Jesus among the Jews

Representation and Thought

Neta Stahl

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9781136488726
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: History of Christianity

For almost two thousand years, various images of Jesus accompanied Jewish thought and imagination: a flesh-and-blood Jew, a demon, a spoiled student, an idol, a brother, a (failed) Messiah, a nationalist rebel, a Greek god in Jewish garb, and more.

This volume charts for the first time the different ways that Jesus has been represented and understood in Jewish culture and thought. Chapters from many of the leading scholars in the field cover the topic from a variety of disciplinary perspectives - Talmud, Midrash, Rabbinics, Kabbalah, Jewish Magic, Messianism, Hagiography, Modern Jewish Literature, Thought, Philosophy, and Art – to address the ways in which representations of Jesus contribute to and change Jewish self-understanding throughout the last two millennia. Beginning with the question of how we know that Jesus was a Jew, the book then moves through meticulous analyses of Jewish and Christian scripture and literature to provide a rounded and comprehensive analysis of Jesus in Jewish Culture.

This multidisciplinary study will be of great interest not only to students of Jewish history and philosophy, but also to scholars of religious studies, Christianity, intellectual history, literature and cultural studies.

1 A Jewish reader of Jesus

Mark, the evangelist

Daniel Boyarin

At the beginning of the twentieth century, a highly renowned American Jewish scholar of early Judaism and Christianity, Kaufmann Kohler (1843–1926), wrote:

Still, there are other criteria by which the Jewish investigator is able to ascertain the origin and authenticity of the gospel stories and trace the various stages of their growth. A careful analysis corroborates the conclusion, assumed to be axiomatic by Jewish scholars, that the older and more genuine the records, written or unwritten, of the doings and teachings of Jesus, the more they betray close kinship with and friendly relations to Jews and Judaism; but that the more remote they are from the time and scene of the activity of Jesus, the more they show of hostility to the Jewish people and of antagonism to the Mosaic Law. The changing attitude and temper of the new sect influenced the records at every stage, and this accounts for the conflicting statements found beside each other in the various gospels and gospel stories.¹

To this judgment, I would contrast Rudolf Bultmann’s more generally accepted principle of only accepting as Jesus’ authentic sayings those that do not accord with the alleged “morality of Judaism.” We may assume that there are distinct and important theological or ideological differences behind such directly opposite articulations of method. While it is clear that many Jews in the twentieth century have wished to say to Jesus (as earlier Jews had said to Agrippa), “you are our brother; you are our brother,”² many influential Christian scholars (prominently Bultmann and his students) have insisted on a Jesus who is as un-Jewish as possible.³ This interpretation would have the effect of rendering any appearance of similarity with Judaism (as New Testament scholarship has imagined that “religion”) the product of an early church that was a Judaizing church (especially in Matthew). The original message of Jesus, according to this view, is the idea that over time became “orthodox” within the historical Christian churches, to wit that the Law was abrogated by Jesus entirely and quite without concern for continuity with traditional Israelite Torah.⁴

Seemingly, ideologically innocent approaches to the Synoptic Problem may be shown to have the same effect. For instance, take Mark’s Gospel in its final canonical form as the source (one source) for Matthew’s Gospel, and read Mark as the Gospel of a Gentile believer who rejects the Law of the Torah. Inevitably, Matthew’s differences from Mark are explained in large part as Judaizing and thus aberrant, if not heretical, moves on the part of Matthew.⁵ On the other hand, if we were to understand that Matthew’s versions of some pericopae may be more primitive than Mark’s and that it is plausible to read some earlier version of Mark himself as within Jewish religious culture, then the heresiological narrative (“Judaizing” as deviation) is destroyed, both of these Gospels having developed from a common Jewish source.⁶ According to such latter views, the Christological elements of Mark are read as the product of a later “Christian” redaction of the Jewish text. What I will argue in this chapter goes further. I hope to show that canonical Mark is best read as a Jewish text, even in its most radical Christological moments. It would follow that Matthew is not a “Judaizing” text but another variant of the early so-called Jewish Christianity manifested throughout the New Testament and beyond.⁷

This shift in interpretation of the Gospel of Mark has enormous historical consequences. Was the earliest Jesus movement a movement that began in utter disdain for all “Jewish” practice of the Torah and entirely rejected those practices? Or perhaps, was it an apocalyptic, messianic, Judaism – having Jesus as its Christ – containing a sharp critique of various Jewish leaderships for rejecting Jesus and other perceived faults but thoroughly Jewish nonetheless?⁸ In that case, as F. Stanley Jones put it recently, “the first Christians were the first heretics,”⁹ that is, like Origen, they were discovered as heretics long after their deaths. I take the latter position here. Although I entirely agree with Joel Marcus’s formulation that the theme of Mark 2–3 is “the incompatibility between the old and the new,” I would strongly emphasize that the “old” and the “new”¹⁰ are not religions or testaments. Rather, they are historical situations, before and after the advent of the Messianic Age. Among the consequences of the answer one might give to these questions is whether to think of the Gospels as anti-Jewish or as part and parcel of a contentious, polemical Judaism, or whether or not the Gospels – as opposed to certain of their readers – are to be blamed for creating anti-Judaism (and ultimately anti-Semitism). In this sense, the traditional understanding that the approach to the Synoptic Problem was a branch of theology is literally and significantly the case.

Here I present one chapter of the argument based on my analysis of the Gospel of Mark. As in much of my thinking about Mark as a Jewish text, the Son of Man is key to the reading. In other work, I have tried to show how the Son of Man sayings of Mark 2 are entirely consistent with an approach that takes the Son of Man of the Gospels to be based on a reading of Daniel 7.¹¹ The suffering Messiah is so frequently marked as the theological point differentiating something called Christianity from a monolith called Judaism. While many scholars see this theme as a retrospective attempt on the part of the so-called early church to make sense of Christ’s death, I argue that this may plausibly be born of pre-Jesus apocalyptic speculation.

Shaming the Son of Man: Mark 8:38

The first time that Jesus reveals the inevitability of his suffering and death is in Chapter 8:

27 And Jesus went with his disciples, to the villages of Caesarea Philippi; and on the way he asked his disciples, “Who do men say that I am?” 28 And they told him, “John the Baptist; and others say,” Elijah;” and others “one of the prophets.” 29 And he asked them, “but who do you say I am?” Peter answered him, “You are the Christ.” 30 And he charged them to tell no one about him. 31 And he began to teach them that the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. 32 And he said this plainly. And Peter took him, and began to rebuke him. 33 But turning and seeing his disciples, he rebuked Peter, and said, “Get thee behind me Satan! For you are not on the side of God, but of men.” 34 And he called to him the multitude with his disciples, and said to them, “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 35 For whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it. 36 For what does it profit a man, to gain the whole world and forfeit his life? 37 For what can a man give in return for his life? 38 For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed, when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels [my italics].

Rudolf Bultmann famously initiated a scholarly tradition in which Jesus never referred to himself as the Son of Man. However, when Jesus did use this phrase, it was for someone else, not for himself. For Bultmann, the italicized verse was one of the most impressive examples of Jesus’ original words speaking of an apocalyptic Son of Man while not identifying himself with that figure but distinguishing between himself and the Son of Man. Although impossible to disprove that such were Jesus’ original words or meanings,¹² in the context of Mark it certainly cannot be read in this fashion, certainly not in the context of a Gospel in which Jesus has already spoken of himself as the Son of Man in Chapter 2 nor in the immediate context of Chapter 8.¹³

In this passage, as in Chapter 9:12, we are told by Jesus that the Son of Man must “suffer many things.” If Jesus is not speaking of himself in verse 31, then that verse is a non sequitur, “and he said this plainly.” The sequence of verses 29–31 is only intelligible if the Son of Man equals the Christ and if Jesus believes that he is the Christ. I also suggest that this makes the most sense if we assume that Jesus (Markan Jesus) alludes to the Son of Man figure from Daniel and his fate. Supporting the suggestion of a virtually explicit biblical citation is the fact that in the other explicit citation of Daniel 7, Chapter 14:61, we find exactly the same sequence of Jesus identified as Messiah by others and then referring to himself as Son of Man.

Are you the Christ, the son of the Blessed One?” And Jesus said “I am, and you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power, and coming on the clouds of Heaven.” Then the high priest tore his clothes and said, “Why do we still need witnesses? You have heard his blasphemy?!”

The high priest clearly knows the terms Christ, Son of God, and Son of Man as well as the meaning of “I am.” Through all of these terms, Jesus claims some share of divinity, hence the charge of blasphemy.¹⁴ Here it cannot be denied, of course, that there is a direct allusion to the Danielic source of the narrative of the Son of Man. Thus, I suggest the parallel provides good evidence for my interpretation of the Mark 8 passage. As there too, he refers to the exaltation of the Son of Man, in Mark 8:31 as the suffering and humiliation of the Son of Man, which is then cited again in Chapter 9:12, “as it has been written.” The two verses thus complete each other exegetically (undermining, inter alia, the notion held by some – e.g. Lindars – that Chapter 14:62 is a very late accretion from the “Church”).

Eschewing a priori those strategies of reading Mark that treat it as a disparate collection of form-critical or source-critical problems,¹⁵ I believe that we can conclude that verse 38 strongly implies that Jesus himself is, and sees himself and proclaims himself as the Son of Man. The progression of the narrative runs, according to my reading, in the following fashion:

Jesus asks the disciples who they think he is.

Peter answers that he is the Messiah.

Jesus answers that the Son of Man must suffer many things.

Peter denies this (he is ashamed of a suffering Messiah!) Jesus rebukes him.

Jesus calls the disciples together to provide them with the lesson to be learned from his sharp rebuke of Peter.

All who would be followers of Jesus must pick up crosses and be willing to lose their lives as he will.

Those who are ashamed of Jesus in his humiliation and crucifixion, the exalted Son of Man (Jesus vindicated) will be ashamed of them in the final moment when he comes in glory with his angels (Daniel 7).¹⁶

Moreover, it cannot be accidental that it is precisely under the title, Son of Man, that the predication of Jesus’ sufferings is made by Jesus. In my opinion, C. H. Dodd must have been right to derive this predication primarily from the end of Daniel 7, in which the symbol of the Son of Man is interpreted as “the People of the Saints of the Most High,” who will be crushed for a certain amount of time under the heels of the fourth beast and then will arise and, defeating him, “will receive the kingdom and hold the kingdom forever and ever.”¹⁷ Christian interpreters, and I daresay others before them, are entirely justified in harmonizing the chapter in the direction of reading the “The People of the Saints” as an epithet for the single Redeemer (or at most he and his disciples incorporated), as much as later Jews are in insisting that the “One Like a Son of Man” is to be read as the People. To conclude, the development of the “Christian” exegetical tradition has its point of origin in Daniel 7, which was naturally joined in the manner of Midrash with the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53 as well as the Psalms of the Righteous Sufferer,¹⁸ for which there was apparently also a tradition of messianic reading.¹⁹ It can hardly be doubted that “the Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected” is a palpable allusion to Isaiah 53:3: “He is despised and rejected of men.” Below I argue that the parallel passage in Mark Chapter 9 provides an even more exact allusion. The association of these texts with the Son of Man from Daniel as its primary point of origin is what enabled the full development of a suffering Christology according to which Jesus’ demise (and exaltation) was interpreted. This is entirely opposite to the current view, according to which the theory of the suffering Messiah was elaborated as an apology for Jesus’ apparent defeat. The “as it has been written of the Son of Man” [9:12] now may be given more straightforward interpretation as referring to Daniel 7 directly. Moreover, the “saints of the most High” might be taken further as referring to the apostles or followers of the Son of Man, such that the necessity to suffer for these as well is incorporated in the prophecy of the suffering of the Son of Man, directly, scripturally, and not merely by analogy.²⁰ In other words, once again moving beyond a binary opposition, we see that the Son of Man is both individual – h...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• List of contributors
• Introduction
• 1. A Jewish reader of Jesus: Mark, the evangelist
• 2. The magical Jesus in ancient Jewish literature
• 3. Where is Jonah from?
• 4. Celsus’ Jew and the theological threat from Christianity
• 5. Abraham Abulafia: A Kabbalist “Son of God” on Jesus and Christianity
• 6. From Joshua through Jesus to Simeon bar Yohai: Towards a typology of Galilean heroes
• 7. The salvation of Jesus and Jewish Messiahs
• 8. Jacob Frank and Jesus Christ (with an excursus on Nathan of Gaza)1
• 9. “Christus secundum spiritum”: Spinoza, Jesus and the infinite intellect
• 10. Harry Austryn Wolfson on the Jews’ reclamation of Jesus
• 11. Jesus in modern Jewish thought
• 12. The crucified brother: Uri Zvi Greenberg and Jesus
• 13. We left Yeshu: On three twentieth-century Hebrew poets’ longing for Jesus
• 14. Jesus of the Sabra Thorns: The figure of Jesus in Israeli art
• Bibliography
• Index