IV: THE GENTILE MESSIAH
For my money, the best study of Luke is Joseph A. Fitzmyer’s The Gospel According to Luke (New York, 1970, 1985) in two volumes of the Anchor Bible Commentaries series. Fitzmyer, perhaps our leading expert on ancient Aramaic (and one of the most important scholars to work on the DSS), has an extraordinary background in classical and ancient Near East languages and cultures; yet he is modest in his assertions and appreciative of Luke’s unique qualities both as evangelist and stylist. His English translation of Luke is without peer and was most helpful to me in making my own.
Though a majority of scholars put the gospels of Matthew and Luke in the late 70s or early 80s, a preponderance of these would now place Luke a little earlier than Matthew. In my text, I suggest the opposite, but this is because Luke strikes me as more developed theologically than Matthew (and, as I say later on, halfway to the theology of John). Matthew could well have written later than Luke; but, even so, he exemplifies the earlier and less exalted Christology of Palestinian Jewish Christians.
Though I mention Jesus’s provocative attitude toward the Temple, I do so only as an example of Luke’s tendency to tone down instances of Jesus’s anger—and Jesus’s temper was definitely part of the oral tradition. For an exhaustive (and enlightening) consideration of Jesus’s relationship to Temple Judaism, see Sanders (see notes to Chapter Two). For my treatment of Jesus’s miracles, I am much indebted to John P. Meier’s A Marginal Jew, volume 2:509–1038 (see notes to Chapter Two).
V: DRUNK IN THE MORNING LIGHT
Once again. Joseph Fitzmyer comes to our rescue with his Anchor Bible Commentary, in this case on The Acts of the Apostles (New York, 1998), an immensely learned and judicious assessment of the many (and conflicting) waves of contemporary scholarship. The picture of communistic Jerusalem Christianity painted by Luke is, like much of Luke, idealistic rather than realistic—intended as an archetype for bad times.
A small book by Raymond E. Brown was essential to my picture of the early Christians—The Churches the Apostles Left Behind (New York, 1984)—but others of his small books, all from Paulist Press, were also helpful, especially Priest and Bishop (New York, 1970) and, with John P. Meier, Antioch and Rome (New York, 1983). A lovely reimagining of the early Christians is presented in the first volume of Michel Clévenot’s Les hommes de la fraternité (Paris, 1981).
The touchstone feminist study of the life of the early Christians is Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza’s In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins (New York, 1983). Though I disagree (mildly) with her in my main text on the question of who wrote Colossians. I find that her Overall approach, bracing in one’s first encounter, only grows in stature as this book approaches its seventeenth birthday.
The excerpt from Dorothy Day is taken from her essay “Room for Christ,” collected in By Little and By Little: The Selected Writings of Dorothy Day, edited by Robert Ellsberg and Tamar Hennessy (New York, 1983). The poem by Emily Dickinson is number 409 in her collected poems. The lines from Gerard Manley Hopkins come from his untitled poem that begins “As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame.”
VI: THE WORD MADE FLESH
The great interpreter of John’s Gospel and letters is Raymond E. Brown, who to some extent based his studies on the seminal work of C. H. Dodd. His Anchor Bible Commentaries The Gospel According to John (New York, 1966, 1970), in two volumes, and The Epistles of John (New York, 1982) are among the most influential works of modern biblical criticism. Though Brown had hoped to revise the Gospel volumes, his untimely death has prevented that; but his treatment of John’s Gospel in his final work, An Introduction to the New Testament (see notes to Chapter Two), gives some indication of what shape his revision might have taken. Essential to my picture of the evolution and sensitivities of the Johannine church was Brown’s groundbreaking The Community of the Beloved Disciple: The Life, Loves, and Hates of an Individual Church in New Testament Times (New York, 1979).
Once again, there are many topics standard in scriptural studies that I fail to deal with in the main text because these have little or no bearing on our principal pursuit of establishing the impact of Jesus on our culture. One of these, which may puzzle the reader, is John’s unique chronology for the Passion narrative. In Paul and the Synoptics, the Last Supper, which takes place “on the night he was betrayed,” is clearly thought to have been a “Passover [meal].” In John, Jesus on the day after his betrayal comes before Pilate, and this day John describes as “the Day of Preparation [for Passover],” thus indicating that Passover is yet to take place. It is obvious that John does this for theological reasons, especially to dramatize the role of Jesus as Paschal Lamb and unleavened [i.e., incorrupt] bread, but which chronology is the correct one can probably never be settled. For a detailed study of this and similar contradictions between John and the Synoptic tradition, see Brown, The Gospel According to John (above).
Perhaps nothing will give readers pause so much as my failure to deal directly with the question of who killed Jesus. Once again, this question has little bearing on our principal considerations; and its function in the history of anti-Semitism has made it invidious. I actually belong to the Brown school on this one: I think (pace Crossan et al.) that the gospels are suffciently reliable historical documents for us to conclude that some Jewish leaders whipped up popular animosity toward Jesus and used this to influence the Roman governor, who like most Roman officials needed scant provocation to execute a Jewish troublemaker. But from the perspective of cultural history, as from an informed theological perspective, such a conclusion takes us nowhere. The deep truth of the matter, both in the New Testament and in all the subsequent cultural development of the West that we can continue to cherish as valuable, is that we all killed Jesus—and are forgiven.
Contrary to my assertion at the outset of this chapter that the Jews in the time of Jesus were expecting only one Messiah, John J. Collins in The Scepter and the Star (see notes to Chapter One), 74ff., draws our attention to indications in the DSS that among the Essenes there may have been some expectation of two messiahs, a kingly one and a priestly one. But the Essenes were far removed from normal Jewish life; and we may take their (possible) expectation as the exception that proves the rule. (In earlier times, the word “messiah,” or moshiach, had been applied to many different men, such as Saul, David, and even Cyrus the Great.)
The incomparable study of Jesus’s Passion is Raymond E. Brown’s The Death of the Messiah: From Gethsemane to the Grave (New York, 1994) in two volumes, an exquisitely detailed “commentary on the Passion narratives in the four gospels.” It is Brown’s masterpiece, the result of a lifetime of reflection, and I doubt it will ever be surpassed.
The most recent “Shroud” book of interest is Leoncio A. Garza-Valdes’s The DNA of God? (New York, 1999), which proposes the bioplastic coating that confounds accurate carbon dating. But many other books have attempted to establish the Shroud’s authenticity, most convincingly perhaps several books by Ian Wilson and various reports by STURP (Shroud of Turin Research Project) on research carried out in the 1970s. (Much of the essential information on this project is contained in Report on the Shroud of Turin by John Heller, who was professor of internal medicine at Yale, though the carbon-14 tests on the Shroud came after the work of Heller and his colleagues.) But all these texts have something of the whiff of the unhinged believer about them. The great fear that anyone must have in going near this material is to be dismissed as another “Shroudie.” Though I find the data immensely intriguing and largely convincing, nothing that I have to say in this book depends on the Shroud’s authenticity or would have to be altered if the Shroud were definitively proved a forgery.
The quotation toward the end of this chapter from the hymn in Paul’s Letter to the Philippians, may seem to confirm that Paul, like John, held to a Christology that saw Jesus as the incarnation of God’s preexistent “Word” (“Though he possessed divine estate …”). But it is jus
t as legitimate to read this hymn as an example of Paul’s “Adamic” Christology. Jesus, born like Adam “in the image of God,” “was not jealous to retain” any of the favors of Eden but “cast off” his rightful human “inheritance,” and took on “the nature of a slave”—that is, the lot of fallen humanity. Though I have chosen to explain Paul according to the “Adamic” Christology that Murphy-O’Connor and others find in his letters, a good argument can also be made for interpreting Paul along the lines of an “eternal preexistence-with-God” Christology that more closely approaches John. For an impressive defense of this second position, see John P. Meier’s A Marginal Jew (see notes to Chapter Two). Volume 3 (forthcoming).
The full text of “Still Falls the Rain” by Edith Sitwell may be found in her Collected Poems (New York, 1954).
VII: YESTERDAY, TODAY, AND FOREVER
The quotations from. Chaim Potok are taken from his novel My Name Is Asher Lev (New York, 1972). Potok has written a second book about the same character, called The Gift of Asher Lev (New York, 1990). Potok sets Asher Lev’s experience of Michelangelo’s late Pietà in the Duomo (or cathedral) of Florence. Since 1981, however, this sculpture has been housed in the Museo dell’ Opera del Duomo behind the cathedral.
Malcolm Muggeridge expressed his fervent admiration for Mother Teresa and her nuns in Something Beautiful for God (San Francisco, 1971). His reflection on who runs leprosariums was first offered, I believe, in his “Seasonal Cross-Examination of Himself” in the Observer Review for December 15, 1968, but it is also contained in his BBC television program on the work of Mother Teresa. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is available in many collections of documents and at www.un.org. Mohammad Yunus, founder of the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh, wrote an engrossing op-ed piece for the New York Times (April 2, 1990) under the headline “Credit as a Human Right.” An editorial on the same subject appeared in the New York Times (February 16, 1997) under the headline “Micro-Loans for the Very Poor.” The Journal of Economic Issues (June 1997) carried an excellent article on the work of the Grameen Bank under the unpromising title “The Grameen Bank as Progressive Institutional Adjustment.” A brief biography of the life of Aung San Suu Kyi, who is a follower of Gandhi and daughter of Aung San, the George Washington of Burma, may be found in Current Biography Yearbook 1992. Her essays are collected under the tide Freedom from Fear (London, 1991).
Donald Kagan’s dazzling tour de force of historical analysis, On the Origins of War and the Preservation of Peace (New York, 1995), takes us from the Peloponnesian War of the fifth century B.C. to the Cuban Missile Crisis. The quotation from Yuan Zhiming is taken from “The Pilgrimage from Tiananmen Square” by Ian Buruma in the New York Times Magazine (April 11, 1999).
The headquarters of the Community of Sant’Egidio is Piazza di Sant’Egidio 3A, 00153 Roma. Except during August, they meet for prayer at 8:30 every evening in the basilica of Santa Maria in Trastevere, an excellent opportunity to approach a member of the community for additional information. The Friends of Saint Giles, an American offshoot of Sant’Egidio, meet for prayer every Wednesday evening at 5:45, except during August and on the day and eve of national holidays, at Saint Malachy’s Church, 239 West 49th Street, New York, NY 10019.
The quotation from W.H. Auden is the ending to his verse play For the Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio and may be found in his Collected Longer Poems (New York, 1969).
In closing, I would like to give the context for the alarming assertion of Shaye Cohen with which this book began. It was delivered as part of a Jewish-Christian dialogue (with John Meier) on “The Jewishness of Jesus” at Fordham University, November 10, 1993, and is contained in No Religion Is an Island: The Nostra Aetate Dialogues (New York, 1998):
“The challenge that the Jewishness of Jesus brings to Christianity is that Christians must develop a non-supersessionist theology that validates the Christian message and the Christian promise without at the same time de-legitimating Judaism for Jews. Christians must find a way to maintain Christianity’s identity and sense of purpose without at the same time denying Judaism a reason for its continued existence. That is a contemporary challenge to those who take seriously Jesus’s Jewishness.
“The challenge that the Jewishness of Jesus brings to Judaism is that Jews must develop a theology of the Other, a theology that validates the Jewish way without at the same time de-legitimating the Christian message and the Christian promise for Christians. We Jews must realize that Christians, too, have a claim to the Old Testament (as Christians call it) and to biblical history, and that the Christian claims are no less real and no less authentic than our own. The challenge is to recognize that Christianity, too, is (or at least once was) a form of Judaism, and that we Jews must work out in our own minds a way of understanding what Christianity is, and what purpose Christianity serves in the cosmic order. As fas as I know, Jewish thinkers have barely begun to confront this challenge, but the challenge must be confronted.”
We have all of us barely begun to confront the challenges Shaye Cohen rightly sets for us. But I dare to hope that this book, taken in conjunction with its predecessor, The Gifts of the Jews, will be seen as a step toward answering these challenges and even as an act of reconciliation.
The Books of the New Testament
THE NARRATIVES
The Gospel According to Matthew
The Gospel According to Mark
The Gospel According to Luke
The Gospel According to John
The Acts of the Apostles
THE LETTERS TO THE PAULINE CHURCHES
* Romans
*1 Corinthians
*2 Corinthians
*Galatians
Ephesians
*Philippians
Colossians
*1 Thessalonians
2 Thessalonians
† 1 Timothy
2 Timothy
† Titus
† Hebrews
THE CATHOLIC LETTERS
(written in letter form but intended as literary documents for all, thus “catholic”)
James
1 Peter
† 2 Peter
1 John
2 John
3 John
†Jude
PROPHECY/APOCALYPTIC
The Revelation of John
* Paul’s authorship rarely disputed.
† Paul’s authorship universally disclaimed.
† Apostolic authorship universally disclaimed.
Chronology
This is hardly a complete chronology, just a reference guide to historical daces relevant to episodes mentioned in the main text.
1010–970 B.C. David rules the United Kingdom of Israel.
966 David’s son Solomon builds the Temple in Jerusalem.
933 The United Kingdom is divided into Israel and Judah.
722/721 The Kingdom of Israel is overrun by the forces of the Assyrian king Sargon II, and its inhabitants are deported: the ten northern tribes are lost.
597 Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon captures Jerusalem, begins deporting Jews (Babylonian Captivity); he then levels Temple and city.
539 Cyrus, king of the Persians, enters Babylon.
538 The Edict of Cyrus is proclaimed, allowing the exiles to return to the Promised Land.
515 The Second Temple is completed.
336 Alexander the Great on the throne of Macedon.
332 Alexander marches through Palestine.
323 Alexander dies in Babylon; his empire is divided.
200 Greek Seleucid kings rule Palestine from Antioch.
167–164 Construction of Acra at Jerusalem; the Temple is defiled by pagans.
166 Revolt of Judas Maccabeus.
160 Death of Judas, who is succeeded by his brother Jonathan.
152 Jonathan is named high priest by the Seleucids; soon thereafter, formation of the Essene community near the Dead Sea.
63 Roman general Pompey takes Jerusalem.
48 Julius Caesar def
eats Pompey, who is killed in Egypt.
37–34 Herod the Great king of Roman Judea.
31 Octavian defeats Antony and Cleopatra at the naval battle of Actium.
30 Suicides of Antony and Cleopatra.
29 Roman Senate gives Octavian the office of Imperator (Emperor); Herod builds the Antonia fortress, probable site of Jesus’s trial before Pilate.
27 Senate gives Octavian the title of (Caesar) Augustus.
23–20 Herod constructs his enormous palace in Jerusalem’s upper city; he begins the reconstruction of the Second Temple.
c. 6 Birth of Jesus.
4 Death of Herod.
A.D. 5–10 Birth of Saul-Paul at Tarsus in Cilicia.
14 Death of Augustus.
14–37 Tiberius emperor.
26–36 Pontius Pilate prefect of Judea.
c. 27 Herod Antipas marries his brother’s wife, drawing the condemnation of John the Baptizer. The ministry of Jesus begins.
30 On Friday, the eve of Passover, “Christ condemned to death by Pontius Pilate under the Emperor Tiberius” (Tacitus, Annals).
37 Death of Tiberius.
37–41 Caligula emperor, assassinated before he can see fulfilled his order to erect his statue in the Temple in Jerusalem.
41–54 Claudius emperor; expels the Jews from Rome.
44 Herod Agrippa imprisons Peter in Jerusalem.
45–49 Paul’s first missions.
c. 48 “Council” of Jerusalem declares gentile Christians exempt from the Law of Moses.
49–52 Paul’s missions to Galatia, Macedonia, Athens, Corinth.
54–68 Nero emperor.
57–58 Paul writes letters to Corinthians, Galatians, Romans.
61–63 Paul in Rome, under military guard, writes letters’ to Colossians, Ephesians, and Philippians.
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