paul to be the Apostle to the Gentiles); one participates in salvation by becoming one person with Christ, dying with him to sin and sharing the promise of his resurrection; the transformation, however, will not be completed until the Lord returns; meanwhile the one who is in Christ has been freed from the power of sin and the uncleanness of transgression, and his behaviour should be determined by his new situation; since Christ died to save all, all men must have been under the dominion of sin, “in the flesh” as opposed to being in the Spirit. It seems reasonable to call this way of thinking “participationist eschatology.”6 In relation to this fundamental participationist logic, righteousness by faith is said to play a subordinate role. Elsewhere, Sanders qualifies this opinion by stating that “righteousness by faith and participation in Christ ultimately amount to the same thing.”7 This observation illustrates one way in which Sanders’s sketch of Paul’s thought is more nuanced than Schweitzer’s. As Sanders observes, “Schweitzer did not see the internal connection between the righteousness by faith terminology and the terminology about life in the Spirit, being in Christ and the like.”8 Nonetheless, Sanders continues throughout much of his treatment of Paul to follow Schweitzer in highlighting the centrality of the participatory aspects of Paul’s soteriology. We might say—if I might be forgiven for putting it this way—that the primacy of participation over justification

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is the main theme of Sanders’s reading of Paul, while the suggestion that righteousness by faith can be equated with participation in Christ is a subsidiary crater in Sanders’s thought. The more one emphasizes participation in Christ as the key to Paul’s pattern of religion, however, the more starkly one comes up against a serious hermeneutical difficulty: What in the world does such language actually mean? To what experiences or realities does it refer? If it is not simply speculative fantasy, how is it to be understood? In a trenchant critical engagement with Bultmann’s Theology of the New Testament, Sanders perspicaciously identifies this problem. Bultmann had read Paul’s participationist language as one aspect of the mythological husk in which Paul’s real message was wrapped. When Paul speaks of the transfer from the old creation to the new, this should not be understood, Bultmann insists, as entailing a “magical or mysterious transformation of man.” Instead, Paul is really saying nothing other than that “a new understanding of the self takes the place of the old.”9 Even Paul’s talk about “the union of believers into one sōma with Christ” is simply a way of describing the way in which the proclaimed word presents us with “a possibility of existence in regard to which a decision must be made.”10 After this exposition of Bultmann’s views, Sanders, recognizing the reductionist character of Bultmann’s demythologizing program, demurs. The concluding pages of this section of PPJ, which formulate the problem unforgettably, deserve to be quoted at length: In general, we may agree with what Bultmann and his successors wished to argue against: against magic, against viewing the soteriological event as taking place apart from man’s will or depriving him of it, against the possibility that Paul was interested in cosmological speculation for its own sake and the like. It must be wondered, however, whether the alternative as Bultmann proposed it—either cosmological speculation, magical transference and the like, or the ever-present demand to make a decision when faced with a demand which challenges one’s self-understanding—does justice to Paul. . . . That accepting the gospel was accepting the grace of God and that this resulted in a revised self-understanding of one’s position before God is, I believe, true. But this seems to be the individual and internal consequence of Paul’s

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theology rather than the exhaustive interpretation of it. . . . Being one body and one Spirit with Christ is not simply living out of a revised self-understanding, although that also may result. It seems to me best to understand Paul as saying what he meant and meaning what he said: Christians really are one body and Spirit with Christ, the form of the present world really is passing away, Christians really are being changed from one stage of glory to another, the end really will come and those who are in Christ will really be transformed. But what does this mean? How are we to understand it? We seem to lack a category of “reality”—real participation in Christ, real possession of the Spirit—which lies between naïve cosmological speculation and belief in magical transference on the one hand and a revised selfunderstanding on the other. I must confess that I do not have a new category of perception to propose here. This does not mean, however, that Paul did not have one. . . . To an appreciable degree, what Paul concretely thought cannot be directly appropriated by Christians today.11 When I first read these words in 1977, they seemed to me to pinpoint a problem that any honest theological reading of Paul must confront, and this formulation of the matter has lingered hauntingly with me for more than twentyfive years. Sanders’s frank admission of puzzlement about how to answer the question that he poses increases the tantalizing quality of the problem. In this brief essay, then, I will offer four proposals about ways in which we might respond to the hermeneutical problem of interpreting “real participation in Christ.” I do not suppose that Sanders will necessarily embrace any of these solutions, but I hope he will receive them as appreciative suggestions meant to carry forward a conversation provoked by his work.

F o u r S u g g e s t io n s a b o u t H o w to U n d e r st a n d “P a r t i ci p a t i on i n Ch r i st ” A . P a r t i c i p a t i o n a s B e l o n g i n g t o a F a mi l y My first proposal takes its point of departure from Sanders’s own extended exposition of Paul’s participatory language. After treating Paul’s

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“body of Christ” imagery, his emphasis on “one Spirit,” and his en Christō formulations,12 Sanders somewhat surprisingly includes within his survey those passages (such as 1 Cor 6:12–20, 7:22–23, 15:23; Gal 5:24; Rom 6:15–23, 14:8–9) in which Paul describes Christians as servants of the Lord or as belonging to him.13 Sanders immediately acknowledges that such terminology is “less ‘participationist’ than the language of being members of his body and the like.” Nonetheless, he asserts, “Paul did not consider belonging to Christ to be different from being in him.”14 His chief evidence for this claim is found in Rom 8:9–10, where Paul’s terminology shifts seamlessly from having the Spirit of Christ to belonging to Christ to having “Christ in you.” The expressions appear to be used synonymously, or at the very least the different terms, if not precisely synonymous, share a single referent. If Sanders is correct—and I believe he is—that “to belong to Christ is not different from being ‘in’ him,”15 this observation might go a long way toward clarifying the hermeneutical problem of what “real participation in Christ” actually means: “belonging to Christ” and being “in Christ” might be understood as roughly equivalent metaphors for participation in an extended family structure. The passages that speak of belonging to Christ draw upon metaphors related to membership in the extended household of which Christ is pictured as the master. Sometimes Paul imagines Christians as slaves of Christ;16 in other instances, he shifts the metaphor: “So you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son then also an heir, through God” (Gal 4:7).17 In either case, whether slaves or children, believers are said to be part of the household of which Christ is the head. As such, they participate in the privileges and benefits of that family. Christ is the symbolic head and personification of the household—just as the paterfamilias was the legal embodiment and representation of his family in Greco-Roman custom—while the “sons” and “slaves” within the family unit derivatively share the status and goods of the head. No doubt this reading of Paul’s metaphorical language could be refined by careful study of the social and legal conventions of extended households in the Roman world, but the general force of the metaphor is clear. It is perhaps noteworthy that Paul understands the inclusion of Gentiles within the blessing of Abraham in a similar manner. The Gentiles are blessed “in” Abraham (Gal 3:8, quoting a conflation of Gen 12:3 and 18:18:

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eneulogēthēsontai en soi panta ta ethnē). In Gal 3:29 the climax of Paul’s exegetical argument embeds the Gentile Galatians within the family structure, and therefore the inheritance, of Abraham: “But since you belong to Christ [note how this expression explicates ‘you are all one en Christō’ in the previous sentence], therefore you are Abraham’s seed, heirs according to promise.” To participate “in” Abraham, or Abraham’s blessing, is to be included by adoption within the family of Abraham. The soteriological mechanism here may be slightly mysterious, but it is hardly mystical: it is simply a matter of being embraced—or adopted—within a particular elect family and thereby receiving the divine favor that has been lavished upon that family. B . P a r t i c i p a t i o n a s P o l i t i c a l o r M i l i ta r y So l i d a r i ty w i th Ch r i st The first model for understanding “participation in Christ” may be broadened somewhat by considering also those metaphors that construe Christ’s “lordship” not just in relation to an extended family but in relation to wider political realities. Again, our point of departure is an important summary passage in PPJ: “By sharing in Christ’s death, one dies to the power of sin or to the old aeon, with the result that one belongs to God. The transfer is not only from the uncleanness of idolatry and sexual immorality to cleanness and holiness, but from one lordship to another. The transfer takes place by participation in Christ’s death.”18 Here “participation in Christ’s death” is interpreted—in a way reminiscent of Ernst Käsemann—in terms of coming within the sphere of power of Christ’s lordship. The metaphor is not one of familial relationality but of political or military authority. Paul uses this political/military metaphor in direct connection with unitive participation language in Romans 6. He first declares that through baptism we have been united with Christ’s death and thereby set free from the dominion of sin (6:1–11). This exhortation follows immediately: Therefore, do not let Sin rule (basileuetō) in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions. No longer present your members to Sin as weapons (hopla) of unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life and present your members to God as weapons (hopla) of righteousness. For Sin will not

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have lordship (kyrieusei) over you, for you are not under Law but under grace. (6:12–14) Within this symbolic frame of reference, Christ is the king who through his death and resurrection has triumphed over the powers of Sin and Death that held humanity captive, thereby setting his people free. To be joined with him in baptism is to belong to him, to come under his sovereignty. To be “in Christ,” then, is to enter the sphere of his lordship and thereby to be enlisted on his side in the war against the enslaving power of Sin. John Chrysostom perceived the military imagery of this passage and interpreted it in a way that highlights participation in Christ as participation in the struggle against Sin. Commenting on Rom 6:13, he writes: “Hence, the body is not evil, since it may be made an arm [hopla] of righteousness. But by calling it an arm, he makes it clear that there is a hard warfare at hand for us. And for this reason we need strong armor . . . and above all we need a commander. The Commander, however, is standing by, ever ready to help us, and abiding unconquerable, and has furnished us with strong arms likewise.”19 Within this metaphorical field, participation in Christ is understood as solidarity with Christ the triumphant ruler and submission to his authority. The experiential dimension of union with Christ is played out in the realm of moral struggle to live a holy life—a favorite theme of Chrysostom’s. It is perhaps not irrelevant to note here that Paul’s favorite epithet for Jesus is Christos, a term that originally carried precisely the sort of political and military connotations we have been considering. The Messiah is the one anointed to reclaim power over hostile forces, to assert God’s sovereignty over and on behalf of God’s people: the Messiah’s enthronement symbolically enacts and prefigures their ultimate vindication. This scenario is spelled out with particular clarity in passages such as 1 Cor 15:20–24 and Phil 3:20–21. If Paul has taken the language of political messianism and deployed it metaphorically to portray God’s triumph not over earthly rulers but over cosmic powers of Sin and Death, one suspects that he stands within a hermeneutical trajectory of other Second Temple Jewish thinkers who had already begun to read the Psalmists’ accounts of the exaltation of the Davidic king within a cosmic and eschatological frame of reference.

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As an aside, we should note that Sanders devotes several pages in PPJ (511–15) to a consideration and refutation of W. D. Davies’s understanding of redemption in Christ as a new exodus. Sanders argues that being “in Christ” is not analogous to being “in Israel”20 and that corporate participation in Israel’s Sinai covenant does not provide the conceptual background for Paul’s understanding of participation in Christ. Most of Sanders’s objections to Davies are well-taken, particularly his rejection of the notion that Paul’s religion is a new form of “covenantal nomism.”21 I mention this point here simply to indicate that Paul’s use of political metaphors to elucidate participation in Christ should not necessarily lead us to equate his understanding of salvation with immanent political projects or with traditional Jewish understandings of covenantal community—at least not in any simple sense. In any case, the political/military model for interpreting “participation” provides one very promising avenue for coping with Sanders’s conundrum. To be “in Christ” is to acknowledge his practical lordship over human lives and to share in his battle to reclaim sovereignty over the world by yielding our bodies in service of righteousness. C . P a r t i c i p a t i o n i n t h e E k k l e¯ s i a One possible criticism of Sanders’s reading of Paul is that it underemphasizes the ecclesial frame of reference of Paul’s thought. This may seem a surprising critique, since Sanders agrees with Käsemann and Stendahl that Pauline soteriology “cannot be centered on the individual,”22 and since he highlights themes such as “body of Christ” and “one Spirit” as keys to Paul’s theology. Nonetheless, on a rereading of PPJ, I am struck by its relative lack of attention to the communal and community-forming thrust of Paul’s gospel. Consider, for example, Sanders’s climactic summary of “participationist eschatology” cited in the opening section of this paper (from PPJ, p. 549): nothing is actually said there about the church, and the account of Paul’s pattern of religion focuses entirely on the individual’s union with Christ and behavior in the new situation created by Christ’s death and resurrection. The book’s subject index identifies only four references to baptism and two to the Lord’s Supper, and most of these are only glancing references—for example, the (accurate) remark that Schweitzer’s view of

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baptism as efficacious ex opere operato is exegetically unacceptable.23 Nowhere does PPJ offer a sustained discussion of either topic. One would have expected—and here I write, of course, as a Monday morning quarterback— that an analysis of Paul’s pattern of religion might have attended more fully to the identity-forming sacramental practices through which that pattern was articulated and sustained within the community of believers. To be sure, in Sanders’s concluding comparison between Paul and Palestinian Judaism, he does observe that “both Judaism and Paul take full account of the individual and the group.”24 This is consistent with his emphasis that Paul’s soteriology is concerned with getting into “the body of the saved.”25 Even here, however, Sanders is concerned to emphasize that Paul’s notion of participation in Christ “is neither simply personal mysticism nor externalistic group membership.”26 In all this, one cannot help wondering whether there is a (characteristically Protestant?) overlooking of the concrete, gathered ekklēsia as the locus and theater of God’s redemptive activity. My principal purpose here is not, however, to criticize Sanders for something he wrote or failed to write more than twenty-five years ago, but to suggest one more approach that might prove fruitful in answering the question “What categories of perception might help us understand what Paul meant when he wrote about real participation in Christ?” I would propose that, for Paul, being “in Christ” was inextricably woven together with his experience of participation in a remarkable new boundary-blurring human community made up of Jews and Gentiles together, a community where Christ’s presence was understood to be palpably manifest through the sharing of bread and wine and through the outpouring of the Spirit in communal worship. In fact, I suspect this is as close as we are likely to get to the category of perception that frames Paul’s participatory soteriology, a category that lies between magical transference and revised self-understanding. The category is ecclesial participation—which includes participation in a specific social group, participation in the community’s sacramental life, and participation in Spirit-inspired charismatic worship. (Or, to put the point in more theoretical terms, ecclesial participation has social, sacramental, and pneumatological components.) I hasten to add a preemptive disclaimer: Paul’s ecclesiology certainly did not eclipse his Christology, nor can participation in Christ be reduc-

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tively equated with church membership. Nevertheless, if we want to know how “being in Christ” was embodied and experienced in Paul’s world, we cannot overlook the fact that participation in the body of Christ provided the setting in which Paul’s soteriology took shape and made sense.27 An analysis, then, of real participation in Christ in Paul’s letters should find anchor points not only in Paul’s portrayal of the church as the body of Christ (1 Cor 12:12–31; see Rom 12:4–8) but also in texts such as Rom 6:3–11, where Paul speaks of being “baptized into Christ Jesus,” and Gal 3:27–29, where he links baptism with being clothed in Christ, belonging to Christ, and living in a community that anticipates the eschatological transcendence of the fleshly distinctions that divide us. Such an analysis of real participation would probe in depth the meaning of a communal meal in which, as the story of Jesus’ death is told again and again, these words are spoken: “This is my body, which is for you,” and “This cup is the new covenant in my blood” (1 Cor 11:23–26). By receiving these sacramental elements, members of the community concretely experience participation in Christ. Finally, such an analysis would ponder carefully Paul’s assertion that the Holy Spirit activates gifts in all the members of the body of Christ, so that the outsider who comes into the community’s worship will hear the prophetic word and exclaim, “God is really among you” (1 Cor 14:25).28 Real participation in Christ entails participation in a body of worshippers where the Spirit speaks audibly and makes divine power palpably present. D . P a r t i c i p a t i o n a s L i v i n g w i t h i n th e Ch r i st Sto r y A final proposal: one more model for understanding real participation in Christ is the model of narrative participation. By that I mean that Paul’s imaginative retelling of the story of Israel and of Jesus summons his hearers (and readers) into a symbolic world in which cross, resurrection, and Parousia are the events that define the shape and meaning of history. Sanders’s summary of “the pattern of Paul’s religious thought”29 has a narrative structure: God sent Christ as savior and called Paul to be the apostle to the Gentiles; believers have died with Christ to sin and look forward to his future return and the hope of resurrection. It is not by accident that Sanders’s account has this narrative dimension, for he is faithfully summarizing Paul’s

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kerygmatic statements, which are themselves encapsulations of the story of God’s redemption of the world through Jesus Christ.30 Integral to the story is the claim that these events are true and that they summon the hearer to response. Those who reject the storyteller’s claim are described by Paul as “those who are perishing”; those who accept it are “those who are being saved,” and for them it is “the power of God” (1 Cor 1:18). That power of God reaches out to claim the hearers and draft them into the mission unfolded by the narrative. For them, even if they are Gentiles, Israel in the wilderness has now become “our fathers” (1 Cor 10:1). Thus the story forces a decision. (In this sense, at least, Bultmann was right.) Those who acknowledge its truth find their lives changed by it. They are drawn into participation in a new narrative world, and their former ways of life are subjected to critical scrutiny in light of the gospel. (This is true in different ways for Jews and pagans.) They are called into a process of conformity to the image of Christ. The story portrays Jesus as “the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal 2:20) and teaches them to interpret themselves as the beneficiaries of that action. They learn to see themselves as having been crucified with Christ, so that Christ lives in them. This means, furthermore, that in their own lives they are called to recapitulate the self-giving pattern embodied in Jesus’ death and in Paul’s living out of the same pattern (see, for example, Gal 6:2; 1 Thess 1:6; 1 Cor 11:1 [taken as the conclusion of 1 Cor 8:1–11:1]; Rom 12:1–2).31 There is no position of neutrality: either one hears the story and walks away, or one is grasped by it. If the latter, one is drawn inescapably into participation in a life pattern whose telos is the conformity of the hearer’s life to the story of Jesus Christ.32 This account of the believer’s participation in the Christ story leads us to raise, cautiously, one more question about Sanders’s account of Paul’s thought. In view of the great emphasis given by Paul to self-sacrificial participation in the death of Christ, does Sanders’s account of Paul’s pattern of religion in PPJ overemphasize the believer’s transformation into sharing Christ’s eschatological glory and, relatively speaking, underemphasize the believer’s participation in Christ’s sufferings? Within the Christ story, real participation in Christ necessarily entails sharing his costly self-giving for the world. To be in union with Christ is to share in “the koinōnia of his

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sufferings, being conformed to his death” (Phil 3:10). Surely this too is an integral part of Paul’s pattern of religion.

Insights from Eastern Orthodoxy I have proposed four models for interpreting “real participation in Christ”: belonging to Christ’s family, solidarity with Christ’s triumphant conquest of sin and death, participation in the church, and living within a narrative world shaped by Christ’s story. These models should be understood as complementary, not mutually exclusive. Each represents a facet of the complex reality to which Paul’s participation language points. How are these different aspects of the reality to be grasped together? My own inclination is to think that the third and fourth models (ecclesial and narrative participation) are epistemologically primary: they provide the symbolic and experiential framework within which the first and second models become intelligible. At the same time, however, the ecclesial and narrative models are the categories least closely connected to Sanders’s own explicit description of Paul’s thought. Therefore, I do not necessarily expect my colleague to embrace these constructive answers to the question he so pointedly posed. It should also be noted that Paul’s participatory eschatology makes sense if and only if one accepts the plain-sense truth of Paul’s future eschatological hope for the resurrection of the dead and God’s redemption of the created world (see, e.g., Rom 8:18–25). Without such a hope, the story falls apart—or it becomes a deluded fiction (1 Cor 15:12–20). A full treatment of these issues would require a much more extensive discussion of image and metaphor. Bultmann was not wrong to regard Paul’s language as figurative; rather, his mistake was to read the meaning of the figurative language narrowly and reductively. Sanders rightly opposes this reduction; he wants to let Paul’s language stand in its integrity rather than to translate the metaphors into a different symbolic world. This is a sound interpretive intuition, even though Sanders judges that “Paul’s view could hardly be maintained, and it was not maintained.”33 While this may be a partially correct historical description of what happened in the history of Christianity—at least in the West—I want to argue

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that, theologically speaking, Paul’s participationist eschatology is both viable and indispensable for the coherence of Christianity. Paul’s participationist eschatology has continued to play a particularly important role in shaping the thought and spirituality of Eastern Orthodoxy. For this reason, a careful reading of Eastern patristic sources might well provide further insight into Paul’s language of participation in Christ. For example, Gregory of Nyssa’s treatise On Perfection offers an elegant discussion of metousia (participation) in the nature and character of Christ.34 This essay is of particular interest because it elucidates the calling of Christian perfection through meditation on the names or descriptions given to Christ by Paul. Gregory asserts that Paul is our “safest guide” in these matters because he so faithfully embodied the character of Christ, “imitating Him so brilliantly that he revealed his own Master in himself, his own soul being transformed through his accurate imitation of his prototype, so that Paul no longer seemed to be living and speaking, but Christ Himself seemed to be living in him.”35 It would require another essay altogether to trace the diverse and subtle ways that Gregory discusses participation in Christ, but two observations may at least gesture toward his possible contribution to our understanding of this topic. First, Gregory conceives of conformity to Christ as occurring through contemplative prayer: “For when a person prays, he draws to himself through prayer what he is invoking and looking towards with the eye of his soul. Thus, the person looking towards power (Christ is power) ‘is strengthened with power unto the inner man,’ as the apostle says, and the person calling upon the wisdom which the Lord knows of old becomes wise.”36 Thus, Christ who is “the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Cor 1:24) is displayed in the life of the one who is joined with him in prayer. I suspect that our usual discussions of “participation in Christ” in the New Testament guild give insufficient attention to the practice of prayer as the medium of such participation. Second, despite the hortatory character of the treatise On Perfection, for Gregory participation in Christ cannot be understood as something achieved primarily through human initiative. It is Jesus Christ who “reconciled the enemies of God to the true and only Godhead,” as the following passage makes clear:

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The Mediator, assuming the first fruit of our common nature, made it holy through his soul and body, unmixed and unreceptive of all evil, preserving it in Himself. He did this in order that, having taken it up to the Father of incorruptibility through his own incorruptibility, the entire group might be drawn along with it because of its related nature, and in order that the Father might admit the disinherited to “adoption” as sons, and the enemies of God to a share in his own Godhead.37 Thus the human activity of contemplating and imitating Christ is always a responsive one, answering to the prior reconciling act of Christ. The believer’s growth toward fuller conformity to Christ presupposes a relation of participation in him that was already established through the incarnation, faithful death, and resurrection of Jesus. Is this passage an accurate interpretation of Paul’s understanding of participation in Christ? Gregory offers these comments in the context of explaining the Pauline references to Christ as “ ‘the firstborn of every creature’ and ‘the firstborn from the dead’ and ‘the firstborn among many brethren’ ” (Col 1:15, 18; Rom 8:29). Thus, he certainly intends to be giving an account of what Paul believed. I do not mean to suggest that Gregory’s exegesis of Paul is unexceptionable. To note just one problem, his reading is a synthetic one that blends Pauline motifs (e.g., first fruits, adoption) with ideas drawn from other New Testament texts, particularly John and Hebrews. Nonetheless, when we find ourselves puzzled—as Sanders has acknowledged we are—by Paul’s notion of participation in Christ, we might well learn something from a more extended exploration of the way Gregory and the other Greek fathers seek to explicate this theme. In any case, we owe Ed Sanders a debt of gratitude for his clear-headed, forceful, and provocative exposition of Paul’s thought. The proposals offered in the present essay are intended to respond to Sanders’s incisive question about “real participation” by thinking out loud about some possibilities. These proposals offer some ways of approaching the issue, but they hardly exhaust the matter; there remains something irreducibly mysterious about union with Christ. For that reason, we can appreciate Sanders’s reading of Paul, which refuses to give a simple explanation of “participation” and thereby continues to provoke us into a richer apprehension of the mystery.

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Notes 1. E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison of Patterns of Religion (Philadelphia/London: Fortress/SCM, 1977), 552. 2. See Albert Schweitzer, The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle (2nd ed.; London: Adam and Charles Black, 1953). 3. To adopt this approach is not to say that I agree with Sanders’s exegesis of Paul in every particular but to grant, as I have noted elsewhere, that Sanders’s emphasis on participation in Christ has highlighted the heart of the matter. See Richard B. Hays, The Faith of Jesus Christ: The Narrative Substructure of Galatians 3:1–4:11 (2nd ed.; SBLD 56; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), xxv–xxvi, n. 12. 4. I am pleased to offer this essay as a contribution to the celebration of the work of Ed Sanders, who has been my colleague at Duke since my arrival there in 1991. 5. See Krister Stendahl, “The Apostle Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West,” HTR 56 (1963): 199–215. 6. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 549. 7. Ibid., 506. 8. Ibid., 440; emphasis in original. 9. Rudolf Karl Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament (2 vols.; trans. Kendrick Grobel; New York: Scribners, 1951–1955), 1:268–69, cited by Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 521. 10. Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament, 1:302, cited by Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 521. 11. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 522–23. 12. Ibid., 453–61. 13. Ibid., 461–63. 14. Ibid., 462; emphasis in the original. 15. Ibid.; emphasis added. 16. See Dale Martin, Slavery as Salvation: The Metaphor of Slavery in Pauline Christianity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990). 17. All biblical quotations are my translation. 18. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 468; emphasis in the original. 19. John Chrysostom, Homilies on Romans, XI (NPNF 1 11; repr., Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1999), 411. For an interesting comparison, see also the words of the great hymn known as “St. Patrick’s Breastplate.” 20. See also Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 547. 21. Ibid., 514: note that this is one point at which Sanders’s interpretation of Paul differs decisively also from that of James D. G. Dunn. 22. Ibid., 438.

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23. Ibid., 434. 24. Ibid., 547. 25. For example, ibid., 544. 26. Ibid., 547. 27. A corollary of that last point is that we, as interpreters in a later time, may find Paul’s language about participation in Christ intelligible only insofar as we stand imaginatively within the same ecclesial community in which Paul stood. When Sanders writes, “We seem to lack a category of ‘reality’ ” for grasping Paul’s understanding of “real participation in Christ,” I suspect that his “we” refers, at least implicitly, to “we scholars who stand in a position of objective detachment from the church about which Paul writes.” Without in any way minimizing the seriousness and difficulty of Sanders’s question about how to understand “real participation,” I suspect that those who actively participate in the kind of worship that Paul describes may be in a better position to provide answers than those who do not. 28. On this passage, see Richard B. Hays, “The Conversion of the Imagination: Scripture and Eschatology in 1 Corinthians,” NTS 45 (1999): 391–412, esp. 391–94. 29. See Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 549, cited above. 30. On the question of the narrative structure of Paul’s thought, see Bruce W. Longenecker, ed., Narrative Dynamics in Paul: A Critical Assessment (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2002); Richard B. Hays, “Is Paul’s Gospel Narratable?” JSNT 27 (2004): 217–39. 31. On this theme, see John M. G. Barclay, “Paul’s Story: Theology as Testimony,” in Narrative Dynamics in Paul: A Critical Assessment (ed. Bruce W. Longenecker; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2002), 133–56. See also Michael Gorman, Cruciformity: Paul’s Narrative Spirituality of the Cross (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001). 32. Some of these ideas are suggested, if not very well explained, in Hays, Faith of Jesus Christ, 214–15. 33. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 552. 34. For an accessible English translation, see Gregory of Nyssa, On Perfection, in Saint Gregory of Nyssa: Ascetical Works (trans. Virginia Woods Callahan; FC 58; Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1967), 91–122. 35. Ibid., 96. 36. Ibid., 102. 37. Ibid., 116–17.

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What Is “Pauline Participation in Christ”? Stanley K. Stowers

Albert Schweitzer made the classic case for the idea that participation in Christ is the most important element in Paul’s thought.1 But it is due to Ed Sanders’s incisive critical reassessment of Schweitzer’s position in Paul and Palestinian Judaism that the centrality of participation has been widely accepted in New Testament scholarship.2 Among other things, Schweitzer and Sanders showed decisively that in forming arguments for moral advice, Paul draws from claims about participation in Christ and not justification by the believer’s faith.3 While there has been wide acceptance of the centrality of participation, the agreement has ended on how to characterize the phenomenon indicated in Paul’s discourse. From incomprehensible mystery to a form of corporate personality, the proposals have varied greatly and failed to win wide assent.4

S c h w e it z e r ’s P r o p o s a l a s S t a r t in g P oi n t Schweitzer’s answer was clearer than most. He proposed a historical explanation of sorts for the origins of the idea and a broad cultural context, which was a rather uniform Jewish eschatology or, as New Testament scholars might say today, apocalypticism. Jews, including Paul, held to a series of strict and logically interrelated doctrines about their own age, 352

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past ages, and the world to come. Paul created the idea of participation in Christ as a solution to the dilemma caused by his belief that the Messiah had come and been raised from the dead well ahead of the end time and its general resurrection. Paul had to make the elect mystically share in the death and resurrection of the Messiah already in this natural age. According to Schweitzer, Paul’s conception is that believers in mysterious fashion share the dying and rising again of Christ, and in this way are swept away out of their ordinary mode of existence, and form a special category of humanity. When the Messianic Kingdom dawns, those of them who are still in life are not natural men like others, but men who have in some way passed through death and resurrection along with Christ, and are capable of becoming partakers of the resurrection mode of existence, while other men pass under the dominion of death.5 Schweitzer provides a possible conceptual context for the larger problem that confronted Paul, but not for language and discourse of participation itself. That was Paul’s pure creation, in his view, a matter of irresistible reasoning from the system of eschatological doctrines that led Paul to invent the language.6 Schweitzer assures us that Paul came to the idea that believers are in Christ, Christ in them, and that they participate in his death and resurrection with the logical reasoning of a genius, but he never tells us how the idea of one person being in another person or sharing in the experiences of another would make sense to Paul or to others in his culture.7 For all of the celebration of Schweitzer’s discovery of Paul’s apocalyptic context, there has been little recognition that apocalyptic did not explain (that is, provide a context for) the central idea of participation. We need a discourse or discourses that provide the conditions of intelligibility for the language of participation. Schweitzer’s absolute oppositions between Palestinian Judaism and Hellenism and between eschatology and Hellenism will not do.8 What was common sense in the 1920s and 1930s, when most Europeans and Americans assumed that racial groups and their fractions had inherently different minds and intrinsic and mutually exclusive cultural practices, does not now make sense. In spite of Schweitzer’s often admirable

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liberal values, the antimonies of his constructions belong to his milieu, even if they still frame much New Testament scholarship.

P a u l’s R e a li s m v e r s u s M o d e r n R e a l i sm One of Schweitzer’s great contributions was the consistency with which he held the view, against the common liberal understandings of the apostle, that Paul belonged to a milieu that was quite alien to modernity. Schweitzer was certain that Paul’s language did require a realistic conception of the supernatural existence that had entered the natural. Participation was a sharing in the corporeality (Leiblichkeit) of Christ. He insisted that the language was not symbolic and mere metaphor.9 Sanders wholeheartedly affirmed this realism, even though he did not know how to characterize it. Against Rudolph Bultmann and many others, who have proposed that although Paul’s language seems to indicate something physical, it has a nonphysical reference that is its true meaning, Sanders writes: It seems to me best to understand Paul as saying what he meant and meaning what he said: Christians really are one body and Spirit with Christ, the form of this world really is passing away. . . . But what does this really mean? How are we to understand it? We seem to lack a category of “reality”—real participation in Christ, real possession of the Spirit—which lies between naïve cosmological speculation and belief in magical transference on the one hand and a revised self understanding on the other. I must confess that I do not have a new category of perception to propose here. This does not mean, however, that Paul did not have one. . . . To an appreciable degree, what Paul concretely thought cannot be directly appropriated by Christians today.10 Richard Hays has argued on the contrary: that there is a fitting conception of participation and that modern Christians can appropriate it. He has recently made a number of proposals about the metaphorical nature and categories of participation, but his most sustained argument has been that

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participation involves imaginative identification with narratives about Jesus Christ.11 As he puts it in the sermonic Christian, “we are caught up into the story of Jesus Christ.”12 Hays glosses Gal 2:19–20, where Paul speaks of being crucified with Christ and now living in Christ, with: Jesus Christ’s “story transforms and absorbs the world.”13 I find it difficult to determine the scope and significance of Hays’s claims. Sometimes it sounds like what I would call a narrative or linguistic idealism, as when he criticizes realistic readings with the comment that all language is metaphorical.14 Hays also chides Bultmann for his demythologizing of this language.15 I believe that Hays’s hermeneutic is just as modernist as Bultmann’s. Since, however, it is in part unconscious of its translation from Paul’s ancient culture, it lacks the critical reflexivity of Bultmann’s approach. Part of the basic structure of modernity, in radical contrast to the ancient world, is the natural-supernatural divide that thinkers like René Descartes created to protect religion from science and science from religion.16 There is a natural realm of cause and effect in which humans live that is constituted of matter and persistent physical laws that apply equally everywhere. The supernatural, including God and the spiritual, is totally other and constitutes a realm to which the principles of the natural realm do not apply. One can only point to the supernatural realm symbolically and metaphorically. In contrast, ancient and medieval thinking had one unified realm consisting of a hierarchy of being or substances, each of which had its own qualitative properties. In principle anything, including God and God’s activity, could be explained in physical terms. This was a holistically interactive cosmos without a neat separation between the symbolic-spiritual and the instrumental-physical. Thus in modernist thought the spiritual is that which is beyond and in contrast to the physical, substantial, and merely natural. But in Paul’s world pneuma (wind, air, breath, spirit; hereafter, pneuma), for example, is a refined, qualitatively higher substance with its own power of movement and intelligence. Paul betrays exactly this kind of physics and cosmology. So, for example, in 1 Cor 15:39–41 the substances of the lower and heavenly cosmos vary qualitatively in a grand hierarchy: “Not all flesh is the same flesh, humans have one flesh, but animals another, birds another, and fish another. There are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is one thing and the glory of the earthly is different. The sun has

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one kind of glory, and the moon another glory, and different glory for the stars, in fact star differs from star in glory.”17 Humans participate in Adam because they share bodies consisting of the same stuff as Adam (15:42–49). Those in Christ participate in him because they share with him the most sublime kind of pneuma, divine pneuma that he received in being resurrected from the dead. Paul’s language here is not metaphorical, or at least it is not only metaphorical in the sense of not involving a realistic meaning and reference. Sanders is right in stressing a realist ontology. It is a reinterpretation into the modernist framework to treat the language of participation as fundamentally metaphorical without the referent of a substantial ontology. Both modern (anthropological and literary) conceptions of myth and modern Christian theology have insisted that myth and theology are about something called “meaning” in opposition to the physical. The elaborate modern practices of studying myth and scripture have traded on this opposition, assuming that the meaning of the text could never include significant notions about the “stuff ” and processes of the world. Meaning is the realm of religion, literature, art, and the humanities; stuff belongs to science and has no meaning. When Hays dismisses Schweitzer’s interpretation as “a crudely literal belief in a shared physical substance between the Messiah and his people,” he is overwriting Paul’s thought with modernity.18 The move amounts to unconscious demythologizing. Protestants along with European and American Roman Catholics, among others, share a nonhuman world that is largely disenchanted and “mechanical”—without humanlike intelligence and teleology—in contrast to Paul’s world. From the thousand thousands and ten thousand ten thousands of heavenly beings who administer the world for God in Daniel (e.g., 9:10), and the qualitatively physical principles of purity, pollution, and holiness in the Priestly sources, to the aether, pneuma, and purposive species essences of Hellenistic and Greco-Roman cultures, the ancient conceptions understood the world to work by the principles of mind (e.g., value, purpose) permeating the cosmos. But New Testament scholars have often assumed that a relative lack of explanation in these terms in some texts means that Paul had a modern mechanistic understanding of the world as a background for beliefs about God, Christ,

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angels, and how the supernatural, say in the form of Christ’s resurrection, could enter the natural world. The fact that ancient writings do not always overtly explain ancient ways of understanding the world should no more be taken to imply modernlike assumptions than my failure to mention atoms, electrons, and evolutionary selection should be taken to imply that I hold some nonmodern understanding of the world.19 Some of those who have tried to describe the logic and origins of Paul’s participationist language have appealed to Paul’s or early Christian experience.20 But I do not view that as an explanation. The conditions for the experiences themselves must be explained rather than treated as originary mysteries. Moreover, Paul does not use our modern language of experience. He does not have an interest in the individual’s inner feel for some special event, but instead a concern for the event itself and its broader significance.

T h e C o n t i g u it y o f S u b s t a n c e s a n d t h e L i n ea g e of Fa i t h ful n e ss I want to stress three points. First, a hierarchy of qualities of substances is central to the discourse and should not be treated as symbolic for some supposedly deeper theological meaning or existential posture that Paul really meant. Second, the most basic principle by which this thinking with substances works is the logic of contiguity of substances: a matter of extension, identity, and contiguousness or lack thereof. Third, these are principles by which Paul reads and constructs narratives about Abraham and his descendants, Adam and his descendants, and Christ and those who are contiguous with him by the logic of patrilineal lineage and physical relatedness. These are components out of which the language of participation comes. I can illustrate these points with some brief comments on 1 Cor 6:12–20. Paul explains that God will destroy both the stomach and food, but the Lord is for (or with) the body. God raised the Lord, and God will raise those who are members of Christ. This argument makes sense because there is a contrast between the resurrection body and the human fleshly body. The best commentary on 6:13–14 is 15:35–50. Paul follows important strains of Hellenistic thought in treating the human body or bodies in general as like forms that can have various sorts of content.21 The body that will perish is made of flesh

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and was probably thought of as concocted out of food grown from the earth. But a better form of the body would consist of divine pneuma. It comes as no surprise, then, that in 6:18 the current body is a temple of this pure or holy pneuma. Paul is clear that a fully pneumatic body will replace the fleshly body only at the resurrection (15:44). So far we have types of stuff, but there is also the contiguity. Those in Christ are members of him. The relation is like the relation of the arm to the rest of the body. The same stuff makes Christ and believers contiguous. Paul means this so realistically that for a believer to be joined to a prostitute in sexual intercourse would be to join her to Christ and create that arm-body relation. On the one hand, Paul explains that the person who is joined to the Lord is one pneuma with him. On the other hand, he cites Gen 2:24 to show that in sexual intercourse the partners become one entity: “the two shall become one flesh.” Enigmatically, Paul comments that such sexual intercourse is uniquely a sin “against,” or more likely, “into” the body.22 I suggest that he may have in mind the context of the Genesis passage. There, just before the statement about becoming one flesh, Eve is made from one of Adam’s bones, and she is said to be “bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh.” This preceding context makes the “one flesh” statement seem very literal. Man and woman come together so as to share the same substance. Finally, “bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh” is a biblical expression for being a descendant or a relative of someone. This conception of human relatedness by the identity of substance clearly preceded and informed the statement from Genesis. Indeed, I will argue that the basic model for the discourse of participation is that of descendants and relatives sharing the same stuff as ancestors or those to whom they are related. This reading supposes the subjective genitive construal of pistis Christou and related expressions,23 and it shows why Paul’s focus on what Christ and Abraham did makes sense. The Pauline letters do not argue that Christ brought a new way to be saved, that is, through the believer’s faith, over against the old way of keeping the law. Rather, salvation in an apocalyptic scenario hinges on Abraham’s and Christ’s faith or faithfulness and not on the believer’s faith. Through their actions, God has founded covenants that descendants inherit merely by being born of the chosen lineage.24 In reading Paul’s texts in this way, I would argue that he does not sound as if he were

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“spiritualizing” religion, but as if he had a genuine investment in Jewish beliefs about kinship and descent that are central to the Hebrew Bible.25 In Gal 3:7–8 Paul writes, “those who come out of faithfulness are sons of Abraham.”26 I take this to be a reference to Abraham’s faithfulness: because Abraham believed the unlikely promise that he would have an heir and then acted faithfully so as to have a child, Paul thinks of the descendants of Isaac as the lineage of Abraham’s faith and of God’s promise.27 Then in Gal 3:8–9, “Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles out of faithfulness, proclaimed the gospel beforehand to Abraham, namely, ‘in you [en soi] will all the Gentiles be blessed.’ So that those who come out of [Abraham’s] faithfulness are blessed with [sun] the faithful Abraham.” Paul uses the language of ancient genetics and lineage from the Septuagint to say that the Gentiles who are in Christ were blessed when Abraham was blessed because Christ was in Abraham as his seed. Christ was in Abraham at that point and participated in him; he was one with Abraham. Thus the “in Christ” language derives from this logic of descent and genetic participation.28 Paul may have been just as literal as Hebrews 7, which argues that although he was not yet born, Levi paid ties to Melchizedek because he was in the loins of Abraham as seed when Abraham paid ties to Melchizedek. Paul emphasizes the presence of Christ in Abraham when the promises were given. Thus Gal 3:16 says, “the promises were pronounced to Abraham and to his Seed.” In Gal 3:14 one reads that Christ died “so that the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles in Christ Jesus so that we might receive the promise of the spirit through faithfulness.” Here Paul is referring to the faithfulness of both Abraham and Christ. Nils Dahl long ago suggested that Paul’s allusion to Gen 22:18 in 3:14 might be the basis for Paul’s “in Christ” expression, at least in some contexts.29 In 3:26–27 Paul continues, “You are all sons of God in Christ Jesus through [his] faithfulness. For all who have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ.” And 3:29: “If you are of Christ [participate in Christ], you are the seed of Abraham and heirs according to promise.” The logic is this: Abraham and Jesus as blood relatives share the same stuff and the same characteristic of faithfulness to God’s promises and are the crucial beginning and end of the God-chosen lineage bearing the promise of blessing. Paul takes the particular blessing promised to the Gentiles as the gift of possessing God’s pneuma. As Christ participated in

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Abraham and shared his stuff, so Gentiles who come to share the pneuma of Christ in baptism share in this contiguity back to Abraham and are thus seed of Abraham and coheirs as they participate in the stuff of Christ. But Christ’s spirit is not any normal human pneuma: it is the divine pneuma that brought him back to life on a new level of existence after he allowed himself to die in faithfulness to God’s promises. This interpretation of Galatians 3 explains why it has been so difficult to fit 3:28 together with Paul’s other statements about women, men, Judeans, non-Judeans, slave, and free and make them cohere with modern liberal and rights-based conceptions of equality. Galatians 3:28 is first of all a denial of a set of ontological differences and an affirmation of an ontological unity. Those in Christ are literally of the same stuff. All share the very same pneuma—Christ’s. It would be a wrong turn, however, to separate in modern fashion substance from quality, the spiritual (in the modern sense) from the material. Epictetus (3.3.22) illustrates this unity: “When someone has a spell of dizziness, it is not the abilities and the virtues that are thrown into confusion, but the pneuma of which they exist. When the pneuma settles down, the abilities and virtues are settled.” Habituated skills and virtues such as courage or self-control are qualities of a person’s pneuma. Epictetus acknowledges that because of the substantial nature of these abilities, an external physical force can cause an interruption of normal consciousness that temporarily incapacitates them.30 It therefore makes perfect sense for Paul to associate pneuma with moral and mental qualities. He goes on to say (Gal 5:24, 16–23) that “those who are of Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires” and to oppose the virtues (fruit) of the pneuma, including self-control, with the vices of the flesh. Substances have their qualities and capabilities. Unlike Epictetus’s person, Paul’s Christ has not only ordinary pneuma like all human beings but also an interpenetration of Christ’s pneuma that came directly from God.31

The Nature and Role of the Pneuma Those in Christ are not descendants of Christ but contemporary kin. As Rom 8:29 reveals, Paul thought of them as brothers of Jesus Christ. This

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perennially vexing passage, which has been treated as consisting of references to God’s predestination of each person to salvation or damnation and to the lost image of God, actually uses the language of ancient genetics and descent, as Caroline Johnson Hodge has shown.32 Ancient biological thought spoke of the image (eikōn) of the father being passed on through procreation in a seed from the father. It was widely held that pneuma of the father concentrated in the seed and was the active and organizing force that shaped the matter supplied by the mother in the womb. Writings of the Hebrew Bible also broadly share in this ancient patrilineal ideology of genetics. Genesis 5:3 says that “Adam generated a son according to his likeness and according to his image.”33 The Septuagint here and in Rom 8:29 uses eikōn. One of the common ideas of patrilineal thought is that all of the seed of all of the descendants are in the ancestor, as Hebrews 7, for example, assumes with regard to Levi in Abraham. In Romans 9 and elsewhere, Paul emphasizes that God plans ahead of time the chosen lineage through which the promises will be passed, and here he correctly reads Genesis. Romans 9:7–8, for instance, says, “ ‘In Isaac shall your seed be named,’ that is, it is not the children of the flesh that are children of God, but the children of promise are counted as seed.” This passage is usually taken to mean that Paul is eliminating descent and spiritualizing (in the modern sense) true religion as the religion of faith in God and his promises. On my reading, he is arguing that mere fleshly descent is not enough.34 Rather the salvific lineage has to be a line of descent chosen by God for promise. So in Romans 9 he argues that Ishmael and Esau were fleshly descendants of Abraham, but not of the line chosen by God for promise and blessing. God’s choosing and empowerment are more important than just flesh. Jeremiah 1:5 is an example of the language of divine foreknowing and shaping of a chosen agent: “before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, and before you came forth from the womb, I set you apart.” Thus Rom 8:29–30 is about God shaping the line of salvific participation that would even include Gentiles who are grafted in—and not just metaphorically—as a lineage of descendants: “Those whom [God] knew beforehand, he also planned before to be conformed to the image of his son, so that he [Christ] might be the firstborn among many brothers.” God has planted the seed of the chosen line in the ancestor from the beginning, and

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this included Christ, who carries the image formed by the divine pneuma that all of those baptized into Christ share just as sons share the same image of the father. Ancient readers are likely to have understood that Paul likens the resurrection to a birth. Gentile believers share in that birth by “baptism into Christ” and thus become “seed of Abraham” (Gal 3:26–29, cf. Rom 6:1–11). In Rom 1:1–5 Paul stresses this key connection between the salvific line of descent (“seed of David”) and God’s extension of the line to the Gentiles by means of the holy pneuma given to Christ in the resurrection.35 Again, as in Gal 3:8, Paul describes this nexus as the good news preached beforehand in the scriptures. With this logic, other statements in Romans 8 using the language of participation make sense. Earlier, in 8:9, Paul says, “Anyone who does not have the pneuma of Christ is not of him.” He continues, “but if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the pneuma is life because of righteousness.”36 Paul then speaks of the pneuma of the One who raised Jesus from the dead dwelling in those who are in Christ. The particular shape of God’s pneuma that Jesus received in the resurrection is shared by believers; Christ can be said to be in them. But since they merely share what belongs first of all to Christ, they can also be said to be “of him” or “in him” just as Christ shared the stuff of Abraham and was in him. One simply cannot understand Paul’s idea of participation without recognizing that those who are in or of Christ actually possess as part of them the stuff of Christ, a portion of his pneuma. The chapter goes on to speak of them receiving the pneuma of adoption. That pneuma cooperates with the individual’s own “natural” pneuma to certify this adoption as sons of God. As a result, these people are coheirs and cosufferers with Christ. Because they possess part of Christ’s vital essence endowed by God, they not only are part of the inheriting lineage but also experience his suffering, as they live temporarily still in a fleshly or psychic body as he did before his resurrection. How the pneuma of Christ and the pneuma of the believer relate or intermix is far from clear. It is clear, however, that both maintain their substantial natures and identities in some sense. In 1 Cor 2:11–15 the divine pneuma communicates between those in Christ and God: “the pneuma searches all things, even the depths of God. For what person knows the things of a person except the person’s pneuma that is in him? So also no one

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knows the things of God except the pneuma of God. Now we have not received the pneuma of the world, but the pneuma out of God so that we can understand the things given to us by God.” Romans 8:16 says that when the readers cry Abba, Father, that “it is the pneuma [of God] itself witnessing together with our pneuma that we are children of God, and if children also heirs of God . . . and fellow heirs with Christ, provided that we suffer with him so that we might be glorified with him.” The fact that Paul can easily and without caveat (e.g., “I am speaking in a human way”) attribute types of pneuma to both God and humans shows that he participates in his ancient culture and Hellenistic thought about pneuma. The divine pneuma is clearly not a “person” as it becomes in later Christian Trinitarian theology. Paul agreed with the prevailing culture, including philosophers and medical doctors, that pneuma was the vital component of the living person and that there were various kinds and qualities of pneuma in the workings of the world.37 Sometimes Paul’s language makes it sound as if the divine pneuma inhabits the person by a kind of possession so that the natural human pneuma and the divine pneuma are distinct homunculi inside of a person. They are separate, but they work together. The language of sharing and participation (e.g., koinōnia), however, may suggest a more “scientific” picture.38 We learn from the Aristotelian Alexander of Aphrodisias’s De mixtione (On the Mixture of Physical Bodies) about the extremely influential Stoic doctrines regarding the mixing of substances; these doctrines were their basis for picturing a highly interactive cosmos. Philo, Paul’s Jewish contemporary, uses the theory in a quite explicit way in interpreting the Septuagint (e.g., De confusione linguarum 183–87).39 In this theory, krasis is the type of mixing that occurs in the constitution of the human being as pneuma interpenetrates the whole person.40 It is not the mere juxtaposition of stuff. Nor is it fusion so that the pneuma and the other substance lose their identities, but the complete extension of active pneuma through passive matter so that each substance retains its identity. Such a theory would facilitate Paul’s talk of double identity between Christ and the person in Christ with God’s pneuma extending through both the passive matter of the body and the active human pneuma. The person shares all that Christ has experienced and has become and yet retains her or his own personal identity. Listen to Paul speaking of himself: “I have been

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crucified together with Christ. I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh, I live in the faithfulness of the son of God who loved me and gave himself up on my behalf ” (Gal 2:19–20).

P a r t i c ip a t io n a n d J u s t i f i c a t io n Schweitzer, Sanders, and others have very clearly shown that Paul’s ethical thought, as well as his language of freedom from sinning and justification, depend on his conception of participation.41 But how does this connection fit my theory that Paul builds participation on notions of participating in founding ancestors by physical descent? What does all of this have to do with faith or faithfulness? It is in the very texts in which Paul has traditionally been taken to argue his supposedly central concept of justification by the believer’s faith and Jesus’ atoning death by substitution that Abraham becomes a topic (Romans 4 and Galatians 3). In this tradition Abraham is taken as a model of how the believer can be saved by faith alone. In my reading, Paul is arguing that non-Jews/Judeans do not have to become Jews/Judeans in order to become right with God by getting into Christ. They do not have to keep the Judean law and are free from its just condemnation of their sin. By participating in Christ and his death and new life, Gentiles inherit what Abraham and Christ achieved by their faith or faithfulness so that God promised, and now insures, blessings on their descendants. Jews or Gentiles born into the line do not earn the status by law keeping. So, for example, Rom 4:15b–17a says, “where there is no law there is no violation. For this reason the promise comes out of [Abraham’s and Christ’s] faithfulness, so that the promise might be secure, by gift [from God], for all of the seed, not only for those who are of the law, but also for those who are out of the faithfulness of Abraham who is father of us all. As it is written [Gen 17:5], ‘I have made you the father of many peoples [or Gentiles].’ ”42 Thus I believe that William Wrede, Schweitzer, Sanders, Krister Stendahl, and others are correct when they see justification as, in some sense, secondary or dependent on participation. But putting this understanding of justification together with the arguments about Gentile contiguity in a

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line of Abraham through Christ provides a reintegration of the supposedly separate discourses. Salvation is effected not by the believer’s faith but by Abraham’s and Jesus’ faith, and their faith centrally includes faith in (or faithful action in view of) God’s promises about blessed lineages consisting of those whom God actively works to make right with him. God’s own pneuma conveyed to the ungodly through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is the chief instrument of justification. Gentiles “in Christ” are materially improved people, who not only have past sins forgiven but more importantly are empowered and filled with a holy stuff that actively enables obedience to God.

P a u l a n d P a r t i c u la r it y I would like to conclude with a few of many possible reflections on the significance of my argument in this essay. Ancient Christianity was often eager to get rid of an interest in lineage and birth in its readings of Paul. These had to be rejected as the carnality of the Jews. But it is modernist interpreters who have been most threatened by the hierarchy of substances and physics of contiguity. Descartes, still using the language of the scholastics, asserted that the medieval cosmos of interactive qualities of substances had to be replaced by an exhaustive dualism of res extensa and res cogitans. Extension was to be purged of quality, meaning, and teleology. Religion had to be limited to mind, culture, and the symbolic and separated from any discourse about the material world, cause and effect. A Paul who asserted that true religion was a matter of faith has been a perfect instrument for modernity. The Bible has nothing to say about science; it concerns pure meaning. Paul’s message could be made to be about the discontinuity of the physical and the spiritual, matter and meaning. Furthermore, it was not just as a result of scholarly progress that twentieth-century scholarship discovered that eschatology is the essence of primitive Christianity. Modernity made the categories of time and temporality triumph over place, space, and stuff. Interpretation focusing on narrative has been one means for the dominance of this view in New Testament studies. The story can be rendered with character, plot, and so on in a way

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that leaves behind the ancient baggage of place and stuff with all of its particularity. For moderns, time has seemed to have an indeterminacy not possessed by the scientific hardness and law-following behavior of stuff, space, and place—a refuge for traditional Western understandings of the human and the divine. Because of this, we have lost the sense that part of the meaning for Paul was in the concept and reference to stuff and its particularity. One example of this departicularizing abstraction, I believe, relates to interpreting Paul’s view of gender. The understanding of participation outlined here would reveal the depth, detail, and logic of the patriarchal and patrilineal thought that is the raw material for Paul’s creative reworking of biblical stories and commonplace physics and cosmology. This approach, for example, helps us to understand why Paul usually speaks of “sons of God” rather than “children of God” and why, even though language in Paul’s letters suggests that becoming a son of God is like the birth of a child, there is no mother, but only a father and sons. If we produce abstracted narratives that have only God, Christ, Christians, and unbelievers, then we leave out rich but troubling conceptions of men, women, slave, free, Jew and Gentile, fleshly bodies, and pneumatic bodies. The great irony of this reading is that the ultimate elimination of fleshly bodies and their replacement with pneumatic bodies would seem to eliminate procreation and gender, but the very logic leading to this conclusion derives from a logic of participation in human procreation and kinship.

Notes 1. Albert Schweitzer, The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle (2nd ed.; London: Adam and Charles Black, 1953). 2. E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison of Patterns of Religion (Philadelphia/London: Fortress/SCM, 1977). Acceptance, of course, takes many forms, some of which attempt to accommodate other soteriological schemes as well. An interesting sign of this acceptance is the way that the enormously popular introduction to the New Testament by Bart Ehrman, The New Testament: A Historical Introduction (2nd ed.; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), esp. 324–28, approaches Paul by comparing two models of salvation, “judicial” and “participationist.” One of the most important and creative appreciators of Sanders’s revival of participation has been Richard B. Hays, The Faith of Jesus Christ: The Narrative

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Substructure of Galatians 3:1–4:11 (2nd ed.; SBLDS 56; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), on which see below. There are also other distinct scholarly traditions of treating Paul’s “mystical” or “corporate” thought, most notably in Roman Catholic scholarship. A recent conservative evangelical example is Sang Wong (Aaron) Son, Corporate Elements in Pauline Anthropology (AnBib 148; Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 2001). 3. Schweitzer, Mysticism of Paul, 42–43; Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 439, 456, and throughout 447–74. 4. Son in his Corporate Elements provides references to a number of these suggestions or “backgrounds.” 5. Schweitzer, Mysticism of Paul, 96–97. 6. For example, Schweitzer (ibid., 38) argues that Paul created his mysticism out of inferences from beliefs that the early Christians and Palestinian Jews held in common. Thus it was the “personal creation” of Paul, but understandable to others. 7. On Paul’s unique logical genius, see Schweitzer, Mysticism of Paul, 100, 139–40. A key problem here is not that Schweitzer attributes rationality and intellectual labor to Paul, but that he assumes an unrealistic amount of determinacy in Paul’s inferential processes and in reasoning generally. 8. This is not to mention that the fantastic amalgamation that Schweitzer called Hellenism based on the work of scholars in the mode of Richard Reitzenstein holds no credence among scholars of Greek and Roman religion today. For critical discussions of these oppositions, see Troels Engberg-Pedersen, ed., Paul Beyond the Judaism/Hellenism Divide (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 2001). 9. Schweitzer, Mysticism of Paul, 15–17, 19, 127–30. 10. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 522–23. Unfortunately, Bultmann brought into the conversation the concepts of magic, transference, and cosmological speculation in uncritical, anachronistic, and undefined ways that obscure the differences between ancient and modern thought. A critique of such language is beyond the scope of this article. The legitimate point Sanders picked up from Bultmann’s language is that Paul’s letters depict a real and substantial change in those who are in Christ, but such people are still in the flesh and human. For a devastating critique of the scholarly use of the category of magic, see Randall Styers, Making Magic: Religion, Magic, and Science in the Modern World (Reflection and Theory in the Study of Religion; New York: Oxford University Press, 2004). 11. See Hays, Faith of Jesus Christ. His recent proposals are presented in “What Is ‘Real Participation in Christ’? A Dialogue with E. P. Sanders on Pauline Soteriology” (chapter 19). Hays describes this language as a hermeneutical problem for modern Christian theology and proposes four interpretive categories for the language: familial participation, political/military participation, ecclesial participation, and narrative participation. The first two categories consist of metaphorical language, and the third seems to be a combination of metaphors and a reference

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to experiences or practices by Paul. The fourth concerns imaginative identification with the stories of Israel and of Jesus. Unfortunately, Hays picks up the red herrings of whether participation is “magical” and “automatic” instead of showing why Paul’s language should not be taken realistically. See Hays, Faith of Jesus Christ, 213–15. 12. See esp. p. xxix of the introduction to the second edition of Faith of Jesus Christ and pp. 210–15. One hopes that the contention of the Bultmann school and others that Paul’s anthropological language and faith language incorporate the twentieth-century category of human existence has been put to rest. For any who might linger in such gross anachronism, I recommend Paul Macdonald, History of the Concept of Mind (Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2003), esp. p. 100. 13. Hays, Faith of Jesus Christ, 29. 14. I find it difficult to understand or accept Hays’s philosophical position. If one should agree that all language is metaphorical, does that mean that “Bob’s arm” does not also refer to the flesh, bone, and blood body part of the person Bob? Schweitzer was not claiming that there might not be metaphor involved in the language of participation, but that the language was not only metaphorical or figurative with no central reference to substances and objects. This misleading criticism of Schweitzer is clear also in Hays’s discussion of him in Faith of Jesus Christ, 44–45. 15. Hays, Faith of Jesus Christ, 47–52, and Rudolf Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament (2 vols.; trans. Kendrick Grobel; New York: Scribners, 1951–1955), 1:268–69, 302. 16. For a survey of recent scholarship with bibliography on the ancient, see M. R. Wright, Cosmology in Antiquity (London: Routledge, 1995). For a more specialized discussion of some key issues, see Norman Kretzmann, ed., Infinity and Continuity in Ancient and Modern Thought (New York: Cornell University Press, 1982). For an accessible comparison with modernity, see Alexandre Koyré, From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe (Hideyo Noguchi Lectures 7; Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1957). 17. On the concepts of flesh, body, soul, and so forth and the hierarchy of being, see Dale B. Martin, The Corinthian Body (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 105–36. Translations from the Bible are my own. 18. Hays, Faith of Jesus Christ, 451. 19. Just to make sure that I am not misinterpreted, I am not saying that the modern understandings of the world do or should reduce to beliefs in these concepts from the sciences. I am just choosing those examples for the sake of clarity. 20. For one important critique of uses made of the category of religious experience, see Matthew Bagger, Religious Experience, Justification, and History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). 21. Stoic thought regarding bodies was the most influential, but only one among many kinds of thought that treated the concept in this way. In the Stoic view, for anything to exist it had to have extension and qualities that we would attribute to

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mass (SVF 2.359, 381, 525); matter is completely indeterminate and passive. In this creation, it always comes in particular forms that are acted upon by God, and the kind of action makes the combination corporeal (see SVF 2.310; Diogenes Laertius 7.134). On Stoic corporealism see David Hahm, The Origins of Stoic Cosmology (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1977), 3–28, which needs to be combined with Stoic discussions of the human body and soul. The point is well made by Martin, Corinthian Body, 104–36, who cites all kinds of views from different periods, including medical sources. 22. Martin, Corinthian Body, 177–78, makes the highly plausible suggestion that eis in this context means “into” the body rather than “against” it. 23. Above all, the subjective genitive is superior to the objective because it allows constructions that read as Greek rather than some bizarre uniquely Pauline language. We can no longer tolerate bloopers like the rsv or nrsv translations of Rom 3:26 and 4:16 (compare the inconsistent translation of exactly the same construction, ek pisteōs Iesou/Abraam) and a number of other passages. But in addition to syntax, the subjective genitive also, I believe, makes Paul’s thought much more coherent and less like a modern thinker. There is more to be said about the syntax (which needs a book-length monograph) and other issues, but for a reasonably upto-date discussion of the debate, see Hays, Faith of Jesus Christ, 249–97. 24. I am not, of course, denying that the faith of the one who is in Christ is “required” for getting in and baptism, but Paul, as in many traditional Western interpretations, does not make it involve a transaction between God and individual humans that essentially skips over Abraham, Israel, and Christ by, for example, making Christ only an object of faith. On this reading, these three actually do the work of salvation through God’s spirit. Paul certainly does talk about the pistis of the believer in several places. 25. I will be drawing on my earlier work and on Caroline Johnson Hodge, If Sons, Then Heirs: A Study of Kinship and Ethnicity in the Letters of Paul (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). The gist of much of the interpretation is summed up in a passage from Stanley K. Stowers, A Rereading of Romans: Justice, Jews, and Gentiles (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 246: The apostle likes this formulation of the promise because it contains the idea of descendants and heirs being incorporated into the ancestor who founded the lineage. Thus the promise was made to Christ, who was present in Abraham together with his fellow adoptees, sons of God by the Spirit. Christ is both a descendant by blood and an adoptee by the Spirit in the resurrection (1:3–4). Paul’s language of “predestination” seems also to come from the logic of patriliny: “Those whom he foreknew he also designated beforehand [cf. horizein in 1:4] to be conformed to the image of his son, in order that he might be the first born of among many brothers” (8:29). God gives and knows all of the

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line’s offspring because they are already in the founder’s seed. Thus Abraham’s gentile heirs “in Christ” were already “designated beforehand” in Abraham. Just as each generation passes on and shares the “image” of the ancestor, so also those in Christ are brothers sharing with Christ and each other the image of God the father. See also pp. 225, 229–30, 280, 283. 26. On ethnic mythmaking in Galatians see Caroline Johnson Hodge, “ ‘All the Gentiles Shall be Blessed in You’ (Gal 3:8): Reading Paul’s Gospel in Terms of Ethnicity and Kinship,” unpublished paper; Johnson Hodge, If Sons, 67–77, 79–86, 104–31, chap. 4 on strategies. On related exegesis of Galatians 3, see Stowers, Rereading of Romans, 201, 221, 225, 229–30. 27. For Paul’s and ancient use of ek phrases for descent, see Johnson Hodge, If Sons, 79–91. 28. For Paul’s use of en, see Johnson Hodge, If Sons, 93–107, and Stowers, Rereading of Romans, 230. 29. I believe that I first heard this suggestion in one of Dahl’s seminars in 1974. For the suggestion, see Nils Alstrup Dahl, Studies in Paul: Theology for the Early Christian Mission (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1977), 131. 30. In other words, a person who is about to pass out from dizziness is in no condition to exercise courage or self-control, but physical interruptions are temporary matters that do not destroy the characteristics of the pneuma. 31. Epictetus’s dualism of, for example, the moral will versus the flesh is a purely moral dualism due to his Stoic monism, but Paul’s is both a moral and an anthropological dualism. 32. Johnson Hodge, If Sons, 109–16, and Stowers, Rereading of Romans, 246. 33. According to Gen 1:26, God and his divine helpers create the human in their image and likeness. As many scholars have pointed out, in some early context this meant that humans were divine offspring. 34. For a similar reading, see Johnson Hodge, If Sons, 100–103. 35. The attempts to negate the role of the passage in the letter by claiming that it is a “non-Pauline” or “un-Pauline” quotation are misguided and perhaps examples of Christian and modernist spiritualizing. First, the corpus of Paul’s letters is too small to confidently say that an interest in David as ancestor is un-Pauline. The evidence for Paul’s interest in Abraham, for example, rests on only a handful of verses in two letters. Second, the case made here and in Johnson Hodge’s book illuminates the web of thought that is a context for an interest in David. Third, even if it were a quotation, Paul’s discourse provides no reason to think that he did not, as they say, “mean what he said.” 36. According to the argument of Romans, God has overcome the injustice of the Gentile bondage to passion and desire, and their related alienation from God, by

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means of Christ’s dying so as to pioneer the new righteous life of the pneuma. Christ will also somehow be a key to the current rebellion of most Jews. All are in the moment of Paul’s “now” caught up in the apocalyptic apex of sin that is the prelude to God’s salvation of all. I argue for this interpretation in A Rereading of Romans. 37. On the wide influence of Stoic thought, see the remarks by Samuel Sambursky, The Physical World of Late Antiquity (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1962), 4. 38. I owe the idea that the Stoic krasis theory might be involved in Paul’s thinking to Caroline Johnson Hodge, who first proposed the idea in a 1995 graduate seminar at Brown University. See also Johnson Hodge, If Sons, 75. 39. Tertullian also famously uses this theory of mixing to explain Christ’s divinity by the interpenetration of God’s pneuma. 40. A. A. Long, “Body and Soul in Stoicism,” in Stoic Studies (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 224–49. 41. Another example is Denys Whiteley, The Theology of St. Paul (2nd ed.; Oxford: Blackwell, 1974). 42. Johnson Hodge, If Sons, 79–107.

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TWENTY-ONE

Grace and the Transformation of Agency in Christ John M. G. Barclay

S a n d e r s a n d t h e S t r u c t u r e s o f P a ul i n e Th eol og y It is hard to offer adequate tribute to the most influential New Testament scholar of our generation, and this brief essay will hardly suffice. While both Paul and Jesus scholarship have been revolutionized by Ed Sanders’s work, his rereading of Paul and Judaism has had the greatest impact on me and will help define my topic. Indeed, one of the pleasures of preparing this essay has been the opportunity to revisit my well-thumbed copy of Sanders’s Paul and Palestinian Judaism, whose copious marginal notes remind me of the excitement I experienced when I first grappled with this masterpiece twenty-five years ago. At that time, when I was just embarking on serious Pauline studies, there was the giddy sense of witnessing the start of a revolution in scholarship, whose ramifications were as yet unknown. Much of the last generation of Pauline scholarship has been spent in more or less explicit dialogue with Sanders, and I am delighted here to continue a conversation that has been enriching and challenging in equal measure. Although the bulk of Paul and Palestinian Judaism was devoted to ridding scholars of their caricatures of Judaism as a works-based religion, its second part, on Paul, was as bracing as the first. With his characteristic directness and clarity of style, Sanders took on many of the most cherished assumptions in Pauline scholarship and mounted a powerful case to revive 372

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and refine Schweitzer’s thesis that the heart of Paul’s theology is not justification by faith but participation in Christ. The latter, stripped of the problematic language of mysticism, is labeled “participationist eschatology”: Pauline soteriology concerns the establishment of a saving union with Christ, in anticipation of the eschaton, and it is this, rather than either justification by faith or covenantal nomism, that defines the pattern of religion we find in the Pauline letters.1 Sanders’s conclusions on the structures of Paul’s thought and their relationship to Judaism result in a seeming paradox. On the one hand he finds that “on the point at which many have found the decisive contrast between Paul and Judaism—grace and works—Paul is in agreement with Palestinian Judaism. There are two aspects of the relationship between grace and works: salvation is by grace, but judgment is according to works; works are the condition of remaining ‘in,’ but they do not earn salvation.”2 Sanders insists that this is by no means paradoxical, either in Judaism or in Paul. “The point is that God saves by grace, but that within the framework established by grace he rewards good deeds and punishes transgression.”3 In relation to Judaism, he had spent the whole of part 1 establishing and clarifying the structure of covenantal nomism, in which election by grace is the basis of the covenant within which observance of the law is required. In relation to Paul, he pointed out in brief but sufficient detail that Paul takes Christian deeds seriously enough to speak of the judgment of believers. Hence, “in Paul, as in Jewish literature, good deeds are the condition of remaining ‘in,’ but they do not earn salvation.”4 Paul was thus both confident of God’s gracious election and serious in warning his converts about the consequences of their actions, and in both respects he mirrors the general view in Palestinian, including rabbinic, Judaism. On the other hand—and herein lies the paradox to which I referred above—Sanders insists that “Paul’s ‘pattern of religion’ cannot be described as ‘covenantal nomism,’ and therefore Paul presents an essentially different type of religiousness from any found in Palestinian Jewish literature.”5 In a short but significant section on “Covenantal Nomism in Paul,”6 Sanders took issue with the notion, propounded by W. D. Davies among others, that Paul’s structure of religion is essentially as “covenantal” as that of Judaism. Although there are some surface similarities, Sanders argued that “cove-

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nant” is not a central notion in Paul’s thought, that there is no proper Pauline analogy to the Exodus or the Torah, and that ethics in Paul are not connected to the new covenant but “above all to receiving the Spirit.”7 Paul’s dominant conviction is “that the end is at hand, that Christ is Lord and that only those who belong to the Lord will be saved on the Day of the Lord.”8 The “basic insight was that the believer becomes one with Christ Jesus and that this effects a transfer of lordship and the beginning of a transformation which will be completed with the coming of the Lord.”9 This view of the self, sin, and salvation transcends covenantal categories: Paul’s moral arguments concern unions compatible with being in Christ, and are “not typical of covenantal nomism as we know it from Judaism.”10 If these two conclusions are correct (and I think that in essence they are) it is striking that Paul’s theology is both so like the structure of Judaism in his understanding of grace and works and so unlike the structure of covenantal nomism in his participatory pattern of salvation. To name this combination a “paradox” (my term, not Sanders’s) is not to suggest that one or the other proposition must be incorrect: some of the most important truths in history and religion (not to mention physics) are highly paradoxical. But since divine grace and human works (ethics) are indisputably pivotal topics in Pauline theology, the question must arise as to their relationship to the central theme of participation in Christ. If the core of Paul’s thought concerns participation in Christ, and if this represents both the means of entry into and the mode of continuation in salvation, how does this affect the tenor and shape of Paul’s theology of grace? And if this union with Christ is so directly related to ethics and to the “transformation which will be completed with the coming of the Lord,” how does this influence Paul’s perception of human works, the deeds that will be judged at that coming? In other words, has Paul allowed his core convictions about participation in Christ to shape the framework conceptuality of grace and work? If so, how deeply and in what respects? In developing his own reading of Paul,11 Sanders stressed the value of the distinction between “getting in” and “staying in” for understanding Paul’s otherwise bewildering statements about the law.12 But he also pointed out that faith is not only how one begins but also how one continues the Christian life: “faith in Christ would always be part of life in him.”13 While

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developing and deepening his analysis of judgment by works,14 Sanders reemphasized the difference between Paul’s understanding of behavior and that implicit in covenantal nomism: since Paul understands Christian behavior to be the fruit of the Spirit, “in Pauline theory, deeds do flow from the Spirit, not from commandments.”15 This certainly encourages our enquiry: if, for Paul, deeds (i.e., believers’ works) flow from the Spirit, whose presence is an aspect of participation in Christ, what does this say about the relationship between grace and works in the Pauline pattern of thought?16 The paradox I have highlighted in Sanders’s presentation of Paul has elicited several kinds of reaction. At the risk of oversimplification, we may divide these into three: (1) A number of scholars accept his main point that the structure of Paul’s understanding of grace and works is fundamentally similar to that found in Judaism. But they disagree with his judgment that Paul’s participationist soteriology creates a fundamental distinction from the covenant theology of Judaism. Thus M. D. Hooker argues that participation in Christ is the mechanism for the inclusion of the Gentiles but is itself to be placed within the structure of the covenant: the same pattern of “divine election and promise” leading to “human acceptance and response” is to be found in both Judaism and Pauline theology.17 The same trend is apparent in other “covenantal” interpreters of Paul, such as James D. G. Dunn18 and N. T. Wright; indeed the latter proposes “covenant” as the overarching theme of Pauline theology.19 In relation to ethics and works, Kent L. Yinger insists, with Sanders, that Paul’s understanding of judgment by deeds is indistinguishable from that found (in various forms) in Judaism, but he disagrees with Sanders’s reluctance to accept similarity with the total pattern of covenantal nomism. Even if the precise term “nomism” is inappropriate, and although “the role of the Spirit in enabling obedience, while not absent in Judaism, is certainly heightened significantly in Paul,” in both cases salvation is given by God’s grace and “contingent upon continuance in the faith and obedience which are required by that relationship.”20 However, what the “heightening” of the role of the Spirit might imply for notions of agency is left unexplored. (2) Another group of scholars would take issue not with the second part of our paradox but with the first: while accepting that participation in Christ

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alters the structure of religion in Paul, in comparison with Judaism, they deny that Paul shares with Judaism the same convictions on grace and works. Thus, for instance, Robert H. Gundry insists that works in Judaism inevitably led to a “works-righteousness,” or at least a type of “synergism.” In Paul, on the other hand, works are only ever an “evidential,” not an “instrumental” condition of salvation: they give proof that one has received grace through faith but cannot be said to be the means by which one keeps hold of grace.21 Pushed a little further, and with emphasis on divine protection, perseverance, and predestination, this can lead to a reading of Paul whereby grace will guarantee salvation for the truly saved: if believers behave so badly as to fall, that indicates that they were never truly believers in the first place.22 (3) A third reaction to our paradox probes how participation in Christ relates to the Pauline convictions about divine grace and the equally Pauline demands for believers to work. Thus Stephen Westerholm refers to a catena of Pauline texts suggesting that God is for Paul the effective subject in a believer’s “work,” such divine power being the continuation of the grace received in salvation: the believer’s works are “an expression of divine grace and power in a sense impossible when the Spirit was not yet given.”23 Similarly, Simon J. Gathercole, with reference to Pauline pneumatology, suggests that “Christian obedience is, according to Paul, not so much the believer’s response to what God has done in Christ but the effect of God’s continuing work in the believer, the ‘fruit of the Spirit.’ ”24 A full discussion of this topic demands far more than I can offer in this essay. It would require a lengthy discussion of the centrality and the meaning of “participation in Christ”25 and its relationship to Paul’s theology of grace. It would also require a careful reexamination of the judgment texts in Paul and the threat they pose to believers, the subject of so much debate over the last century.26 I will eschew both these tasks, and I will also leave unexamined the similarities or differences between Paul’s thought and the variegated patterns of grace-theology to be found in his contemporary Judaism.27 Instead, I will accept as a working hypothesis both parts of the paradox described above but examine some of the key texts in which Paul discusses believers’ activity with reference to grace. On this basis we can assess what patterns emerge concerning the relationship between divine and human agency.

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F iv e T h e m a t i c Te x t s I will select here just five texts, whose common characteristic is their fluctuating ascription of agency between a divine agent (variously, grace, God, or Christ) and that of believers. I will set out each schematically, indicating the fluctuation between divine agency/initiative (A) and human agency (B). (1) 1 Cor 15:10: In a pithy description of his call and apostleship, Paul follows mention of his previous persecution of the church with this statement: A: Cavriti de; qeou' eijmi o{ eijmi, kai; hJ cavri~ aujtou' hJ eij~ ejme; ouj kenh; ejgenhvqh, B: ajlla; perissovteron aujtw'n pavntwn ejkopivasa, A: oujk ejgw; de; ajlla; hJ cavri~ tou' qeou' [iJ] su;n ejmoiv.28 [A: But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain; B: Rather, I worked harder than all of them, A: but not I, rather the grace of God (which is) with me.] Paul’s description of his apostolic calling is simultaneously a description of his constitution as a believer:29 “what I am” in both respects can only be attributed to the grace of God, which is thus structurally the first actor in the drama of salvation. Yet there is the possibility that this grace could be “in vain” (see 1 Cor 15:2, 14; 2 Cor 6:1) if it does not take effect, and the B clause (“Rather, I worked harder than all of them”) emphasizes the human agency that demonstrates that grace was not in vain. So far the structure appears simple: divine grace calls forth, or takes effect in, human effort. But the final clause is arresting, since it swings back to emphasize divine agency in, or with, that of Paul. The “but not I, rather,” which opens this clause, explicitly draws attention to this alternation, and although the verb is unexpressed, it is implied that the agency of the “work” in clause B can be said to be, in some sense, not Paul but the grace of God. The textual variant here could be important: if the article (in square brackets) is sound, it suggests the sense, “but not I, rather the-grace-of-God-which-is-with-me (worked).” If it is not

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to be read, the sense could be taken to be “but not I, rather the grace of God (worked) with me (as I worked).” On this second reading, the “but not I, rather” is not to be taken literally as a correction of B (insisting that the agency is only that of grace) but as a modification (“not I alone”), suggesting two agents working alongside one another. In other words, we are immediately faced with a simple fact and an interpretive problem: Paul seems to be anxious to insist that grace is to be considered an agent within his ongoing life, but the precise relationship between divine and human agency is hard to deduce from his rhetorical and incomplete expression. (2) Phil 2:12–14: Paul here follows the account of the drama of Christ (2:6–11) with a call, introduced by w{ste (“so, then”). Just as the Philippian Christians have been obedient not only in Paul’s presence but much more in his absence, with fear and trembling, they are instructed: B: meta; fovbou kai; trovmou th;n eJautw'n swthrivan katergavzesqe: A: qeo;~ gavr ejstin oJ ejnergw'n ejn uJmi'n kai; to; qevlein kai; to; ejnergei'n uJpe;r th'~ eujdokiva~. B: pavnta poiei'te cwri;~ goggusmw'n. . . . [B: with fear and trembling work out your own salvation, A: for God is the one who works in you, both to will and to work for what is pleasing.30 B: Do all things without complaining. . . .] The opening B clause here gives the impression that “salvation” is the responsibility of believers themselves, but the context of the Christ hymn (2:6–11) indicates that the saving event lies in the action of Christ before and outside their own initiative, even as it will be completed by him (3:20–21). However, the obedience to which they are called is critical and enjoined with “fear and trembling”; salvation is not an automatic procedure they simply watch as it takes place. On the other hand, the A-clause swings attention to the divine agency that works (ejnergei'n) “in you” as “you work” (katergavzesqe). What is more, the gavr-connection suggests a logical link between the two agencies, though the nature of that link is unclear: does God’s work “in you” merely provoke or also empower or even

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constitute their “working out” of their own salvation? The notion of divine energy or empowerment is a common motif in Pauline theology, both in this letter (4:13) and elsewhere (e.g., Gal 2:8; 1 Thess 2:13). But its explicit juxtaposition here with human work is striking (see Col 1:29), even if their precise relationship is puzzling. Moreover, the inclusion in that divine work of both the will and the action (kai; to; qevlein kai; to; ejnergei'n) is of potentially huge significance. If even the will to act rightly is attributed to God (as sole or collaborative agent), human agency is entangled with divine agency from the roots up. (3) Gal 2:19–21: In this famous conclusion to his first statement about justification, Paul declares himself to have died to the law through the law, B: i{na qew`/ zhvsw A: Cristw`/ sunestauvrwmai, zw' de; oujkevti ejgwv, zh`/ de; ejn ejmoi; Cristov~. B: o} de; nu'n zw' ejn sarkiv, ejn pivstei zw' th`/ tou' uiJou' tou' qeou' tou' ajgaphvsantov~ me kai; paradovnto~ eJauto;n uJpe;r ejmou'. A: oujk ajqetw' th;n cavrin tou' qeou'. . . . [B: in order that I might live to God. A: I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. B: What I now live in the flesh I live by faith in (or, the faithfulness of) the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. A: I do not reject the grace of God. . . .31] There are many features of this highly compressed statement that we cannot here discuss. In general we see the same alternation in agency attribution as we have found in the previous two passages, although in this case the theme is expressed in even more radical terms. Here it is not a case of who is “working” but, more basically, who is “living.” In one clause Paul can say he no longer lives (but Christ lives in him); in the next he refers to how he now lives. Again the alternation seems conscious: this is not a careless selfcontradiction but an attempt to express a duality in agency in which the death of the “I” is the precursor to its reconstitution.32 We shall consider

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below how that reconstitution can be imagined, but we can note here that its basis is the grace of God (or, love of Christ) and its nature so Christocentric that it can be described as Christ “living in me.” Here if we may talk of a duality of agency, it is not in the sense that the human “I” works alongside the agency of Christ but that Christ operates in and even as the human agent. In other words, participation in Christ, of which this passage forms a classic expression, entails a radically new understanding of agency and thus of work. (4) Rom 15:15–19: It is unnecessary to cite this whole passage in Greek, but the fluctuating agency is as marked here as elsewhere. Paul speaks of: A: the grace which was given to me by God (15:15), so that (eij~ to;) B: I could serve as a priest of Christ presenting the offering of the Gentiles (sanctified by the Holy Spirit—i.e., themselves the product of A, 15:16); so I have a boast in Christ Jesus in relation to God, for (gavr) A: I will not dare to speak of anything apart from what Christ has worked through me for the obedience of the Gentiles, in word and deed (ouj ga;r tolmhvsw ti lalei'n w|n ouj kateirgavsato Cristo;~ di’ ejmou' eij~ uJpakoh;n ejqnw'n, lovgw/ kai; e[rgw/) in the power of signs and wonders, in the power of the Spirit [of God] (15:18–19), with the result that (w{ste) B: I have fulfilled the gospel of Christ from Jerusalem and around up to Illyricum (15:19). This passage is not as programmatic as those we have considered above, but it is all the more revealing for that: it suggests that the complex notions of agency we have glimpsed in our other passages reflect Paul’s typical selfappraisal. In the A sections here, he can speak of divine agency in terms of the grace of God (15:15), the work of Christ (15:18), and the power of the Spirit [of God] (15:19): the three seem practically interchangeable for this purpose. And it appears that he can speak of his “boast” (kauvchsi~) in this context precisely as a boast “in Christ Jesus” because what he is celebrating is the agency of Christ through him and not anything else (15:18). By the same token, earlier in this letter, having distanced himself from “boasting”

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in one sense (2:17; 3:27), he can allow himself to affirm the propriety of boasting “in God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (5:11; see 5:2, 3), since the salvation he celebrates—past, present, and future—is something both given and achieved through Christ (5:1–11). If human agents celebrate their work, that boast is only possible and legitimate “in” or “through” Christ: again participation in Christ has transformed the way Paul can speak about this matter. (5) 2 Cor 9:8–10: In encouraging the Corinthians to contribute to the collection for Jerusalem (2 Corinthians 8–9), Paul sets out a complex theology of grace, whose dynamics confirm exactly what we have discovered thus far. Here we can examine only one passage that encapsulates the theological structure of these chapters: A: dunatei' de; oJ qeo;~ pa'san cavrin perisseu'sai eij~ uJma'~, B: i{na ejn panti; pavntote pa'san aujtavrkeian e[conte~ perisseuvhte eij~ pa'n e[rgon ajgaqovn, kaqw;~ gevgraptai: A/B?: ejskovrpisen, e[dwken toi'~ pevnhsin, hJ dikaiosuvnh aujtou` mevnei eij~ to;n aijw'na A: oJ de; ejpicorhgw'n spovron tw`/ speivronti kai; a[rton eij~ brw's in corhghvsei kai; phqunei' to;n spovron uJmw'n kai; aujxhvsei B: ta; genhvmata th'~ dikaiosuvnh~ uJmw'n [A: God is able to make all grace abound toward you, B: in order that, having complete sufficiency in everything always, you may abound toward every good work, as it is written: A/B?: “He scattered, he gave to the poor, his righteousness abides for ever.” A: He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and increase your seed and make increase B: the fruits of your righteousness.] Once again the foundation of the believers’ good work is the grace of God that supplies in abundance the resources from which “every good work” is made. The matching verbs in 9:8 (perisseuvein eij~) and the extraordinary alliteration (panti; pavntote pa'san) serve to emphasize that it is from the spring of divine generosity that human “good work” is drawn. The

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metaphors of natural abundance in 9:10 (God supplies the seed and gives growth to the fruit; see 1 Cor 3:7) draw further attention to the source of righteousness, though it is striking that righteousness is nonetheless described as “yours” (uJmw' n, 9:10). In this light, it is extremely difficult to determine the subject of the intervening 9:9, in its citation of Ps 111:9 (LXX). Since the subject of the main verbs in 9:8 and 9:10 is God, and since the righteousness of the singular subject in 9:9 is said to last “for ever” (see 2 Cor 5:21), there are good reasons to regard the citation as referring to God, in God’s generosity to humanity. On the other hand, since the last (the subordinate) clause of 9:9 is about human action, and “righteousness” can be referred to as “yours” in 9:10, and since the psalm originally refers to a human actor (though in close parallel to statements about God in Psalm 110 [LXX]), there are equally good reasons to take the quotation as a statement about human generosity.33 What is interesting is that both interpretations can claim strong support from the context, for the good reason that the generosity in view can be said to involve both divine and human agency. The fact that God is the source of the necessary grace does not reduce the imperative to give, which is the rhetorical force of the whole passage. On the other hand, the chief reason here offered for giving, and the proof that it is authentic Christian giving, is the spring of grace on which Christian generosity depends. Paul seems to take some form of dual agency as the obvious and necessary source of “every good work.”

G r a c e , Wo r k , a n d A g e n c y These five texts (found in five different letters and addressing a variety of topics) establish a prima facie case that Paul entertains a self-consciously complex view of agency in relation to Christian “good works.” Although three of our passages are written in relation to himself (1 Cor 15:10; Gal 2:19–21; Rom 15:15–19), there are good grounds for taking his “I” to be at least partly paradigmatic; in any case, the same alternation of subjects occurs in the two passages that concern Christians in general (Phil 2:12–14; 2 Cor 9:8–10).34 As we have noted, the A-pole in the dialectic can be variously expressed (as “grace,” “God,” “Christ,” “the Spirit”) even in the course

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of a single passage; this pattern of agency seems deeply embedded in Paul’s thought whatever its varied expression. Although the syntactical order varies among our five passages (which sometimes begin with A, sometimes with B), the logical sequence in all five texts places divine grace anterior to human action, while affirming the continuation of that grace in human activity. The relationship between divine grace and human actors can be expressed by a variety of prepositions: grace may be described as “toward me” (eij~ ejmev, 1 Cor 15:10; 2 Cor 9:8), “with me” (su;n ejmoiv, 1 Cor 15:10), “through me” (di’ ejmou', Rom 15:18), and “in me” (ejn ejmoiv, Gal 2:20; Phil 2:13). That diversity of expression suggests that Paul had no set or stable articulation of the relationship between divine and human agency, a fact that complicates our attempt to grasp his meaning. Casting our eyes more widely, we find that Paul’s language about the Spirit hints at the same complexity in agency. Paul’s indicative and imperative applied to the Spirit is as suggestive, but as underdefined, as the statements examined above: eij zw' men pneuvmati, pneuvmati kai; stoicw' men (Gal 5:25: “if we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by [or, in line with] the Spirit”). As Gal 5:13–6:10 demonstrates, Paul regards the Christian moral life as impossible apart from the Spirit, which provides not only instruction but also empowerment for a moral life. The fruit for which Paul looks is, after all, the fruit of the Spirit (Gal 5:22–23; see 2 Cor 9:10). At the same time, he urges the Galatians to walk by the power of, or in line with, the Spirit (5:25) and stresses the importance of sowing to the Spirit (6:8), since human agency is the necessary expression of the life granted by the Spirit.35 Similarly, the letter to the Philippians is predicated on the confidence that “God, who began in you a good work, will bring it to completion on the day of Christ Jesus” (1:6; see 3:21). But this provides the grounds for (and certainly not the grounds against) an appeal to the Philippians to press on in faith, love, and concord (e.g., 2:1–4, 11–12). Yet the fact that Paul prays that their love may increase (1:9) and intercedes that they be “filled with the fruit of righteousness, which (comes) through Jesus Christ” (1:11) suggests that their necessary agency is only made possible by divine grace. In other words, to use our labels, the macro-structure of ethics in Philippians is A-B-A!36 A close study of 1 Thessalonians would reveal the same. While Paul commends the Thessalonians for their labor of love (1:3) and urges

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them to abound still more in this (perisseuvein ma'llon, 4:10), he also prays that God will make them increase and abound in love (pleonavsai kai; perisseuvsai th`/ ajgavph/, 3:12) and trusts that God will sanctify them, since “he who calls you is faithful, and he will do this” (5:23–24). Such is the intertwining of agencies in such matters that one begins to wonder what Paul means by Christians “abounding (perisseuvein again!) in the work of the Lord” (ejn tw`/ e[rgw/ tou' kurivou, 1 Cor 15:58; see 16:10). Is this work done for the Lord, or by the Lord, or precisely both? If we may speak of a dual agency of God/grace and believers, it is immediately clear that these are neither mutually exclusive nor aligned in some ratio whereby the more that one is operative, the less the other is. Nor is their relationship simply one of “gift and response,” since the grace that provokes the believer’s action continues to be active in that “response” and is not simply its motivation or inspiration.37 This entanglement of the two agencies also renders insufficient the language of “cooperation” or “conjunction,” if by that is meant two distinguishable agents who work merely side by side.38 “Empowerment” would get us closer to Paul’s thought, provided that this is not interpreted to mean that divine grace merely assists or perfects the selfgenerated action of believers. Some account must be given of the prepositions “in” and “through,” as well as “toward” and “with,” and there remains the puzzling pattern of “I, yet not I.” At the very least we must speak here of a transformation of the self, a refashioning of the human agent that becomes capable of agency (with a freed will competent to obey or to “fall from grace”) and is embedded within the agency of divine grace. This suggests again the significance of the participation metaphor, so long as it is recognized that the self who participates in Christ is not merely relocated but reconstituted by its absorption within the noncoercive power of grace.39 Finally, we must note a significant asymmetry. While Paul can interrupt his “I” statements with claims of “yet not I, but grace/Christ,” he does not reverse the pattern: it is hard to imagine him speaking of “the grace of God, yet not grace, but I.” This suggests that grace operates not only prior to believer agency but also as the determining factor within it—without coercing human agents or obliterating their capacity truly to act. Indeed, Paul’s emphasis on grace as the sole significant agent in salvation (Rom 4:4–5; 9:11, 16; 11:6) always threatens to dissolve the force of the ethical impera-

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tive (see Rom 3:8; 6:1) and gives scope for radical readings of Paul that reduce the human agent to the role of a pawn in the hands of grace. There is clearly much here requiring further elucidation, both by more detailed exegesis and by comparison with other texts and conceptualities. There may be significant parallels to Paul’s understandings of agency within his Jewish tradition: the role of the Spirit in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the magnetic power of grace in Philo are obvious candidates for comparison.40 Ancient philosophical analysis of the will and predilection (proaivresi~) could also illuminate our theme.41 Moreover, the early interpreters of Paul, especially Chrysostom and Augustine, could sensitize us to hidden dimensions of the Pauline texts, and their significantly different readings of Paul point toward the ancient ideologies of moral freedom and self-improvement that Paul’s statements could be heard to support or challenge.42 Finally, contemporary attempts to reconceive the “self,” without essentialist or idealist presuppositions, could offer partial parallels to Paul’s notion of a reconstituted self, although Paul’s metaphor of participation in Christ is probably not containable within the structures of contemporary theory. For now we shall have to rest content with preliminary conclusions. We have found good evidence to suggest that Paul’s theology of participation in Christ has a significant impact on the way he conceives of believer agency, and thus on the relationship between grace and works. In Paul’s view, the grace believers receive not only initiates their connection to Christ but also energizes and operates through their continuing work in Christ; in Sanders’s terms, it is as significant for their “staying in” as for their “getting in.” Grace does not just invite “response” but itself effects the human participation in grace, such that “every good work” can be viewed as the fruit of divine power as much as the product of believers themselves. From this perspective, the old conundrum of justification by grace and judgment by works is perhaps less problematic than is commonly claimed. The works for which believers are accountable at the judgment seat of Christ are themselves the product of the grace that has transformed their agents and empowered their performance. And if Paul is generally confident about God’s verdict at that judgment, it is because those who “remain in the kindness of God” (Rom 11:22) can trust that God will complete the transformative work that he has begun (Phil 1:6).43 Thus it is correct to insist

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that, even in Paul, “the point is that God saves by grace, but that within the framework established by grace he rewards good deeds and punishes transgression,”44 so long as one adds that the Pauline framework of grace entails a dynamic in which the good deeds are the product of the gracious and transformative union with Christ. What requires examination is not just that salvation by grace and the expectation of good works coexist but precisely how they do. If participation in Christ shapes Paul’s theology and ethics, it is precisely the concept we need to nuance our understanding of grace and grace-in-works.

Notes 1. E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison of Patterns of Religion (Philadelphia/London: Fortress/SCM, 1977), 431–556. 2. Ibid., 543; emphasis in original. 3. Ibid.; emphasis in original. 4. Ibid., 517; emphasis in original. 5. Ibid., 543; emphasis in original. 6. Ibid., 511–15. 7. Ibid., 513. 8. Ibid., 515. 9. Ibid., 549. 10. Ibid., 514; see 503. 11. See, for example, E. P. Sanders, Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983; repr., 1985); E. P. Sanders, Paul: Past Master (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991); E. P. Sanders, Paul: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). 12. For example, Sanders, Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People, 10, 84, 114, 143–45. 13. Ibid., 159. 14. Ibid., 105–14. 15. Ibid., 208. 16. The question of the role of the Spirit is left consciously open: Sanders’s central concern is with the place of the law, and “our present concern . . . is not to offer a full account of what Paul meant by ‘life in the Spirit.’ ” See ibid., 104. 17. M. D. Hooker, “Paul and ‘Covenantal Nomism,’ ” in Paul and Paulinism: Essays in Honour of C. K. Barrett (eds. M. D. Hooker and S. G. Wilson; London: SPCK, 1982), 47–56.

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18. See James D. G. Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998). 19. For example, N. T. Wright, The Climax of the Covenant: Christ and Law in Pauline Theology (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1991). 20. Kent L. Yinger, Paul, Judaism, and Judgment according to Deeds (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 289. 21. Robert H. Gundry, “Grace, Works and Staying Saved in Paul,” Bib 66 (1985): 1–38. 22. See Judith M. Gundry Volf, Paul and Perseverance (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1990); contrast B. J. Oropeza, Paul and Apostasy (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000). 23. Stephen Westerholm, Israel’s Law and the Church’s Faith: Paul and His Recent Interpreters (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988), 216; see 168–69; and Stephen Westerholm, Perspectives Old and New on Paul: The “Lutheran” Paul and His Critics (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003). 24. Simon J. Gathercole, Where Is Boasting? Early Jewish Soteriology and Paul’s Response in Romans 1–5 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 133; see 223–24; Timo Laato, Paul and Judaism: An Anthropological Approach (trans. T. McElwain; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995), 158–62. The question thus raises the issue of divine agency in general. J. Louis Martyn’s unease with the categories of “getting in” and “staying in,” which threaten to surrender “the good news of God’s powerful invasion to the impotence of a merely human decision to have faith,” is acknowledged but not discussed by Sanders. See J. Louis Martyn, Theological Issues in the Letters of Paul (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1997), 219–20, and Sanders, Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People, 14, n. 23. 25. See the essays by Richard B. Hays (chapter 19) and Stanley K. Stowers (chapter 20) in this volume. 26. Sanders refers to the main contributors to the debate in Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People, 118–19, n. 37; since then see David W. Kuck, Judgment and Community Conflict: Paul’s Use of Apocalyptic Judgment Language in 1 Corinthians 3:5–4:4 (Leiden: Brill, 1992) and Yinger, Paul, Judaism, and Judgment, each with surveys of previous scholarship. 27. See D. A. Carson, Peter T. O’Brien, and Mark A. Seifrid, eds., Justification and Variegated Nomism (2 vols.; Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2001–2004), as a continuation of Sanders’s project with generally minor modifications. 28. All translations are my own. The textual variant is potentially significant (see further below). ∏46, Jerome, and one Syriac version read hJ eij~ ejmev, an assimilation to the phrase earlier in the verse. su;n ejmoiv is read (without the article) by a* B D* F G 1739 vg, etc., while the article is present in A, Y, and corrected versions of a and D, alongside many others. The UBS committee and Nestle-Aland print the article, but in square brackets. See Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament (2nd ed.; Stuttgart: United Bible Societies, 1994).

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John M. G. Barclay

29. So, rightly, Anthony C. Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians: A Commentary on the Greek Text (NIGTC; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 1211, contra Gordon D. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians (NICNT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987), 735; it is hard to imagine Paul distinguishing between the two. 30. The sense of uJpe;r th'~ eujdokiva~ is unclear: Is this in accordance with God’s good will (one would expect kata; th;n eujdokivan) or on behalf of human goodwill in the community (see 1:15)? See J.-F. Collange, The Epistle of Saint Paul to the Philippians (trans. A. W. Heathcote; London: Epworth, 1979), 110–11. 31. I include this phrase under the category A: although the subject of the verb is grammatically the human “I,” the theme of the sentence is divine initiative (“the grace of God”). 32. That the “I” is reconstituted and not obliterated is suggested by the continuation of an “I” narrative and the statement that Christ loved and gave himself “for me” (2:20); on the other hand, it seems inadequate to speak here merely of a recentering of the self. See John M. G. Barclay, “Paul’s Story: Theology as Testimony,” in Narrative Dynamics in Paul: A Critical Assessment (ed. Bruce W. Longenecker; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2002), 133–56, esp. 142–44. 33. See the full discussion in Victor Paul Furnish, trans., II Corinthians (AB 32A; New York: Doubleday, 1984), 448–49, and Margaret E. Thrall, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians (2 vols.; ICC; Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 2000), 2:580–83. 34. The agency of believers may indeed be crucially linked to their participation in Christian community as well as to their participation in Christ: in a community where believers are channels of divine grace to one another (1 Corinthians 12–14; 2 Corinthians 8–9), agency is constituted by mutual interdependence as well as direct dependence on the Spirit. 35. See John M. G. Barclay, Obeying the Truth: A Study of Paul’s Ethics in Galatians (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1988), 117–19, 155–56; J. Louis Martyn, trans., Galatians (AB 33A; New York: Doubleday, 1997), 542–43. 36. This element of the power of divine grace is the feature of Paul’s letters that Troels Engberg-Pedersen’s Stoic and often brilliant analysis of Paul’s letters appears to underplay. See Troels Engberg-Pedersen, Paul and the Stoics (Edinburgh/ Louisville, Ky.: T & T Clark/Westminster John Knox, 2000), and the review of this work by J. Louis Martyn, “De-Apocalypticizing Paul: An Essay Focused on Paul and the Stoics by Troels Engberg-Pedersen,” JSNT 86 (2002): 61–102. 37. J. Louis Martyn has pointed out to me (in correspondence) how misleading the term “response” can be, if it suggests that a believer’s action is autonomous or a second act separable from divine agency. 38. To the extent that “synergism” is understood in this sense, it fails to capture the dynamic we are investigating. If the term were permitted, “energism” might capture the Pauline nuance more accurately.

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39. On agency as itself a gift of God, see Kathryn Tanner, Jesus, Humanity and the Trinity: A Brief Systematic Theology (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 2001), 70–75; esp. 71–72: “We are purposive agents within this non-purposive context of God’s superabundant gift-giving, because our passivity before Christ does not translate into passivity on any ordinary construal of that. Passivity before Christ hardly means our lives are taken out of our hands; it hardly forms an easy contrast with a modern emphasis on human responsibility for the character of our lives. We are assumed by Christ, but what is assumed is the selves that we are in our deeds. We receive from Christ in and through the power of the Spirit but we so receive as the free agents we are. Christ forms us but what is so formed is our action.” However, Paul would refer to believers as freed, rather than free, agents. 40. See John M. G. Barclay, “ ‘By the Grace of God I Am What I Am’: Grace and Agency in Philo and Paul,” in Divine and Human Agency in Paul and His Cultural Environment (ed. John M. G. Barclay and Simon J. Gathercole; Library of New Testament Studies 335; London: T & T Clark, 2006), 140–57. 41. See Troels Engberg-Pedersen, “Self-Sufficiency and Power: Divine and Human Agency in Epictetus and Paul,” in Barclay and Gathercole, eds., Divine and Human Agency, 117–39. 42. See, in general, Maurice F. Wiles, The Divine Apostle: The Interpretation of St. Paul’s Epistles in the Early Church (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), 94–131. On the classic theories of virtue, which could be threatened by Paul, see Margaret Mitchell, The Heavenly Trumpet: John Chrysostom and the Art of Pauline Interpretation (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000), 411–23; Augustine’s challenge to classical moral philosophy and its ideals of perfection is analyzed by Carol Harrison, Augustine: Christian Truth and Fractured Humanity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 79–114. 43. The topic is obviously too large to handle here. For a careful reading of 1 Cor 4:1–5, where Paul engages in serious self-examination but ultimately looks to God for judgment and justification, see now Stephen J. Chester, Conversion at Corinth: Perspectives on Conversion in Paul’s Theology and the Corinthian Church (London: T & T Clark, 2003), 195–204. 44. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 543.

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Bibliography of Works by E. P. Sanders

1966 “Literary Dependence in Colossians.” JBL 85 (1966): 28–45. 1968 “Chiasmus and the Translation of IQH VII, 26–27.” RevQ 6 (1968): 427–31. 1969 “The Argument from Order and the Relationship between Matthew and Luke.” NTS 15 (1969): 249–61. The Tendencies of the Synoptic Tradition. SNTSMS 9. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969. 1972 “Priorités et dépendances dans la tradition synoptique.” RSR 60 (1972): 519–40. 1 9 73 “The Overlaps of Mark and Q and the Synoptic Problem.” NTS 19 (1973): 453–65. “Patterns of Religion in Paul and Rabbinic Judaism: A Holistic Method of Comparison.” HTR 66 (1973): 455–78. “R. Akiba’s View of Suffering.” JQR 3 (1973): 332–51. 1976 “The Covenant as a Soteriological Category and the Nature of Salvation in Palestinian and Hellenistic Judaism.” Pages 11–44 in Jews, Greeks and Christians: Essays in Honor of William David Davies. Edited by R. Hamerton-Kelly and R. Scroggs. Leiden: Brill, 1976. 1977 Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison of Patterns of Religion. Philadelphia/ London: Fortress/SCM, 1977. Translated into German and Italian.

391

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1978 “On the Question of Fulfilling the Law in Paul and Rabbinic Judaism.” Pages 103–26 in Donum Gentilicium: New Testament Studies in Honour of David Daube. Edited by E. Bammel, W. D. Davies, and C. K. Barrett. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978. “Paul’s Attitude toward the Jewish People.” USQR 33 (1978): 175–87. 1980 Editor, Jewish and Christian Self-Definition I: The Shaping of Christianity in the Second and Third Centuries. Philadelphia: Fortress/London: SCM, 1980. 1981 Co-editor, with A. I. Baumgarten and Alan Mendelson. Jewish and Christian SelfDefinition II: Aspects of Judaism in the Greco-Roman Period. Philadelphia: Fortress/London: SCM, 1981. 1982 Co-editor, with Ben F. Meyer. Jewish and Christian Self-Definition III: Self-Definition in the Greco-Roman World. Philadelphia/London: Fortress/SCM, 1982. “Jesus and the Sinners.” ANRW. Religion II. 25 (1982): 390–450. 1983 “The Genre of the Palestinian Jewish Apocalypses.” Pages 447–59 in Apocalypticism in the Mediterranean World and the Near East. Edited by David Hellholm. Tübingen: Mohr (Siebeck), 1983. “Jesus and the Constraint of Law.” JSNT 17 (1983): 19–24. “Jesus and the Sinners.” JSNT 19 (1983): 5–36. “New Testament Studies Today.” Pages 11–28 in Colloquy on New Testament Studies: A Time for Reappraisal and Fresh Approaches. Edited by Bruce Corley. Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1983. Paul, the Law and the Jewish People. Philadelphia/London: Fortress/SCM, 1983/1985. Translated into Italian and Korean. “Romans 7 and the Purpose of the Law.” Proceedings of the Irish Biblical Association 7 (1983): 44–59. “The Search for Bedrock in the Jesus Material.” Proceedings of the Irish Biblical Association 7 (1983): 74–86. “Testament of Abraham,” Introduction, Translation, and Notes. Pages 871–902 in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha I: Apocalyptic Literature and Testaments. Edited by James H. Charlesworth. New York: Doubleday, 1983. 1985 Jesus and Judaism. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985/London: SCM, 1985. Translated into Italian, Korean, and Spanish.

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“Judaism and the Grand ‘Christian’ Abstractions: Love, Mercy, and Grace.” Int 39 (1985): 357–72. 1986 “Paul on the Law, His Opponents, and the Jewish People in Philippians 3 and 2 Corinthians 11.” Pages 75–90 in Anti-Judaism in Early Christianity, vol. 1. Edited by Peter Richardson with David Granskou. Waterloo, Ont.: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1986. 1987 Editor. Jesus, the Gospels, and the Church: Essays in Honor of William R. Farmer. Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1987. “Jesus and the Kingdom: The Restoration of Israel and the New People of God.” Pages 225–39 in Jesus, the Gospels, and the Church: Essays in Honor of William R. Farmer. Edited by Ed P. Sanders. Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1987. 1989 With Margaret Davies. Studying the Synoptic Gospels. London: SCM, 1989/Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1989. Translated into Korean. 1990 “Jewish Association with Gentiles and Galatians 2.11–14.” Pages 170–88 in The Conversation Continues: Studies in Paul & John in Honor of J. Louis Martyn. Edited by Robert T. Fortna and Beverly R. Gaventa. Nashville: Abingdon, 1990. Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah. Five Studies. London: SCM/Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1990. “The Question of Uniqueness in the Teaching of Jesus.” Ethel M. Wood Lecture, University of London, 1990. “When Is a Law a Law? The Case of Jesus and Paul.” Pages 139–58 in Religion and Law: Biblical-Judaic and Islamic Perspectives. Edited by Edwin B. Firmage, Bernard G. Weiss, and John W. Welch. Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1990. 1 9 91 Paul. Past Masters Series. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991. Reissued in Very Short Introductions Series, 2001. Translated into Dutch, Japanese, German, Italian, Spanish, and Korean. 1992 “Jesus in Historical Context: Political and Economic Aspects.” Pages 7–21 in De ene Jezus en de vele culturen: Christologie en contextualiteit. Edited by Nico Schreurs and Huub van de Sandt. Tilburg, Netherlands: Tilburg University Press, 1992. Judaism: Practice and Belief, 63 b.c.e.–66 c.e. London: SCM, 1992/Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1992. Corrected ed., 1994. Translated into Italian.

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“Law in Judaism of the NT Period.” ABD 4:254–65. “The Life of Jesus.” Pages 41–83 in Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism. A Parallel History of the Origins and Early Development. Edited by Hershel Shanks. Washington, D.C.: Biblical Archaeology Society, 1992. “Sin, Sinners (NT).” ABD 6:40–47. 1993 The Historical Figure of Jesus. London: Allen Lane Penguin Press, 1993/New York: Viking Penguin, 1994. Translated into Italian, German, Dutch, Lithuanian, Spanish, and Portuguese. “Jesus in Historical Context.” ThTo 50 (1993): 429–48. Danish translation: “Jesus i historisk kontekst.” Pages 72–102 in Den historiske Jesus og hans betydning. Edited by Troels Engberg-Pedersen. Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1998. 1994 “Jesus and the First Table of the Jewish Law.” Pages 55–73 in Jews and Christians Speak of Jesus. Edited by Arthur E. Zannoni. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994. 1996 “Jesus’ Relation to Sepphoris.” Pages 75–79 in Sepphoris in Galilee: Crosscurrents of Culture. Edited by Rebecca Martin Nagy, Eric M. Meyers, Carol L. Meyers, and Zeev Weiss. Raleigh, N.C.: North Carolina Museum of Art, 1996. “Paul.” Pages 112–29 in Early Christian Thought in Its Jewish Context (Festschrift Morna D. Hooker). Edited by John Barclay and John Sweet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Danish translation: “Paulus.” In Den nye Paulus og hans betydning. Edited by Troels Engberg-Pedersen. Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 2003. 1997 “Jerusalem and Its Temple in the Beginnings of the Christian Movement.” Judaism 46 (1997): 189–96. 1998 “La rupture de Jésus avec le judaïsme.” Pages 209–22 in Jésus de Nazareth: Nouvelles approches d’une énigme. Edited by Daniel Marguerat, Enrico Norelli, and JeanMichel Poffet. Geneva: Labor et Fides, 1998. 1999 “Common Judaism and the Synagogue in the First Century.” Pages 1–17 in Jews, Christians, and Polytheists in the Ancient Synagogue: Cultural Interaction during the Greco-Roman Period. Edited by Steven Fine. London & New York: Routledge, 1999.

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“Jerusalem and Its Temple in Early Christian Thought and Practice.” Pages 90–103 in Jerusalem: Its Sanctity and Centrality to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Edited by Lee I. Levine. New York: Continuum, 1999. “Juutalaisuus, Tekopyhää Lakihenkisyyttä?” [“Was Judaism Legalistic?”]. Vartija 112, Helsinki, May 1999, 171–80. “Reflections on Anti-Judaism in the New Testament and Early Christianity.” Pages 265–86 in Anti-Judaism and the Gospels. Edited by William R. Farmer. Harrisburg, Pa.: Trinity Press International, 1999. With W. D. Davies. “Jesus: From the Jewish Point of View.” Pages 618–77 in The Cambridge History of Judaism, vol. 3. Edited by William Horbury, W. D. Davies, and John Sturdy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. 2 0 00 “The Dead Sea Sect and Other Jews: Commonalities, Overlaps and Differences.” Pages 7–43 in The Dead Sea Scrolls in Their Historical Context. Edited by Timothy H. Lim with Larry W. Hurtado, A. Graeme Auld, and Alison Jack. Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 2000. “How Do We Know What We Know about Jesus?” Pages 38–61 in Jesus Two Thousand Years Later. Edited by James H. Charlesworth and Walter P. Weaver. Harrisburg, Pa.: Trinity Press International, 2000. “Jesus Christ.” Pages 701–7 in Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible. Edited by David Noel Freedman. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000. 2001 “Jesus in Galilee.” Pages 5–26 in Jesus: A Colloquium in the Holy Land. Edited by Doris Donnelly. New York: Continuum, 2001. Spanish translation: “Jesús en Galilea.” Pages 11–38 in Jesús: Un coloquio en Tierra Santa. Estella: Editorial Verbo Divino, 2004. 2002 “Jesus, Ancient Judaism, and Modern Christianity: The Quest Continues.” Pages 31–55 in Jesus, Judaism and Christian Anti-Judaism: Reading the New Testament after the Holocaust. Edited by Paula Fredriksen and Adele Reinhartz. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2002. “Jesus’ Galilee.” Pages 3–41 in Fair Play: Diversity and Conflicts in Early Christianity: Essays in Honour of Heikki Räisänen. Edited by Ismo Dunderberg, Kari Syreeni, and Christopher Tuckett. Leiden: Brill, 2002. 2 0 07 “God Gave the Law to Condemn: Providence in Paul and Josephus.” In The Impartial God: Essays in Biblical Studies in Honor of Jouette M. Bassler. Edited by Robert L. Foster and Calvin J. Roetzel. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix, 2007.

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“Jesus Christ.” In Encyclopaedia Britannica 2007 Ultimate Reference Suite. Elk Grove, Calif.: Avantquest, 2007. 2008 “Common Judaism.” In Common Judaism Explored: Second Temple Judaism in Context. Edited by Wayne McCready and Adele Reinhartz. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2008. “Comparing Judaism and Christianity: An Academic Autobiography.” Pages 11–41 in the present volume. F o r thc o mi n g “Covenantal Nomism Revisited.” Jewish Studies Quarterly. Edited by Dana Hollander and Joel Kaminsky. “Did Paul’s Theology Develop?” In a volume of essays on Paul. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. “Paul, Apostle.” In Encyclopaedia Britannica. “Paul between Judaism and Hellenism.” In St. Paul among the Philosophers. Edited by Linda Martin Alcoff and John D. Caputo. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

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Index of Ancient Texts

HEBREW BIBLE Ge n es i s 1:26, 370n33 1:26–27, 53 5:3, 361 12:3, 340 17:5, 364 18:18, 340 22:18, 359

D eut er on o my 8:16–27, 131n9 16, 35n21 31:16, 123 32:2, 135n33

Exod us 3:6, 122 6:4, 122 12, 35n21 15:12–19, 122 16:25, 138n46 19:6, 202 29:9–19, 226n22 38:8, 221

R ut h 3:13, 93

L e v i t i c us 23:2, 91 23:15, 92 26:44, 130n2 Nu mb er s 5, 259 11:29, 94 12:3, 94 34:1–12, 205

Jud ges 5:17, 205

1 Sa m uel 16, 287

95:11, 137n45, 137n46 110, 382 111:9, 382 118:22–26, 289 118:25–26, 287, 289 118:26, 287 118:26a, 287 118:26b, 287 Ecclesiastes 10:8, 118

N eh em i a h 8:2–3, 221

Isaiah 8:23, 204 9:1, 204 30:15, 138n46 56:7, 263 57:13, 131n9 60:21, 114, 116, 130n2, 131n9 66, 316

Psalms 37:11, 116 62:7, 202 72:16, 135n34 84:5, 123 95:7, 125, 128–29, 137n46

J e re mi a h 1:5, 361 7:11, 263 26:8, 291 26:11, 291 26:16–19, 291

2 Sa m uel 4:9, 226n22 1 K i n gs 6:36, 226n22

397

Udoh.indb 397

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398

Index of Ancient Texts

Z ep h a n i a h 1:15, 125

Ma l a c h i 3:19, 125

2 Esdr as 1:28–34, 202

2:66–68, 233 5:15, 204

7:19, 234 8:16–27, 234

1 M ac c ab ees 1:13–15, 239 1:20–56, 239

2 M a c c a b ees 4:12, 239 7, 234

S i ra c h 36:18–19, 206

Ez e kie l 40:24–37, 226n22 47:15–17, 205 47:21–23, 206 48:8–22, 206 APOCRYPHA

OLD TESTAMENT PSEUDEPIGRAPHA Eu po le mus Fragment 2, 206

4 E z r a, 130n2

Jubilees 8:12–21, 206

23:21, 277n20 23:23, 201 23:23c, 210n16 23:37–38, 287 23:37–39, 202 23:38, 257–59 24:37–39, 279n38 26:3–5, 229 26:47, 290

11:15–17, 256 11:15–18, 261 11:15–33, 285 11:27–13:37, 286 12–13, 285 12:15–22, 240 13:1–2, 201 13:2, 257–60, 261 14:1, 285 14:2, 271 14:43, 278n31, 290 14:58, 201, 257–59 15:29, 201 15:29–30, 257–59

NEW TESTAMENT M atthe w 1:15, 287 3:7, 147 5:5, 116, 131n9 5:23, 201 5:23–24, 277n20 5:34–37, 201 7:1–10, 203 8:11–12, 203 9:34, 132n16 12:24, 132n16 15:21–28, 219 17:24–27, 201 19:28, 292 21:17, 286 22:23–33, 122, 147 23, 241 23:16–22, 201

Udoh.indb 398

Mark 1:44, 201 2, 298 3:1–6, 302–3 7:11, 201 7:24–9:29, 219, 220 9:30, 223 11:9–10, 268

Luke 1:8–10, 201 2:22, 201

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Index of Ancient Texts

2:41, 201 11:42, 201 11:42c, 210n16 13:10–17, 302–3 13:28–30, 203 13:31–34, 202 13:34–35, 279n38, 287 13:35, 257–59 14:1–6, 302–3 18:9–14, 201 19:39, 287 19:40, 287 19:41–44, 257–59 19:44, 287 19:45–46, 108, 286, 287 19:47–48, 285 19:47a, 286 20:1–21:36, 286 20:21–36, 286 20:37, 135n32 21:30, 259 21:37, 286 21:37a, 286 21:37–38, 285 22:2, 285, 286 22:30, 292 22:50, 290 23:5, 282n59 23:18, 108 23:45, 108 24:46, 135n32 24:52, 277n20 24:53, 277n20 John 1:17, 314 2:1–12, 161 2:13–17, 256 2:19, 257–59 2:19b–20, 201 5, 298, 302–3, 307n15

Udoh.indb 399

7–8, 210n19 9, 302–3, 307n15 10:22–39, 292 11:18, 272 11:46–48, 211n23 11:48, 258 11:49–50, 229 11:53, 229 12:13, 268, 289 12:19, 271 18:3, 278n31, 291 18:12, 278n31 18:19–28, 274–75 18:31, 292 19:12, 293 Acts 1:12, 277n20 3–5, 291 3:1, 277n20 4:1–7, 144 5:12, 277n20 5:17–18, 144 5:42, 277n20 6:13–14a, 257–59 8:1–4, 272 9:10–11, 272 9:31, 272 9:32, 272, 277n20 9:42, 272 10, 272 10:1–11:18, 318n9 11:20, 272, 318n9 15:1–29, 318n9 21:23, 101n26 21:26ff, 277n20 21:26–27, 93, 101n26 21:27–36, 93, 108 21:30, 93 22:17, 277n20 23:7–8, 147

399

R o ma n s 1:1–15, 362 1:3, 262 1:5, 330n10 1:18–3:20, 333n61 1:20, 39n60 1:34, 369n25 2:17, 381 2:26, 330n13 3:8, 385 3:26, 369n23 3:27, 330n10, 381 4, 364 4:4–5, 384 4:15b–17a, 364 4:16, 369n23 5:1–11, 381 5:2, 381 5:3, 381 5:11, 381 6:1, 385 6:1–11, 341, 362 6:3–11, 345 6:12–14, 341–42 6:13, 342 6:15–23, 340 6:16–18, 330n10 6:23, 135n28 7:1–6, 333n58 8, 262, 317, 362 8:4, 316 8:9, 362 8:9–11, 53 8:16, 363 8:18–25, 347 8:29, 360, 361, 369n25 8:29–30, 361 9, 361 9:4, 277n20 9:6ff, 322 9:6–13, 330n15

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400

Index of Ancient Texts

Ro m ans (cont.) 9:7–8, 361 9–11, 322, 327 9:11, 384 9:16, 384 11, 262, 322, 328 11:6, 384 11:22, 385 11:26, 119, 330n10 12:1–2, 346 12:2, 53 12:4–8, 345 13:1–7, 330n10 14:8–9, 340 14:58, 316 15, 262 15:8–13, 262 15:15, 380 15:15–19, 380–81, 382 15:16, 380 15:18, 380 15:19, 272, 380 15:25–26, 316 1 Co r inth i a n s 1:6, 53 1:18, 346 2:4, 53 2:6, 53 2:11–15, 362 2:16, 53 3:7, 382 4:1–5, 389n43 4:6, 55 4:10, 53, 55 6:12–20, 340, 357 6:13–14a, 357 6:18, 358 7:22–23, 340 8, 36n35, 316 8:1, 55 8:1–11:1, 346

Udoh.indb 400

9, 320 9:1, 55 9:21, 312 10:1, 346 10:22, 36n35, 53 11, 55 11:1, 346 11:23, 278n31 11:23–26, 345 12–14, 388n34 12:12–31, 345 12:28, 53 13:2, 53 14:25, 345 14:34–35, 55 14:37, 53 15, 261, 280n34 15:2, 377 15:3–4, 135n32 15:3–5, 251 15:10, 377, 382, 383 15:12–19, 121 15:12–20, 347 15:13–14, 121 15:14, 377 15:20–24, 342 15:23, 340 15:35–37, 135n34 15:35–50, 357 15:39–41, 355 15:44, 358 15:53, 14, 39n60 15:58, 384 16:10, 384 2 C or i n t h i a n s 4:7, 53 4:18, 30, 39n60 5:21, 382 6:1, 377 8–9, 381, 388n34 9:8–10, 381–82, 382

9:8, 381, 383 9:10, 383 9:10–11, 382 12, 22 13:5, 53 36:17–23, 201 Galatians 1–2, 251 1:13, 316 1:17, 272 1:17–21, 277n20 1:18, 261, 272 1:22, 272 2:1, 272 2:1–10, 318n9 2:8, 379 2:9, 261 2:10, 346 2:11, 272 2:11–14, 315 2:11–21, 331n28 2:19, 333n60 2:19–20, 355, 364 2:19b–20, 56–57 2:19–21, 379–80, 382 2:20, 383 3, 364 3:1–5, 53 3:5, 53 3:7–8, 359 3:8, 340, 362 3:8–9, 359 3:10–13, 333n58 3:14, 359 3:19, 333n61 3:20, 333n61 3:26–29, 362 3:27–29, 345 3:28, 53, 54 3:29, 341, 359 4, 322

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Index of Ancient Texts

4:7, 340 4:12, 320, 330n11 5:11, 315 5:13–6:10, 383 5:22–23, 383 5:24, 340, 360 5:25, 383 6:2, 346 6:8, 383 6:12, 315 6:15, 330n13 Phil i p p i a n s 1:6, 383, 385 1:11, 383 2:1–4, 383

2:6–11, 378 2:11–12, 383 2:12–14, 378–79, 382 2:13, 383 3:7, 329n5 3:10, 347 3:20–21, 342, 378 3:21, 383 4:5, 261 4:13, 53, 379 C ol os s i a n s 1:15–16, 39n60 1:29, 379

401

1 Thessalonians 1:3, 383 1:6, 346 2:13, 379 2:14–15, 251 4:10, 384 4:13–18, 280n43 4:15, 261 5:23–24, 384 He b re w s , 137n46 3–4, 128 7, 359, 361 1 Peter 1:5, 135n28

NEW TESTAMENT PSEUDEPIGRAPHA Go s p el of T h om a s 22, 64n73

71, 201 114, 56, 64n73

DEAD SEA SCROLLS 1QapGen 21 (Genesis Apocryphon), 206 1QpHab, 92 1QS 7.20, 86n42 4QMMT, 95, 98n2, 98n9, 140 section C, 102n37

11QT (Temple Scroll), 222 col. 37–40, 226n22 11QTS 34, 102n33 CD (Damascus Document) 11:10, 306n9

11:7b–11a, 300 11:9c–10a, 300 Q 9:59–60, 156

m. ‘Ed. 5:6, 93, 108 m. ‘Erub. 6:1, 147 6:2, 147 m. Kelim 10.1, 158, 172n34

m. Ma‘aś. Š. 5.15, 102n33 m. Mak. 3.16, 132n22 m. Menah ̣ 10:3, 147

RABBINIC LITERATURE M is h n a h m. ’Abot. 3.11, 133n24 m. Ber. 8.1, 86n37 m. Bik. 1.1, 99n17

Udoh.indb 401

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402

Index of Ancient Texts

M is hnah (cont.) m. ’Ohal. 5.5, 158, 172n34 m. Parah 3:7, 147 m. Qidd. 1.10, 131n9 m. Roš Haš. 2.8–9, 91, 99n13 m. Šabb. 6:2, 301, 306n11 6:3, 306n11 7:2, 301 14:2–4, 301 14:3–4, 306n9 m. Sanh. 10.1, 130n1 m. Sot ̣ah 9.9, 98n4 m. Sukkah 4.8, 95 m. Yad. 1.2, 172n34 4:6, 147 4.6–7, 150n11 m. Yom T ̣ob. 5:2, 301 m. Yoma 1.5, 95 8:6, 301 Talm u d ( Ba b y l on i a n tr actate ) b. ‘Abod. Zar. 27b, 132n18

28b, 132n18 b. B. Mes ̣i‘a, 157 b. Ber. 7a, 137n44 63a, 99n14 b. Me’il. 17a, 86n59 b. Pesah ̣ 106a, 86n37 b. Roš. Haš. 16b–17a, 134n27 b. Šabb. 21b, 85n35 33b, 136n40 146, 16b, 172n37 104b, 132n21 b. Sanh., 114 41a, 136n35, 292 43a, 132n15 90a, 135n30 90b, 135n34 91b, 122, 123 98a, 125 98b, 137n46 100b, 132n13 Ta l m ud ( Jer us a l e m t r a c t a t e) y. Meg. 3:1, 108 y. Šabb. 14.4 (14d), 132n17, 132n19 y. Sanh. 1.2.19a, 99n14

18a [1.1], 292 24b [7.2], 292 y. Ta‘an. 1.1, 136n36 ch. 1 (64a), 137n46 y. Yoma 1.1.38c, 98n5, 100n19 R u t h R a b b a h, 93, 108 Ta rg u m Ye ru s h a l mi, 118 To s e f t a t. H ̣ ag. 3.19, 92 t. Kelim 5.1, 172n37 t. Qidd. 1.12, 131n9 t. Šabb. 4.9, 306n11 4.11, 306n11 6.1, 86n59 t. Sanh. 13, 131n8 13, §1, 134n27 13.2, 134n27 13.10, 137n45 Mi d ra s h i m Tanhuma Vayeshev §4, 133n24 Tannaim to Deut 32:2, 135n33

OTHER JEWISH WRITINGS J o se phu s Antiquitates judaicae (Jewish Antiquities), 156, 198

Udoh.indb 402

1.221, 151n26 2.193, 151n26 8.13, 145 10.278, 146

13.172, 146 13.173, 150n10 13.297, 145 13.297–98, 150n10

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Index of Ancient Texts

13.298, 142, 169n1 13.318–19, 211n29 13.372, 102n34 16.160–78, 244n16 16.164, 84n21 17.146–64, 278n30 17.254, 209n7, 281n58 18.11, 150n10 18.11–24, 154 18.13, 146 18.15, 143, 148, 203 18.16, 147 18.16–17, 150n10 18.17, 95, 142, 143, 148 18.18–22, 92 18.19, 113n10 18.63–64, 277n12 18.64, 277n16 18.85–89, 278n30 18.118, 223 18.269–72, 281n58 20.118–36, 209n7, 281n58 20.123, 211n23 20.139–43, 211n29 20.181, 203

20.199, 143, 145, 148, 150n10 20.199–203, 272 20.200, 292 20.264, 94 Bellum judaicum (Jewish War), 198 1.648–55, 278n30 2.43, 209n7 2.119–66, 150n10 2.164–66, 142, 145 2.166, 147, 149, 150n10 2.232–46, 209n7, 278n30 2.237, 211n23 2.315–25, 278n30 2.459, 206 2.515, 277n20 2.563, 148 2.591–92, 211n30 3.35–40, 205 4.84, 209n10 4.319–21, 148 5.528, 209n10 6, 280n42 6.300, 2880n41

403

6.300–309, 260, 291 6.300–310, 202 7.416, 151n25 7.439, 151n25 Contra Apionem, 143, 154, 156 Vita (Life), 199, 204, 206 1–2, 151n29 10, 142 10–11, 150n10 63.80, 203 74, 211n30 113, 204 149–50, 204 346, 209n10 Philo De confusione linguarum 183–87, 363 De vita Mosis (On the Life of Moses), 300 1.158, 39n57 On the Special Laws, 300 O s t ra c a Y 1, 2, 3, 305n7

GREEK AND LATIN SOURCES Epic t et us 3.3.22, 360 S to i c or um v et er um f r a gmen t a , 369n21

Ta c i t us Annales 12.54, 198 15.44, 277n12

Historiae 5.1–3, 210n20

Note: References to many Greek and Latin authors using the numeration in Menahem Stern, ed., Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism, rather than the original source, may be found in chapter 4 (see notes, pages 83–87).

Udoh.indb 403

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Index of Names and Subjects

Abba Saul, 114, 116 Acts of the Apostles, 9 Agatharchides of Cnidus, 72–74 Agrippa I, 164 Agrippa II, 164 Akavyah ben Mehalalel, 92–93 Akiba ben Joseph, 91, 114, 116 Albinus, 291 Alexander of Aphrodisias, 363 Allison, Dale, 288 Ananus b. Ananus, 143, 145, 148 Anderson, Hugh, 6 Antiochus Epiphanes, 233, 235, 239 Antiochus IV, 233, 236, 239 Antipas, 164, 200, 213, 214, 223 Archelaus, 164 Ariel, Donald, 217 Augustine, 133n23 baptism, 8, 49, 50, 53–54, 345, 362 Baptism and Resurrection (Wedderburn), 49 Barclay, John, 321 Barnabas, 318n9 Bauer, Walter, 89 Baumgarten, Albert, 25, 40n74, 104, 106 Beard, Mary, 55 Beit Shammai, 134n27 Belkin, Samuel, 17

Ben Stada, 118, 119 Betz, Hans Dieter, 239–40 the body —pneuma and, 51, 52, 355–56, 358–64 —resurrection of, 135n34, 357–58 —self-definition and Pauline participation, 48–58 body-self, 47–48 Boismard, M.-É., 143 Book of Jubilees, 299 Borg, Marcus, 230 Boring, Eugene, 326 Bornkamm, Günther, 236, 240–41 Bourns, Art, 34n16 Bousset, Wilhelm, 20, 22 Bowden, John, 24 Bowie, Angus, 27 Boyarin, Daniel, 324, 325, 327, 328 Brown, David, 324–25 Bultmann, Rudolf Boyarin on, 325 Cullmann’s scholarship compared, 6–7 influence on New Testament studies, 14 mentioned, 16, 20, 328 on participationist language, 338, 346, 354, 355 Sanders on, 22

405

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406

Index of Names and Subjects

Bultmann, Rudolf (cont.) Sanders’s scholarship compared, 16, 46 on the self, 47 burial practices, 155–56, 167–68, 180–81, 217–18 Burkert, Walter, 32, 44 By Light, Light (Goodenough), 15, 31, 33n11 Bynum, Caroline Walker, 56–57, 58 Caiaphas Hellenization of, 238–39 historical evidence for, 242–43 and Jesus’ arrest and crucifixion —contemporary retelling of, 227–29, 243 —decision to crucify, 270–71 —messianic claim as factor in, 292–93 —political context, 229–32, 271, 284 —Temple incident and, 291–92 Jesus’ assessment of, 235 as the new Antiochus, 233, 235, 239 Pilate and, 228, 230, 251 tomb of, 156 calendar disputes, 90–92, 99n13 Castelli, Elizabeth, 54–55 Chambers, Dudley, 12 Charlesworth, James H., 43 Chilton, Bruce, 231–32 Christ and Time (Cullmann), 7 Christian Gentiles inclusion in the covenant, 340–41 Jews compared, 77 Paul and —circumcision of, 313, 320 —persecution of, 314–15 —requirement to keep the law, 25, 320

Udoh.indb 406

Christianity initial theological impetus, 8–9 Jesus movement, 242, 271–73 Paul and founding of, 318n9 Chrysostom, John, 342 Cicero, 77 circumcision, 76, 78–80, 313, 320 Cities of the Eastern Roman Provinces (Jones), 32 Clayton, John Powell, 325 Cleansing of the Temple. See the Temple incident Clement of Alexandria, 133n23 Cleopatra, 135n34 Colip, William, 13 Combs, Eugene, 16 common Judaism constituent elements, 70, 72–83, 154 defined, 69–70, 153, 175 evidence of —in the archaeological record, 156–62, 167 —Greek and Latin writing for, 72–83 Hellenization and, 164, 166–67 the Jerusalem temple, importance in, 77 Josephus on, 154 material culture —defining sectarian identity on the basis of, 179–84 —Pharisaic influence on, 176–79 —Qumran, 180–82 —religious concepts in formation of elements of, 184–86 normative in rabbinic Judaism, 82 practices and customs —burial, 155–56, 167–68 —circumcision, 76, 78–80 —dietary restrictions, 76–77, 156–58, 168

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Index of Names and Subjects

—figural art, prohibition against, 163–65 —prayer, 72–73 —purity practices, 77, 160 —ritual baths, 161–63, 177–78, 181 —the Sabbath, 72–76 —Second Commandment, observation of, 163–65, 169 —use of stone vessels, 158–62, 177–78, 185–87 —worship of one God, 72–73 regional trends effect on, 165–66 scholarship opposing, 176–77 the synagogue and, 72–73 varieties of, 186–87 See also Judaism The Corinthian Body (Martin), 50–51 Corinthian Women Prophets (Wire), 50 Court of the Gentiles, 222 Court of the Women, 200, 221–22 covenantal nomism, 21, 23–25, 311 “The Covenant as a Soteriological Category and the Nature of Salvation in Palestinian and Hellenistic Judaism” (Sanders), 34n14 Covenant of Damascus, 107 Crossan, John Dominic, 213–14, 216, 230, 237–38 Crossley, Samuel, 13 Cullmann, Oscar, 6–7 Cyprian of Carthage, 119, 133n23 Dahl, Nils, 359 Damascus Document, 299–300 Daube, David, 14, 15, 18, 32 Davies, W. D. mentioned, 14, 15, 16, 21 scholarship of —influence on Sanders, 32, 36n38

Udoh.indb 407

407

—Sanders compared, 5–6, 9, 22–23 Dead Sea Scrolls, 28 Dead Sea sectarians, 141 Deines, Roland, 176–79, 182, 186 Deissmann (Gustav Adof), 32 DeMille, Cecil B., 228 Descartes, 365 Diaspora Jews, 153–54, 187 dietary practices and laws, 76–77, 156–58, 168, 183 Dionysus, 75 Dodd, C. H., 15, 229 Doré, Gustav, 264 Duke, James B., 7 Duke University founding, 7–8 Dunn, James, 60n21, 63n67, 320, 375 Efird, James M., 6 Eleazar ha-Moda’i, 133n24 Eliezer (Rabbi), 306n11 Eliezer ben Dama, 118, 119 Elijah, 125–29, 206 Elish ben Avuya, 93 Encyclopedia Judaica, 29 Engberg-Pedersen, Troels, 31, 324 Epictetus, 81 Epicureans, 146 Epistle ad Pomponium, de Virginibus (Cyprian), 133n23 Epstein, J. N., 19–20, 27, 32 Essenes, 92–93, 107–8, 180–81 Eupolemus, 206 Excavating Jesus (Crossan and Reed), 213 exclusion Israel, present day practices of, 110 from salvation, 117–20 from the temple, 92–93, 100n22, 107–8, 222 Ezekiel, 201–2, 205–6, 219, 220, 222

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408

Index of Names and Subjects

Farmer, William R., 13, 14, 15, 16, 38n47 Ferrell, Donald R., 325 festivals, 81, 91 figural art, prohibition against, 163–65, 169 Fine, Steven, 185 Flusser, David, 116, 232, 238 Ford, Lewis S., 325 The Founder of Christianity (Dodd), 229 Fox, Robin Lane, 27, 32 Frankel, Saul, 34n16 Fredriksen, Paula, 229–30, 283–84, 289–93 Freud, S., 127 Freyne, Seán, 40n74, 215, 216, 219, 222 From the Maccabees to the Mishnah (Cohen), 106 Furnish, Victor, 21 Gaius, 214, 219 Galilee commercialization and monetization, 213–14, 216–17 ethnic tensions in, 203–7 Hellenization of, 213, 215–17 Jewish, archaeological record of, 213–19 in Josephus’s writings, 199, 204 in the literary record, 218–21 postresurrection Christian movement and, 271–73 protest movements, brigands, and revolt in, 219 Romanization of, 213–17 temple’s significance to Galileans, 197–99, 200–203 territorial boundaries, 205–6, 219–21, 223 Galilee of the Gentiles, 204 Galor, Katharina, 162

Udoh.indb 408

Gamala, 199 Gamaliel II, 91 Gathercole, Simon J., 376 Geertz, Clifford, 207 Genesis Apocryphon, 206 George, Peter, 34n16 Gibson, Mel, 228 Gibson, Shimon, 159, 186 Goodenough, E. R., 15, 16–17, 30–31, 32 Goodman, Martin, 27, 40n74, 111, 237 The Gospel according to the Son (Mailer), 228 The Gospel and the Land (Davies), 32 Gospel of Thomas (Castelli), 54–55 Goulder, Michael, 324 grace and the transformation of agency in Christ, 375–86 Grantham, B. J., 157–58 Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism (Stern), 71 Greek Religion (Burkert), 32 Greek writing as evidence of common Judaism, 71, 72–83 Greenberg, Moshe, 93–94 Gregorian calendar, 99n13 Gregory of Nyssa, 348–49 Gregory XIII, 99n13 Gundry, Robert H., 376 Hasmoneans, 30, 163–65, 169 Hays, Richard, 354–55, 356 Hecataeus of Abdera, 77 Hellenism Galilee, impact on, 213–17 Jewish identity, influence on, 164, 166–67 Judaism’s conflict with, centrality to the crucifixion, 231–43 Pharisees opposition to, 232 Sadducees as representatives of, 232 Hellmuth, Bill, 34n16

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Index of Names and Subjects

Hengel, Martin, 176–79, 182, 186, 236–38, 241–42 Henrich, Albert, 44 Herford, R. T., 117, 132n12 Herod Antipas, 97 Herodians, 30, 164, 165, 169, 200 Herod the Great, 164, 200, 219, 221–23 Hilert, Sven, 3326 The Historical Figure of Jesus (Sanders), 26 historiographers, responsibilities of, 104–12 Hodder, Ian, 178, 184 Hodge, Caroline Johnson, 361 Homo Necans (Burkert), 32 Hooker, M. D., 375 Horsley, Richard, 198 identity, Jewish centrality of the temple in, 197–99 defining through material evidence, 179–84 dietary practices and, 157, 183 Hellenistic influence on, 164, 166–67 Jesus’, 240–41 Paul’s, 9 Ignatius of Antioch, 133n23 The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel (Dodd, C. H.), 15, 31 Irenaeus, 133n23 Ishmael ben Elisha, 118 Israel, present day, 109–12 Jackson, Bernard, 43 Jacob of Kefar Sekaniah, 118 James, brother of Jesus, 143 Jeremiah, 201–2 Jeremias, Joachim, 20 Jerusalem Jesus’ entry into, 248, 268–70, 287–89

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409

Jesus’ lament over, 288–89 postresurrection Christian movement and, 271–73 synagogues in, 72–73 Jerusalem (Levine), 32 Jerusalem Conference, 318n9 Jerusalem temple. See also the Temple incident archaeological record of, 198, 217 architecture, 200, 221–23, 264 competition with the, 91–92 exclusion from, 92–93, 100n22, 107–8, 222 function of, 252–53 Galileans, importance to, 197–99, 202–3 governance of —calendar disputes, 90–92 —Israel’s present day practices compared, 109–12 —priestly practices, limits of evidence regarding, 105–9 —Sadducees influence in, 148, 232 —sectarian groups, power of, 90, 94–96 —temple authorities power over, 89–90, 92–94, 98n9 —will of the majority in, 106 Greek and Latin writers on, 77–78 Jesus’ ministry, importance to, 200–203, 207–8 Jews, importance to, 77, 197–99, 202–3 pilgrimage to, 93, 198, 203 a place for women in, 200, 221–22 prophecy of destruction, other than Jesus’, 291 signs of observance, adherence to, 92–93, 98n9, 202 Jesus anti-Hellenistic attitudes, 240–41

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410

Index of Names and Subjects

Jesus (cont.) as Christos, military connotations, 342 Crossan’s, 237 disciples of, 251, 289–90, 291 Jews, conflict with, 240–41 in John vs. Synoptic Gospels, 247–50 lament over Jerusalem, 288–89 the living God, 122 Maccabean consciousness, 233–35 as magician, 118–19 as Messiah, 254, 265–70, 271, 290, 292, 342 in Methodism, 8 as one who pronounces the Divine Name as it is spelled, 119 self-definition —as Jewish, 9, 240–41 —as Messiah, 265–70, 271, 290, 292 as social revolutionary, 223–24, 230–31, 266 as socioeconomic reformer, 213, 214 temple’s importance to ministry of, 200–203, 207–8 travel outside Galilee, 205–6, 219–20, 223, 266 trial, 96–97, 248, 292 violation of the Sabbath through healing, 297–304 water transformed into wine, 161 Jesus, arrest and crucifixion causative elements —acclamation of the crowds, 269–71, 284, 288–90 —accusations of brigandage, 223–24 —accusations of sorcery, 118 —challenge to the temple authorities, 96–97 —messianic claim, 292–93

Udoh.indb 410

—priests as necessary, 255–56 —Temple incident, 283–93 contemporary retelling of, 227–29 cultural context, 233–35 in fiction and film, 228, 243 Hellenism-Judaism in conflict, centrality to, 231–43 John the Baptist’s death compared, 255 Maccabean martyrs suffering reenacted, 234 in Mark vs. John, 265–71 Pharisees role in, 232 political context of, 229–31, 232, 251, 255–56, 266, 271, 284, 290–93 See also under Caiaphas; Pilate (Pontius) Jesus and Judaism (Sanders), 25–27, 197, 221, 246, 252, 274, 283 Jesus and the Victory of God (Wright), 233 Jesus movement, 242, 271–73 Jesus of Nazareth (Bornkamm), 236 Jesus Pandera, 118 Jesus son of Ananias, 202, 260, 291 Jewett, Robert, 63n67 Jewish burial practices, 155–56, 167–68 Jewish Christians, 25, 117–20, 315, 320–22 Jewish Galilee, 213–19 Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah (Sanders), 139, 297 Jewish material culture chronological aspect, 187 common Judaism and, 187–88 cultural aspect of, 184–86 defining sectarian identity on the basis of, 179–84 Pharisaic influence on, 176–79 regional aspect, 186–87

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Index of Names and Subjects

Jewish Symbols (Goodenough), 15, 16 Jews covenantal relationship with God, 24–25, 115, 322 Gentiles compared, by Julian, 77 identity of the God of the, 72, 75 Jerusalem temple, importance to, 77, 197–99, 207–8 Jesus’ conflict with, 240–41 obligations of, 197 See also Judaism John, Gospel of Bultmann’s interpretation of, 7 externalization of the Jews in, 9 Sadducees in, 144 vs. Synoptic Gospels on the Temple incident, 200–202, 247–50, 252, 256–63, 273–75, 283–93 John Among the Gospels (Smith), 250 John the Baptist, 97, 223, 255, 277n13 John of Gischala, 211n30 Jones, A. H. M., 32 Jones, Jameson, 5 Josephus Paul described by, 97 Sabbath prohibitions, 300 Sanders use as source material, 27–28 Smith on inconsistencies in, 29 writings on —asylum refused in Galilee without circumcision, 204 —Essenes exclusion from the Temple, 107–8 —Galilean brigands, 218 —Jewish Galilee, 199, 204 —John the Baptist’s execution, 223 —the priesthood, 143 —the Sadducees, 95, 139–40, 142, 143, 145–46, 148

Udoh.indb 411

411

—source of prestige and authority for the Jews, 94 —temple importance, 199 —temple pilgrimage, 198 —unity and commonality in Jewish practice, 154 Joshua ben Hananiah, 91 Joshua ben Levi, 122, 125–29 Judah the Prince, 167 Judaism. See also common Judaism; Jews early Christianity’s relationship with, 9, 242 exclusive, 237, 238 Hellenism-Judaism in conflict, centrality to the crucifixion, 231–43 vs. Judaisms in antiquity, 69–70, 82–83 Paul and —backwards reasoning, 317, 326–27 —conflicting convictions of, 323–26 —critique of faith vs. works, 311–17 —his break with, 23–25, 319–22 —interpretation of the covenant, 320 Pharisaic influence on, 176–79 resurrection beliefs —“At the Mouth of the Cave” (Heleq), 125–29 —salvation and, 113–25 —Sabbath prohibitions, 298–304 Judaism (Moore), 20 Judaism and Hellenism (Hengel), 236 Judaism in the First Centuries of the Christian Era (Moore), 130n2 Judaism: Practice and Belief (Sanders), 27–30, 139, 176, 187, 197 Judas, 228 Judas Maccabeus, 234 Julian, 77

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412

Index of Names and Subjects

Justus of Tiberias, 199 Juvenal, 79–80 Käesmann, Ernst, 341, 343 Kamrat, Mordechai, 14, 18–19 Karaites, 149 Kee, Howard C., 44 Keren Naftali, 219 Khirbet Qana, 216–17, 221 The King of Kings (film), 228, 243 Kloppenborg, John, 198 Knox, John, 14 Koetting, Phyllis DeRosa, 25 Kuula, Kari, 322 Lai, Pan-Chiu, 325 Lamouille, A., 143 Latin writing as evidence of common Judaism, 71, 72–83 Lauterbach, Jacob Z., 19 Lee, Alvin, 34n16 legalism, 35n30 Levine, Lee, 32, 164, 179 Leviticus, 28 Lev-Tov, Justin, 158, 184 Lieberman, Saul, 32 Life of Josephus (S. Mason, ed.), 215 Lock, Margaret, 48 Maccabean crisis, 141 Maccabean martyrs, 233–34 Magen, Yitzhak, 160 Magness, Jodi, 181 Mailer, Norman, 228 Malina, Bruce, 47 A Marginal Jew (Meier), 253–54 Martin, Dale, 50–52, 54 Martyn, J. L., 322 Martyn, Louis, 14, 21 material culture, Jewish common Judaism and, 187–88

Udoh.indb 412

defining sectarian identity on the basis of, 179–84 Palestinian Jewish, emergence of, 182 Pharisaic influence on Jewish, 176–79 Qumran, 180–82 religious concepts in formation of elements of, 184–86 Mattathias, 233 McCane, Byron, 156 McEleney, Neil, 89 McKee, Larry, 157 Meier, John, 230–31, 254–55, 256–57, 279n36 Meir (Rabbi), 122, 306n11 Meleager, 74 Mendelson, Alan, 25 the Messiah Jesus as, 254, 265–70, 271, 290, 292, 342 Rabbi Joshua ben Levi’s dialogue with, 125–29 Methodism, 8 Mevo’ot le-Sifrut ha-Tannaim (Epstein), 19, 32 Meyer, Ben, 25 Meyers, Eric M., 6, 40n74, 178, 183, 185, 186 Micah, 291 Middle Ages, redefinition of the male self as female in, 56–57 Millar, Fergus, 27, 32 Miller, Stuart, 157, 159, 160, 186 miqva’ot (ritual baths), 161–63, 177–78, 181 the Mishnah, Sanders’s use of, 28 Moore, George Foot, 16–17, 20, 22, 130n2 Moses, 94 Moses and Monotheism (Freud), 127

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Index of Names and Subjects

Moule, C. F. D., 36n38 The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle (Schweitzer), 336 Nanos, Mark, 320 Nehemiah (Rabbi), 92, 93, 299 Nehemiah, Sanders’s use of, 28 Neusner, Jacob, 153 Nicodemus, 243 Olan, Levi A., 13 On the Mixture of Physical Bodies (Alexander of Aphrodisias), 363 ordination, Wesley and, 8 Origen, 133n23 Orwell, George, 100n20 ossilegium, 156, 178, 187 ossuary burial, 155–56, 177–78, 185, 186–87 Pagans and Christians (Fox), 32 The Passion of the Christ (film), 228 “Patterns of Religion in Paul and Rabbinic Judaism” (Sanders), 9 Patterson, David, 15 Paul Antioch Incident, 315, 320 Christian Gentiles and —inclusion in the covenant, 322, 340–41 —requirement to keep the law, 25, 320 Christians, persecution of, 314–16 circumcision, position on, 313, 315, 320, 327 defiling of the temple, 108 at Galatia, 313 on gender equality, 53–55 on the human vs. the resurrection body, 50–51, 357–58 identity as Jewish, 9

Udoh.indb 413

413

Judaism and —backwards reasoning, 317, 326–27 —conflicting convictions, 323–29 —critique of faith vs. works, 311–17 —his break with, 23–25, 319–22 —interpretation of the covenant, 320 the law and, 25, 320, 327, 364 as mystic, 22 participationist language, 340, 366 particularity and, 365–66 prediction of destruction of the temple, knowledge of, 261–62 purification from corpse uncleanness, 101n26 rebuke of Christian men visiting prostitutes, 50–51 salvation, requirements for, 119–21 as second founder of Christianity, 318n9 on sin, 341–42 theology of, covenantal nomism compared, 23–25, 373–74 See also Pauline participation in Christ Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People (Sanders), 319 Paul and Palestinian Judaism (Sanders), 14–25, 115, 230–31, 311, 319, 336, 338–39, 341, 343–44, 346, 352, 373–75 Pauline participation in Christ defining —as belonging to a family, 339–41 —Eastern Orthodoxy in, 347–49 —as ecclesial participation, 343–45 —as narrative participation, 345–46 —as a political/military solidarity with Christ, 341–43 —Sanders on, 336–40 —Schweitzer’s interpretation, 337, 352–54

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414

Index of Names and Subjects

Pauline participation in Christ (cont.) defining the self —bodily experience of participation in, 48–51 —regendering fostered by participation, 51–58 gender identity and, 53–58 interpreting the language of, 352–57, 366 logic of contiguity of substances, 357–58, 365–66 pneuma, nature and role of, 355–56, 358, 360–64 by reception of the Holy Spirit, 52–53, 60n21 and salvation —by grace vs. expectation of good works, 373–76 —by the lineage of faithfulness, 340–41, 358–62, 364–65 —patterns of divine and human agency, 373–74 —role of the pneuma in, 360–64 See also Paul On Perfection (Gregory of Nyssa), 348–49 Persius, 74–75 Peter of Antioch, 25 Petronius, 76, 78–79 Pharisees/Pharisaism burial practices, 156 doctrine, 146 Hellenism, opposition to, 232 influence of, 30, 95, 176–79 role in death of Jesus, 232 Sadducees vs., 143, 146–47, 232 salvation, requirements for, 120 Philip, 164, 223 Philo, 17, 28, 31–32, 37n39, 300–301, 363

Udoh.indb 414

Pilate (Pontius) Caiaphas and, 228, 230, 251 in fiction and film, 228, 243 and Jesus’ arrest and crucifixion —the decision to crucify, 255–56, 266, 269, 270–71 —political context, 251, 284, 290–93 —the temple incident and, 291–92 as the new Antiochus, 235 Plutarch (Moiragenes), 75–76, 81 pneuma, 51, 52, 355–56, 358–64 Politis, Konstantino, 180 Polybius, 77 Popper, Karl, 125 postresurrection Christian movement, 242, 271–72 prayer, 72–73, 348 Presbyterian Church (USA), 313 Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), 313 Preston, Mel, 34n16 Price, James L., 6 Price, Simon, 27 priests/priesthood governance of the Jerusalem temple, 105–9 influence of, 30 Sadducees origins in the, 142–45 purity practices chronological aspect, 187 in common Judaism, 77, 168 from corpse uncleanness, 77, 93, 101n26, 160 Greek and Latin writers on, 77 Israel, present day, 110 Pharisaic, 178 pilgrimage preparations, 93 Qumran, 93, 181 red heifer sacrifice, 93, 110, 160 ritual baths, 161–63, 177–78, 181

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Index of Names and Subjects

stone vessels and, 158–62, 177–78, 186 temple policies regarding, 92–93, 98n9 of the Torah, 77 Qumran, 93, 180–82, 223 Rabban Gamaliel, 123 rabbinic Judaism, 82 Räisänen, Heikki, 40n74 Rajak, Tessa, 239 Rashi (Rabbi Shlomo Yitzhaqi), 123–24, 135n30 Ray, Nicholas, 243 redemption by Moses, 128 red heifer sacrifice, 93, 110, 160 Reed, Jonathan L., 186, 213–14, 216 Reformation, 8 Regev, Eyal, 186 A Rereading of Romans (Stowers), 369n25 resurrection belief in —“At the Mouth of the Cave” (Heleq), 125–29 —ossuary burial as evidence of, 178, 185 —Sadducees, 124, 147 —salvation and, 113–25 spiritual vs. bodily, 135n34, 357–58 Richardson, Peter, 41n74 ritual baths (miqva’ot), 161–63, 77–178, 181 Rivkin, Ellis, 27 Robertson, John, 25 The Roman Near East (Millar), 32 the Sabbath, 72–76, 92, 138n46, 297–304

Udoh.indb 415

415

Sabbath Codex, 299 Sadducees burial practices, 156 culture and politics, 139–47, 149 doctrine, 146–48 Hellenism and, 232 influence of, 148, 232 name of the, derivation of, 140–41 Pharisees vs., 95, 143, 146–47, 232 post–70 C.E., 148–49 pre–first century C.E., 141 priestly origins, 142–45 resurrection, belief in, 124 role in trial of Jesus, 96–97 social status, 142 theology, 145–46 traditional view of the, 139–40 salvation exclusion from, 116–20 by grace vs. expectation of good works, 373–76 in Judaism —“At the Mouth of the Cave” (Heleq), 125–29 —the covenantal relationship in, 24–25, 322 —resurrection beliefs and, 113–25 by the lineage of faithfulness, 340–41, 358–62, 364–65 patterns of divine and human agency, 373–74 role of the pneuma in, 360–64 Samaritans, 102n39, 188 Sanders, E. P. background and education, 11–16, 18–19 on Bultmann, 14 enduring influence of, 10, 224, 372–73 influences on, 15

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416

Index of Names and Subjects

Sanders, E. P. (cont.) on Jesus and Judaism, 25–27 on Judaism: Practice and Belief, 27–30 on Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 14–25 scholarship of —Bultmann compared, 46 —influences on, 31, 32 —Neusner on, 153 —primary sources, 28–29, 71 —W. D. Davies compared, 5–6, 9, 22–23 Smith on, 3–5, 8–10 as a teacher, 4 university service, 5 Sanders, E. P., works of bibliography, 391–96 “The Covenant as a Soteriological Category and the Nature of Salvation in Palestinian and Hellenistic Judaism,” 34n14 The Historical Figure of Jesus, 26 Jesus and Judaism, 25–27, 197, 221, 246, 252, 274, 283 Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah, 139, 297 Judaism: Practice and Belief, 27–30, 139, 176, 187, 197 “Patterns of Religion in Paul and Rabbinic Judaism,” 9 Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People, 319 Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 14–25, 115, 230–31, 311, 319, 336, 338–39, 341, 343–44, 346, 352, 373–75 “The Tendencies of the Synoptic Tradition,” 15–16 Sanders, Laura, 25 Sandmel, Samuel, 17, 24

Udoh.indb 416

Sanhedrin trial, 292 Scheper-Hughes, Nancy, 48 Schmidt, Francis, 97n1 Schwartz, Daniel R., 96 Schweitzer, Albert Pauline participation in Christ and, 46, 352–54, 356 Sanders and scholarship of, 22, 32, 336, 337, 343–44 Second Commandment, observation of the, 163–65 Second Intifada, 113n15 sectarianism, 90, 94–96 self, defining the baptism’s impact on, 53–54 the body-self in, 47–48 Greco-Roman, 51–53 as Jewish, 9, 240–41 normative, 42–44 in Pauline Christianity —bodily experience of participation in, 48–51 —through grace, 46–47 —regendering fostered by participation, 51–58 pneuma in construction of, 51, 52 for women, 45, 50–57 Seneca, 75 Sepphoris/Sepphorites, 199–200, 213, 215, 216 Shanks, Michael, 184 Shlomo Luria, 131n8 Simeon bar Yohai, 125–29 Simlai (Rabbi), 122, 124 Simon bar Kosiba (Bar Kochba or Bar Koziba), 141 Smith, D. Moody, 6, 250 Smith, Morton, 14, 26, 29, 32, 95, 97n1 Spanje, T. van, 324 Stendahl, Krister, 343

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Index of Names and Subjects

Stern, Menahem, 71, 81 Stinespring, W. F., 6 Stoic corporealism, 368n21 stone vessels, use of, 158–62, 177–78, 185–87 Stowers, Stanley K., 369n25 Strabo, 76 subject-self, 47 synagogues in common Judaism, 72–73 Pharisaic origination of, 177–79 Synoptic Gospels vs. John on the Temple incident, 200–202, 247– 50, 252, 256–63, 273–75, 283–93 Systematic Theology (Tillich), 325 Tacitus, 77, 81, 198, 202 Teacher of Righteousness, attack by the Wicked Priest, 92 the Temple incident architectural context, 221–23 enacting a prophecy/as a symbol of destruction, 221, 253–54, 256–65, 288–89 environmental context, 264–65 follower’s understanding of, 263–64 in Galilee vs. Jerusalem setting, 200–203 historicity of —limits in reconstructing, 109 —in Mark vs. John, 262–75 —multiple attestations, assessing post–70 C.E., 257–62 —scholarly agreement on, 246–47, 256 —in Synoptic Gospels vs. John, 247–50 Jesus’ death and, 250–56, 283–93 in John vs. Synoptic Gospels, 200–202, 247–50, 262–75, 283–93

Udoh.indb 417

417

Maccabean influence on, 234 repudiating temple sacrifices, 252–53 as socio-economic religious protest, 221, 222–23, 224, 252 the Triumphal Entry, connection to, 287–89 “The Tendencies of the Synoptic Tradition” (Sanders), 15–16 Tertullian, 371n39 Thecla, 55 Theissen, Gerd, 324 Theology of the New Testament (Bultmann), 338 Tiberius, 199, 200, 213 Tillich, Paul, 325 Toldoth Yeshu, 119 Torah, 72–73, 77, 93–94 Tosefta ki-Fshutah (Lieberman), 32 Tov, Emmanuel, 94 the Triumphal Entry, 248, 268–70, 287–89 Untane toqef qedushat ha-yom, 127 Urbach, E. E., 133n24 “The Use of the Old Testament in the New” (Smith), 6 Vallée, Gérard, 25 Vaux, Roland de, 180 Vermes, Geza, 27, 236–37, 249 Vibia Perpetua, 55–56 Wacholder, Ben Zion, 24 Wedderburn, A. J. M., 49–50, 66n92 Wesley, John, 8 Wesleyanism, 8 Westerholm, Stephen, 376 Wicked Priest attack on the Teacher of Righteousness, 92 Wire, Antoinette, 50

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418

Index of Names and Subjects

Wolfson, Harry A., 17 women circumcision of, 76 self-definition, 45, 50–57 Wright, N. T., 232–35, 238, 254, 375 Yadin, Yigael, 14

Udoh.indb 418

Yinger, Kent L., 375 Yodefat (Jotapata), 215–16, 221 Yohanan the High Priest, 102n33 Yom Kippur celebrations, 91–92 Zadok, 141, 142 Zerubbabel’s temple, 222

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