Nikos Kazantzakis, The Last Temptation of Christ (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1960); Norman Mailer, The Gospel according to the Son (New York: Random House, 1997).
Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus (rev. ed.; New York: Macmillan, 1968; German original, 1906).
Günther Bornkamm, Jesus of Nazareth (New York: Harper & Row, 1959) 27- 28.
So, for example, Ben Witherington III, The Jesus Quest: The Third Search for the Jew of Nazareth (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1995).
Already in 1988 N. T. Wright labeled this period of research the “Third Quest” (S. Neill and N. T. Wright, The Interpretation of the New Testament, 1861-1986 [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988]).
Most prominently, John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, 2 vols. (New York: Doubleday, 1991) 1:56-111; also Gerd Theissen and Annette Merz, The Historical Jesus: A Comprehensive Guide (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998) 63-89.
The Jewish New Testament scholar Samuel Sandmel states, “I think it is not exaggeration to state that since 1800 many more Jewish essays—historical, theological —have been written on Jesus than on Moses” (“Christology, Judaism, and Jews,” in Christological Perspectives, ed. R. F. Berkey and S. A. Edwards [New York: Pilgrim, 1982] 178). For a survey of Jewish scholarly approaches to Jesus, see Donald A. Hagner, The Jewish Reclamation of Jesus (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1984); see also Roy D. Fuller, “Contemporary Judaic Perceptions of Jesus” (dissertation, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1992).
Two of the most influential histories of New Testament interpretation typify the lack of treatment of this issue. Werner G. Kummel, The New Testament: The History of the Investigation of Its Problems (Nashville: Abingdon, 1972), only mentions this problem in a footnote, because “the denial of the existence of Jesus ... [is] arbitrary and ill-founded” (p. 447, n. 367). Neill and Wright, Interpretation , make no mention of this problem. And according to Bornkamm, “to doubt the historical existence of Jesus at all ... was reserved for an unrestrained, tendentious criticism of modern times into which it is not worth while to enter here” (Jesus, 28).
For treatment of the earlier history of this problem, see Shirley J. Case, The Historicity of Jesus (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1912) 32-61; Arthur Drews, Die Leugnung der Geschichtlichkeit Jesu in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart (Karlsruhe: Braun, 1926); Maurice Goguel, Jesus the Nazarene: Myth or History? (London: Fisher & Unwin, 1926) 19-29; idem, The Life of Jesus (London: Allen & Unwin, 1933) 61-69; Herbert G. Wood, Did Christ Really Live ? (London: SCM, 1938) 18-27. No treatment surveys the history of this problem since ca. 1940, another indication that mainstream scholarship today finds it unimportant.
Meier, Marginal Jew, 1:68. See also the tongue-in-cheek “obituary” of Jesus in a leading British magazine, The Economist , April 3, 1999, 77. Despite treating the life and death of Jesus as fully historical, it seems compelled to state that evidence from ancient non-Christian sources “provide[s] unbiased, near contemporary, indications that Jesus actually existed.”
For example, Rudolf Bultmann, who doubted the authenticity of many Gospel traditions, nevertheless concluded, “Of course the doubt as to whether Jesus really existed is unfounded and not worth refutation. No sane person can doubt that Jesus stands as founder behind the historical movement whose first distinct stage is represented by the Palestinian community” (Jesus and the Word [2d ed.; New York: Scribners, 1958] 13).
F. M. Voltaire, “De Jesus ,” from Dieu et les hommes, in Oeuvres completes de Voltaire (Paris: Société Littéraire-Typographique, 1785) 33:273. He accepted the historicity of Jesus (p. 279).
C.-F. Volney, Les ruines, ou Meditations sur les revolutions des empires (Paris: Desenne, 1791); English translation, The Ruins, or a Survey of the Revolutions of Empires (New York: Davis, 1796); C. F. Dupuis, Origine de tous les cultes (Paris: Chasseriau, 1794); abridgement, Abrégé de l’origine de tous les cultes (Paris: Chasseriau, 1798; 2d ed., 1822); English translation, The Origin of All Religious Worship (New York: Garland, 1984).
On Bauer, see especially Dieter Hertz-Eichenrode, Der Junghegelianer Bruno Bauer im Vormärz (Berlin, 1959); Schweitzer, Quest, 137-160.
B. Bauer, Kritik der evangelischen Geschichte des Johannes (Bremen: Schünemann, 1840; reprint, Hildesheim: Olds, 1990); idem, Kritik der evangelischen Geschichte der Synoptiker (Leipzig: Wigand, 1841-42; reprint, Hildesheim: Olms, 1990); idem, Kritik der Paulinischen Briefe (Berlin: Hempel, 1850-52). Bauer’s Kritik der Evangelien und Geschichte ihres Ursprungs (Berlin: Hempel, 1851-52; Aalen: Scientia, 1983) fully states his conclusion that Jesus never existed.
B. Bauer, Christus und die Caesaren: Der Ursprung des Christentums aus dem römischen Griechentum (Berlin: Grosser, 1877; reprint, Hildesheim: Olms, 1968).
Wood (Did Christ Really Live? 7) reports seeing in 1931 anti-religion posters in the Chicago Russian Workers’ Club equating Jesus with Mithras and Osiris. On Bauer and Marx, see Zvi Rosen, Bruno Bauer and Karl Marx (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1977); K. L. Clarkson and D. J. Hawkin, “Marx on Religion: The Influence of Bruno Bauer and Ludwig Feuerbach on His Thought,” SJT 31 (1978) 533-55; Harold Mah, The End of Philosophy, the Origin of “Ideology”: Karl Marx and the Crisis of the Young Hegelians (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987).
The Existence of Christ Disproved (London: Hetherington, 1841) 41.
Simon J. De Vries, Bible and Theology in The Netherlands (CNTT 3; Wageningen: Veenman, 1968) 52-55.
A. Pierson, De Bergrede en andere synoptische fragmenten (Amsterdam: van Kampen & Zoon, 1878). On Loman and van Manen, see De Vries, Bible and Theology in the Netherlands , 53-54.
De Vries, Bible and Theology in the Netherlands , 54. He points to D. Volter, H. U. Meyboom, and G. A. van den Bergh van Eysinga as continuations in the early twentieth century of this school’s views.
J. M. Robertson, Christianity and Mythology (London: Watts, 1900-1910). See also his A Short History of Christianity (London: Watts, 1902; 3d ed., 1931); idem, Pagan Christs (London: Watts, 1903); idem, The Historical Jesus: A Survey of Positions (London: Watts, 1916); idem, The Jesus Problem: A Restatement of the Myth Theory (London: Watts, 1917). On Robertson, see the hagiographical work of M. Page, Britain’s Unknown Genius: The Life and Work of J. M. Robertson (London: South Place Ethical Society, 1984) esp. 48-51; see also George A. Wells, J. M. Robertson (London: Pemberton, 1987).
Robertson, Pagan Christs , xi.
F. C. Conybeare, The Historical Christ (London: Watts, 1914). Conybeare, like Robertson, was a leading member of the Rationalist Press Association, and his book was published in further printings by the Association. But he subjects Robertson’s arguments to withering criticism.
W. B. Smith, Die Religion als Selbstbewusstein Gottes (Jena: Diedrich, 1906; 2d ed., 1925); idem, Der vorchristliche Jesus (Giessen: Töpelmann, 1906); idem, The Silence of Josephus and Tacitus (Chicago: Open Court, 1910); idem, Ecce Deus : The Pre-Christian Jesus (Boston: Roberts, 1894).
A. Drews, Die Christusmythe (Jena: Diederich, 1909-11); English translation, The Christ Myth (London: Unwin, 1910; reprint, Buffalo: Prometheus, 1998).
A. Kalthoff, Das Christus-Problem: Grundlinien zu einer Sozial-Theologie (Leipzig: Diederich, 1903); idem, Was Wissen Wir von Jesus? Eine Abrechnung mit Professor D. Bousset in Göttingen (Berlin: Lehmann, 1904); P. Jensen, Hat der Jesus der Evangelien Wirklich Gelebt? (Frankfurt: Neuer Frankfurter Verlag, 1910).
E.g., Wilhelm Bousset, Was Wissen Wir von Jesus ? (Halle: Gebauer-Schwetschke, 1904); Case, Historicity; Goguel, Jesus ; Adolf Jülicher, Hat Jesus Gelebt? (Marburg: Elwert, 1910); H. von Soden, Hat Jesus Gelebt? (Berlin: Protestantischer Schriften-Vertrieb, 1910); Samuel E. Stokes, The Gospel according to the Jews and Pagans (London: Longmans, Green, 1913); Ernst Troeltsch, Die Bedeutung der Geschichtlichkeit Jesu für den Glauben (Tübingen: Mohr, 1911); Johannes Weiss, Jesus von Nazareth , Mythus oder Geschichte? (Tübingen: Mohr, 1910-11). See also Kurt Linck, De antiquissimis veterum quae ad Jesum Nazarenum spectant testimoniis (Giessen: Töpelmann, 1913). One of the few scholars to support Drews was Solomon Zeitlin; he ruled out Jewish, Roman, and New Testament witnesses to Jesus and concluded, “The question remains: Are there any historical proofs that Jesus existed?” (“The Halaka in the Gospels and Its Relation to the Jewish Law in the Time of Jesus,” HUCA 1 [1924] 373).
G. A. Wells, The Jesus of the Early Christians (London: Pemberton, 1971); idem, Did Jesus Exist ? (London: Pemberton, 1975; 2d ed., 1986); idem, The Historical Evidence for Jesus (Buffalo: Prometheus, 1982); idem, Who Was Jesus ? (Chicago: Open Court, 1989); idem, The Jesus Legend (Chicago: Open Court, 1996).
Hoffmann, in the foreword of Wells, Jesus Legend, xii.
Richard France, The Evidence for Jesus (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1982) 12.
In the first chapter of Evidence Against Christianity (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991), the philosopher Michael Martin of Boston University followed Wells in arguing that Jesus did not exist. Martin defends Wells against critics who dismiss his hypothesis: Michael Grant (Jesus: An Historian’s Review of the Gospels [New York: Scribners, 1977] 200); Ian Wilson (Jesus: The Evidence [San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1984] 60); and Gary Habermas (Ancient Evidence for the Life of Jesus [Nashville: Nelson, 1984] 31-36). Martin’s argument is flawed by a reliance on Wells for his knowledge of New Testament scholarship. Although Martin considers Wells’s argument sound, “since [it] is controversial and not widely accepted, I will not rely on it in the rest of this book” (p. 67).
But see Murray J. Harris, Three Crucial Questions about Jesus (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1994), where the first “crucial question” is “Did Jesus exist?” This issue is crucial for belief in Jesus, but not any longer for scholarship on him.
As Morton Smith remarks, Wells’s argument is mainly based on the argument from silence. He criticizes Wells for explaining this silence by arguing for “unknown proto-Christians who build up an unattested myth ... about an unspecified supernatural entity that at an indefinite time was sent by God into the world as a man to save mankind and was crucified” (Morton Smith, “The Historical Jesus,” in Jesus in Myth and History , ed. R. Joseph Hoffmann and Gerald A. Larue [Buffalo: Prometheus, 1986] 47-48). This “Christ before Jesus” myth has also been promoted by J. G. Jackson, Christianity before Christ (Austin: American Atheist Press, 1985).
The only possible attempt at this argument known to me is in Justin’s Dialogue with Trypho, written in the middle of the second century. At the end of chapter 8, Trypho, Justin’s Jewish interlocutor, states, “But [the] Christ—if indeed he has been born, and exists anywhere—is unknown, and does not even know himself, and has no power until Elijah comes to anoint him and make him known to all. Accepting a groundless report, you have invented a Christ for yourselves, and for his sake you are unknowingly perishing.” This may be a faint statement of a nonexistence hypothesis, but it is not developed or even mentioned again in the rest of the Dialogue, in which Trypho assumes the existence of Jesus.
Russell, in his Why I Am Not a Christian (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1957), implicitly accepts the historicity of Jesus.
Some popular treatments of Jesus outside the New Testament have also dealt with Jesus in the Qur’an and later Islamic traditions, in legends about Jesus’ putative travels to India and Tibet, his grave in Srinagar, Kashmir, and so forth. Scholarship has almost unanimously agreed that these references to Jesus are so late and tendentious as to contain virtually nothing of value for understanding the historical Jesus. Since they have formed no part of the scholarly debate on Jesus, we will not examine them here. Readers who wish to pursue this can begin for Islamic tradition with Craig Evans, “Jesus in Non-Christian Sources,” in Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, ed. Joel B. Green, Scot McKnight, and I. Howard Marshall (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1992) 367- 68; see also J. Dudley Woodberry, “The Muslim Understanding of Christ,” WW 16 (1996) 173-78; Kenneth Cragg, Jesus and the Muslim (London: Allen & Unwin, 1985). For Jesus in the Far East, see the treatment of Nicholas Notovich’s Unknown Life of Christ (1894) in E. J. Goodspeed, Modern Apocrypha (Boston: Beacon, 1956) 3-14.
R. Mellor, Tacitus (New York: Routledge, 1993) ix. Religion scholars who have trouble keeping up with the literature in their own specialties will sympathize with this.
Text: F. Jacoby, Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker, II B (Leiden: Brill, 1962) 1157; ANF 6:136. Treatments: F. Jacoby, Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker, II D (Berlin: Weidmann, 1930) 835-36; F. F. Bruce, Jesus and Christian Origins Outside the New Testament (London: Hodder & Stoughton; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974) 29-30; Craig A. Evans, “Jesus in Non-Christian Sources,” in Studying the Historical Jesus: Evaluations of the State of Current Research, ed. Bruce Chilton and Craig A. Evans (NTTS 19; Leiden: Brill, 1994) 454-55; Richard France, The Evidence for Jesus (Downers Grove, III.: InterVarsity, 1982) 24; Maurice Goguel, The Life of Jesus (London: Allen & Unwin, 1933) 91-93; Murray Harris, “References to Jesus in Classical Authors,” in Jesus Traditions Outside the Gospels, ed. David Wenham (Sheffield: Sheffield University Press, 1982) 323-24; E. Herrmann, Chrestos (Paris: Gabalda, 1975) 15-18; P. Moreau, Témoinages sur Jésus (Paris: Cerf, 1935) 7-9; P. Prigent, “Thallos, Phlegon et le Testimonium Flavianum: Temoins de Jesus?” in Paganism, Judaïsme, Christianisme (Paris: Boccard, 1978) 329-34; Emil Schürer, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ, 3 vols.; vol. 3 in two parts; rev. and ed. Geza Vermes, Fergus Millar, Matthew Black, and Martin Goodman (Edinburgh: Clark, 1973-87) 2:241; Gerd Theissen and Annette Merz, The Historical Jesus: A Comprehensive Guide (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998) 84-85; George A. Wells, Did Jesus Exist? (London: Pemberton, 1975) 12-13.
Goguel, Life of Jesus , 91-92.
For a discussion of this darkness in the Synoptics, with some treatment of the positions of ancient and modern exegetes, see Raymond E. Brown, The Death of the Messiah: From Gethsemane to the Grave: A Commentary on the Passion Narratives of the Four Gospels , 2 vols. (New York: Doubleday, 1994) 2:1034-43.
Cited in Goguel, Life of Jesus, 92.
Harris, “References to Jesus,” 361, argues that this source must have been written. Theissen and Merz, The Historical Jesus , 85, state that either an oral or written source could be present.
Evans, “Jesus in Non-Christian Sources,” 455.
The New Testament apocryphal work The Acts of Pilate 11:2 contains another witness to this disagreement: “Pilate sent for the Jews and said to them, ‘Did you see what happened?’ But they answered, ‘There was an eclipse of the sun in the usual way.’”
Perhaps this relative simplicity of Book 10 is due to its unpolished state at Pliny’s death. Also, Pliny is writing about governmental affairs for the emperor, who, to judge from his terse replies, may have appreciated a more simple, direct style.
Bruce, Jesus and Christian Origins, 24, is typical: “Pliny shows himself ... as the complete civil servant of caricature, incapable of taking any decision on his own initiative.”
This statement by a Roman governor that obstinate, uncooperative defendants deserve death, which Trajan’s reply implicitly approves, may shed some light on the attitude and action of Pilate in his trial of Jesus. If a relatively humane governor like Pliny can think this way, how much more would a governor like Pilate, who was widely known for his lack of humaneness!
I have used the text of M. Schuster as reproduced by W. den Boer, Scriptorum Paganorum I-IV Saec. de Christianis Testimonia (Textus Minores 2; rev. ed.; Leiden: Brill, 1965). Den Boer also includes the relevant original-language texts from Tacitus, Suetonius, Lucian, and Celsus.
Or “statue.” See Letters 100-104 of Book 10 for the connection of sacrifice to loyalty to the empire.
Male dicere can also be translated more mildly as “speak ill of” or more forcefully as “curse”
A. N. Sherwin-White, The Letters of Pliny (Oxford: Clarendon, 1966) 697.
R. A. Wright, “Christians, Epicureans, and the Critique of Greco-Roman Religion” (dissertation, Brown University, 1994), argues that while Christians and Epicureans were both identified as religious deviants, the latter avoided persecution in part by sacrificing to the Greco-Roman gods. Christian refusal to sacrifice led to economic losses by those dependent on sacrifices, the charge of superstitio, and persecution.
Trajan seems to accept that Christians are ipso facto guilty of capital crimes that go along with their name. Another example of this is Claudius’s banning of Druid religion throughout the empire (Suetonius, Claudius 25.5); when Claudius saw a Roman soldier wearing a Druidic symbol, he ordered the soldier’s immediate execution (Pliny the Elder, Natural History 29.54). A modern parallel on a vastly larger scale is the Holocaust, in which Jews were killed merely for being Jewish, on the basis of an anti-Semitism which had long accused them of evil deeds.
The policy given here formed the basis of Roman policy toward Christians until the persecutions of the third century. Not only would Roman administrators have read and been instructed by them, but Christians as well took careful note. After summarizing this letter, Tertullian attacks Trajan’s policy. “What a miserable pardon, and an obvious contradiction! It forbids [Christians] to be sought after, implying they are innocent, but it commands them to be punished as if they are guilty.... If you condemn, why do you not investigate? ... You act with even greater perversity when you hold our crimes to be proven by our confession of the name of Christ .... When we repudiate the name we likewise repudiate the crimes with which, from that same confession, you had assumed us guilty” (Apology 2). Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 3.33.128- 29, cites Tertullian. Other witnesses to Pliny are Jerome, Chronica 5.01.221; Sulpicius Severus, Chronica 2.31.2; Orosius, History against the Pagans 7.12.3; Zonaras, Epitome historiarum 11.22.C-D.
Sherwin-White, Letters, 691-92. See also Moreau, Témoinages sur Jésus , 37-38.
Harris, “References to Jesus,” 346.
The best recent overview of the letter and its issues is by Stephen Benko, Pagan Rome and the Early Christians (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984) 4-14. The most detailed commentary is Sherwin-White, Letters , 691-712.
On persecution, see W. H. C. Frend, Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church (New York: New York University Press, 1967) 162-66; Sherwin-White, Letters, 772-87; Rudolf Freudenberger, Das Verhalten der römischen Behörden gegen die Christen im 2. Jahrhundert dargestellt am Brief des Plinius an Trajan und den Reskripten Trajans und Hadrians (2d ed.; Munich: Beck, 1969). Sherwin-White, Letters, 702-8, has an excellent excursus on “The Christian Liturgy.” See also Ralph P. Martin, Carmen Christi: Philippians ii. 5-11 in Recent Interpretation and in the Setting of Early Christian Worship (SNTSMS 4; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967) 1-9. On Pliny and the role of women in Christianity, see Margaret Y. MacDonald, Early Christian Women and Pagan Opinion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996) 51-59.
The manuscripts of Tertullian’s Apology (2.6) do not read quasi, but either ut (“Christ as God”) or et (“Christ and God”). The former reading is correct in Tertullian; his use of it stems from his giving this passage from memory, not exact quotation, as also shown in his use of ad canendum for carmen dicere.
Harris, “References to Jesus,” 346-47. Goguel argues that quasi “seems to indicate that, in Pliny’s opinion, Christ was not a god like those which other men worshipped. May we not conclude that the fact which distinguished Christ from all other ‘gods’ was that he had lived upon the earth?” (Life of Jesus, 94). Theissen and Merz cleverly state that Pliny may see Christ as a “quasi-god, precisely because he was a man” (The Historical Jesus, 81).
A. N. Sherwin-White, Fifty Letters of Pliny (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967) 177. He points especially to Epistula 32.3 and 38.3.
P. G. W. Glare (Oxford Latin Dictionary [Oxford: Clarendon, 1968-82] ) states that with the ellipsis of the verb, as in this clause, quasi generally means “as if.”
Harris, “References to Jesus,” 347, defends the independence of these references to Christ by arguing that this information is obtained from former Christians, who would be unlikely to fabricate it. Yet these former Christians obtained this information while they were in the faith; moreover, it is corroborated by two women deacons who are obviously still Christians.
At the end of this section Suetonius states, “Yet all these acts, others like them, and (one could say) everything Claudius did in his reign, were dictated by his wives and freedmen. He almost always followed their wishes rather than his own judgment” (Claudius 25.5; see also chaps. 28-29). This restates Suetonius’s contention that Claudius was weak-willed, but it does not illuminate the passage under consideration.
M. Ihm, ed., C. Suetoni Tranquilli Opera (Teubner Series; Stuttgart: Teubner, 1978) 1:209; Henri Ailloud, ed., Suétone, Vies des douze Césars (Budé Series; Paris: Société D’Edition “Les Belles Lettres,” 1932) 2:134. For the Teubner text, occasionally altered, with English translation, see J. C. Rolfe, Suetonius (2d ed; LCL; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997) 2:50-51. The only variant reading these three editions note is in Paulus Orosius, who quotes from Suetonius in his fifth-century History against the Pagans 7.6, “Claudius expelled the Jews from Rome, who were constantly stirring up revolutions because of their ill-feeling toward Christ.” Chresto is preferable as the most difficult reading.
Rolfe, Suetonius, 2:51.
See especially Helga Botermann, Das Judenedikt des Kaisers Claudius (HE 71; Stuttgart: Steiner, 1996), and H. Dixon Slingerland, Claudian Policymaking and the Early Imperial Repression of Judaism at Rome (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997). Other studies: Raymond E. Brown and John P. Meier, Antioch and Rome: New Testament Cradles of Catholic Christianity (New York: Paulist, 1983) 100-102; F. F. Bruce, “Christianity under Claudius,” BJRL 44 (1961) 309-26; Goguel, Life of Jesus , 97-98; Harris, “References to Jesus,” 353-56; G. Howard, “The Beginnings of Christianity in Rome,” ResQ 24 (1981) 175-77; John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus , 2 vols. (New York: Doubleday, 1991) 1:90-91; A. Momigliano, Claudius (Cambridge: Heffer, 1934) 32-34; Rainer Riesner, Paul’s Early Period (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998) 160- 67.
Arguments for repression are based on Dio Cassius (Historia Romana 60.6.6), who reports that the Jews were not expelled, but ordered not to hold public meetings. Louis Feldman states, “The most likely explanation [of our passage] is either that the expulsion involved only the Christians or that Claudius at first intended to expel all the Jews but ... reversed the order and restricted it to limiting [their] right of public assembly” (Jew and Gentile in the Ancient World [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993] 303-4). Raymond Brown suggests a partial expulsion of “those Jews who were most vocal on either side of the Christ issue,” arguing that the mention in Acts of “all the Jews” is an exaggeration (Antioch and Rome, 102). The context in Suetonius suggests that all the Jews are envisioned, since this entire section deals with national/ethnic groups as a whole, but the large number would make a full expulsion improbable.
Most historians hold to an expulsion in 49; some posit an expulsion associated with the temporary closing of the synagogues in 41. See F. J. Foakes Jackson and K. Lake, The Beginnings of Christianity (London: Macmillan, 1932) 5:459-60. Slingerland concludes that both 41 and 49 are not well supported by the evidence; Claudius may have expelled the Jews several times between 42 and 54 (“Suetonius Claudius 25:4, Acts 18, and Paulus Orosius’ Historiarum adversum paganos libri vii: Dating the Claudian Expulsion(s) of Roman Jews,” JQR 83 [1992] 127-44).
A. N. Wilson, Paul: The Mind of the Apostle (London: Norton, 1997) 104.
Even modern editions are obliged to point out that “Chrestus” may be Christ. See the Penguin Classics edition of The Twelve Caesars, ed. Robert Graves (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1957) 197; and the Loeb edition of Suetonius 2:52-53.
Frend, Martyrdom and Persecution , 122; Slingerland, “Chrestus,” 133-144; B. W. Winter, “Acts and Roman Religion: The Imperial Cult,” in The Book of Acts in Its Graeco-Roman Setting, ed. D. W. J. Gill and C. Gempf (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994) 99; Andrew D. Clarke, “Rome and Italy,” in ibid, 469-71. France, Evidence , 40-42, leans strongly against identifying Chrestus and Christ. J. Mottershead is skeptical about identifying Chrestus with Christ (Suetonius : Claudius [Bristol: Bristol Classical Press, 1986] 149). Barbara Levick is very cautious: “Suetonius ... leaves open the bare possibility that Claudius was facing clashes between orthodox Jews and members of a new Jewish sect, the ‘Christians’” (B. Levick, Claudius [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990] 121).
Stephen Benko, “The Edict of Claudius of A.D. 49,” TZ 25 (1969) 406-18; idem, Pagan Rome, 18-20.
Benko, “Edict of Claudius,” 410-17.
LSJ, 2007.
K. Weiss, “Chrestos,” TDNT 9 (1974) 484-85.
See, most recently, D. Noy, Jewish Inscriptions of Western Europe, vol. 2, The City of Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), which has no “Chrestus” in any Jewish inscription in Rome. The seeming Jewish aversion to this name may have been based on its common use for slaves and freedmen, and by corollary the typical Roman misidentification of “Chrestus” may be related to Rome’s view of Christianity as a lower-class movement.
Walter Grundmann concludes about Christian writings outside the New Testament, “There is still some awareness that Christos denotes the Messiahship of Jesus.... It is also obvious, however, that in circles which do not know what Christos means and take that term to be a name, the content of the word as the bringer of salvation has to be continually translated in new ways.” [“Chriō,” TDNT 9 (1974) 579].
F. T. Gignac, A Grammar of the Greek Papyri of the Roman and Byzantine Periods (Testi e documenti per lo studio dell’antichita 55; Milan: Istituto Editoriale Cisalpino-La Goliardica, 1976) 1:241-42. Gignac’s work, which centers on the non-literary papyri, is particularly valuable for the issue of spelling “Christ,” as it documents popular spelling changes.
F. Blass, “XPIΣTIANOΣ—XPHETIANOE,” Hermes 30 (1895) 468-70.
See the fascinating study by Elsa Gibson, The “Christians for Christians ” Inscriptions of Phrygia (HTS 32; Missoula, Mont.: Scholars Press, 1978), esp. 15-17. In the forty-five inscriptions Gibson reproduces and analyzes, only six have correct spelling. For an Italian inscription with this feature, see A. Ferrua, “Una nuova iscrizione montanista,” RivArcChr 31 (1955) 97-100.
Gibson, The “Christians for Christians” Inscriptions, 15. It could be argued that these misspellings are due to a non-Christian stonecutter’s confusion, and thus not evidence for Christian confusion. If this were the case, the stones would probably have gone back for recutting. See Gibson’s inscription 33, p. 105, for an example of a stonecutter beginning to write eta and “correcting” to epsilon iota.
Gibson, The “Christians for Christians” Inscriptions, 16, suggests that a similar play on words may be present in two New Testament uses of Xρηστoς. However, the αυτoς (“he”) of Luke 6:35 does not refer, as she indicates, to Christ, but to “the Most High,” ruining any possible pun. In Eph 4:32, Xρηστo is nine words after Xρ στω, making a pun remote. If a play on words with Xρ στω is present, it would be with the word that immediately follows it, εχαρ σατo.
Gibson, The “Christians for Christians” Inscriptions , 17. She rejects phonological convergence of eta and iota as a factor in the confusion on the “Christians for Christians” inscriptions, while admitting that some convergence does occur in them (p. 61).
E. Koestermann, “Ein folgenschwerer Irrtum des Tacitus?” Historia 16 (1967) 456-69. He holds that Nero did not persecute Christians but Jewish supporters of the agitator Chrestus named by Suetonius here and wrongly identified as Christians by Tacitus.
Feldman, Jew and Gentile , 300-304.
Historia Romana 57.18.5a. Feldman convincingly argues that Suetonius also connects the spread of religious practices with the expulsion in Tiberius 36: “He abolished foreign cults in Rome, particularly the Egyptian and Jewish, forcing all citizens who had embraced these superstitions to burn their religious vestments and other accessories.” Suetonius mentions “non-Jews who had adopted similar beliefs” as the object of these measures.
Bruce, Jesus and Christian Origins , 21; Moreau, Témoinages sur Jésus, 49-53.
“Suetonius followed whatever source attracted him, without caring much whether it was reliable or not” (M. C. Howatson, ed., The Oxford Companion to Classical Literature, [2d ed.; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989] 542).
Goguel, Life of Jesus, 98 states, “If Suetonius really believed that Jesus had come to Rome in the reign of Claudius, this shows how little the Romans thought of the traditions to which the Christians referred.”
Harris, “References to Jesus,” 356. Suetonius states that “Chrestus” was an instigator of unrest, not the instigator of “a distinctive sect arising within Judaism” (ibid., 357).
For recent work on Tacitus featuring good treatment of the Annals, see especially R. Martin, Tacitus (Bristol: Bristol Classical Press, 1994); Mellor, Tacitus.
The immediate prelude to this description is a condemnation of Emperor Nero’s evils. After discussing yet another of the emperor’s sexual escapades, Tacitus sums up by saying, “He defiled himself by natural and unnatural deeds, and reserved no shameless act [flagitia ] with which to cap his corrupt condition” (15.37). But then Tacitus realizes that there is such an act: Nero became the “wife” of a man named Pythagoras, “one of that herd of degenerates,” in a traditional, formal marriage ceremony. Some have argued that this marriage is Nero’s personal enactment of a mystery-religion rite, and not an illustration of immorality. While this is possible, Tacitus does not seem to know of it; if he had, he likely would have explicitly pointed to it as yet another example of the corrupting influence of nontraditional religions. Also, Tacitus’s wording depicts a traditional Roman wedding, not a foreign ceremony. See R. Verdière, “À verser au dossier sexuel de Néron,” PP 30 (1975) 5-22; W. Allen et al., “Nero’s Eccentricities before the Fire (Tac. Ann. 15.37),” Numen 9 (1962) 99-109. As Mark Morford points out, Tacitus linked Nero’s vices to the fire to show how the degeneracy of the emperor was disastrous for Rome (“The Neronian Books of the ‘Annals,’” ANRW II.33.2, 1614).
E. Koestermann remarks that it is interesting that Tacitus raises the question of guilt before he has described the overall event (Cornelius Tacitus Annalen, Band 4, Buch 14-16 [Heidelberg: Winter, 1968] 234).
F. Römer, P. Corneli Taciti , Annalium Libri XV-XVI (Wiener Studien 6; Vienna: Böhlaus, 1976) 65-7; K. Wellesley, Cornelius Tacitus 1.2, Annales XI-XVI (Bibliotheca Scriptorum Graecorum et Romanorum Teubneriana; Leipzig, Teubner, 1986) 114-15; P. Wuilleumier, Tacite , Annales livres XIII-XVI (Collection des Universités de France; Paris: Société D’Edition “Les Belles Lettres,” 1978) 170-72. Textual difficulties include the clauses from section 4, “were convicted” and “were crucified... torches.” The general sense of these clauses is reasonably certain, but Tacitus’s precise meaning is obscure.
That the whole of Tacitus’s Annals is a forgery was argued by P. Hochart, especially in his De l‘authenticité des Annales et des Histoires de Tacite (Bordeaux, 1890). Hochart contended that the work was forged by the fifteenth-century Italian writer Poggio Bacciolini. This extreme hypothesis never gained a following. Drews, Christusmythe, 1:179, argued that the material on Christ and the Christians is interpolated. Jean Rouge argued from a perceived parallel between Nero’s burning of Rome and Galerius’s burning of Nicomedia, and from the fact that only Tacitus among extant writings links the burning of Rome with persecution of Christians, that all of Chapter 44 is an interpolation (“L’incendie de Rome en 64 et l’incendie de Nicomédie en 303” in Mélanges d’histoire ancienne offerts a William Seston [Paris: Boccard, 1974] 433-41 ). C. Saumange argued that Christians are not present in the original of 15.44, but that Sulpicius Severus transposed material from the now-lost Book 6 of the Histories into Annals 15.44 (“Tacite et saint Paul,” RH 232 [1964] 67-110). This is pure speculation. A more modest argument for interpolation is advanced by K. Büchner, among others, that aut ... flammandi is an interpolation (“Tacitus über die Christen,” Humanitas Romana (Heidelberg: Winter, 1957).
Norma P. Miller, Tacitus: Annals XV (London: Macmillan, 1973) xxviii.
E.g., the most often-cited translation in English-language Tacitean scholarship: J. Jackson, Tacitus: The Annals XIII-XVI (LCL; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1956) 282-85.
Chrestianoi is supported by R. Hanslik, “Der Erzählungskomplex vom Brand Roms und der Christenverfolgung bei Tacitus,” WS 76 (1963) 92-108; R. Renahan, “Christus or Chrestus in Tacitus?” PP 23 (1968) 368-70.
For another example of this economic style, see later in this passage, where Tacitus does not at first give the location or presumed nationality of Christ, but then a few clauses later implies this nationality by stating that Judea is “the origin of this disease.” This correction also militates against the possibility that Tacitus originally wrote Christianoi, but a later scribe changed it to Chrestianoi.
Renahan, “Christus or Chrestus in Tacitus?” 368-70, argues that Christus was originally Chrestus, “the common appellation.” But Tacitus is clearly correcting the common appellation.
Herbert W. Benario has helpfully surveyed all aspects of scholarship on Tacitus, including Annals 44 and related issues, in a series of articles entitled “Recent Work on Tacitus,” Classical World 58 (1964) 80-81; 63 (1970) 264-65; 71 (1977) 29-30; 80 (1986) 138-39; 89 (1995) 146-47. See also W. Suerbaum, “Zweiundvierzig Jahre Tacitus-Forschung: Systematische Gesamtbibliographie zu Tacitus’ Annalen, 1939- 1980,” ANRW II.33.2, 1394-99; Botermann, Das Judenedikt des Kaisers Claudius , 177- 182.
Suetonius Nero 38; Dio Historia Romana 62.16.1ff.; and Pliny the Elder Natural History 17.1.5 do not connect the fire with persecution of Christians. However, Tacitus knows of some (auctores ) who blame the fire on Nero and others that argue for its accidental nature (15.38.1), and concludes that the truth is uncertain. Martin, Tacitus , 182-83, speaks for a near-consensus of modern scholarship: “Tacitus’ account [of Nero’s persecution of Christians] is so circumstantial that its general veracity must be accepted, as must the explicit connection with the fire.”
Nero is held responsible for the fire by Suetonius (Nero 38.1 Pliny the Elder (Natural History 27.5); Dio (Historia Romana 62.16.2). D. C. A. Shotter (Nero [London: Routledge, 1997] 53) argues that the fire was accidental. Martin suggests that Nero was probably not responsible for the first, six-day phase of the fire, but he may have ordered the second, three-day phase, which cleared the property he wanted for his new palace (Tacitus , 182).
Sherwin-White, Fifty Letters, 172, has given the most influential explanation, that this was a cognitio extra ordinem. Wendy Cotter has concluded, “Roman law held persons liable for actions and not for any name they professed. Yet it appears that Nero had Christians arrested and killed on the basis of their membership, that is, their ‘name.’ We have good reason to suppose that he did institute that precedent.... Nero’s treatment of Christians shows the power of Imperial dictates and the precarious character of any collegium” (“The Collegia and Roman Law: State Restrictions on Voluntary Associations, 64 B.C.E.-200 C.E.,” in Voluntary Associations in the Greco-Roman World, ed. J. S. Kloppenborg and S. G. Wilson [London/New York: Routledge, 1996] 82).
Erich Koestermann has argued that Christ must also have been mentioned in Book 5 of the Annals (Cornelius Tacitus: Annalen II (Heidelberg: Winter, 1965] 28). But the statements about Christ in 15.44 appear to introduce Christianity and Christ for the first time to the reader. Robert Drews argues that the lost part of Book 5 may have been deliberately suppressed by a Christian scribe in late antiquity or the early Middle Ages because it did not mention Christ (“The Lacuna in Tacitus’ Annales Book Five in the Light of Christian Traditions,” AJAH 9 [1984] 112-22). This hypothesis raises more problems than it solves. The usual scribal practice is to interpolate, not excise. Drews theorizes that a scribe would hesitate before “the recklessness required to place Christian testimony in the mouth of one of the great pagan historians” and the challenge of imitating Tacitean Latin (p. 118). The more likely explanation is that the lacuna in Book 5, like several others of the Annals, is due to other, perhaps accidental, factors. We may safely conclude that what Tacitus has to say about Christ he says in 15.44.
The phrase is by Ronald Syme, Tacitus , 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1958) 2:469.
See ρτσBAGD, 887: “The transition is marked [in the New Testament] by certain passages in which Xρ στός does not mean the Messiah in general ... but a very definite Messiah, Jesus, who now is called Christ not as a title but as a name.” BAGD cites twenty-seven New Testament examples and indicates there are others. Marinus de Jonge has stated, “From the Pauline letters and the ancient formulas contained in them, it is clear that from a very early period the word christos was used in ‘Christian’ circles to denote Jesus. It is used very often, and it received its content not through a previously fixed concept of messiahship but rather from the person and work of Jesus” (“Christ,” ABD, 1:920).
The -ianos suffix to connote the followers of a movement is itself of Latin origin and would have been familiar to Tacitus’s readers. Of the three uses of “Christian/s” in the New Testament, Acts 26:28 has an implicitly negative tone; Agrippa says to Paul, “Are you so quickly persuading me to become a Christian?” Acts 11:26 may also have an implied negative connotation, and 1 Pet 4:6 seems to have no connotation. Compare our use of the suffix “-ism” occasionally to connote an undesirable movement.
Harris, “References to Jesus,” 349.
Philo, Legation to Gaius 299-305; Josephus, Jewish War 2.9.2-4 §169-77; Antiquities 18.3.1—4.2 §55-64, 85-89.
Bruce, Jesus and Christian Origins , 23.
For a succinct discussion of this issue, see Evans, “Jesus in Non-Christian Sources,” 465-66.
Harris points to Philo (Legation to Gaius 38), Josephus (Jewish War 2.8.1 §117; 2.9.2 §169), and the New Testament to demonstrate that there was “a certain fluidity of terminology regarding the titles of the governor of Judea, at least in popular usage, during the period A.D. 6-66” (“References to Jesus,” 349-50).
So, e.g., Brown, Death of the Messiah, 1:337.
Wells, Did Jesus Exist? 14.
Joseph Blinzler, The Trial of Jesus (London: Sheed & Ward, 1965) 32.
J. N. D. Anderson states, “When he adds that ‘a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out’ he is bearing indirect and unconscious testimony to the conviction of the early church that the Christ who had been crucified had risen from the grave” (Christianity: The Witness of History [London: Tyndale, 1969] 19). To see Tacitus making an oblique reference to the resurrection of Jesus, however, requires over-interpreting his words into a meaning he did not intend, directly or indirectly.
“This episode is remarkable for the pathos with which the sufferings of the Christians are described (a kind of sympathy extremely unusual in Tacitus)” (Morford, “The Neronian Books of the Annals,’” 1614).
Goguel, Life of Jesus , 95, argues that no Christian source is present here because “the leading idea in [Tacitus’s] mention of Christianity is the fact that the Christian movement, suppressed by the execution of its founder, did not reawaken until a little before the year 64.” Goguel ties this reawakening in Judea to the Jewish revolt of 66-70. Harris, “References to Jesus,” 351-52, repeats Goguel’s argument. But this presses Tacitus’s wording too hard. In praesens relates to the immediate effect of the execution of Christ (“for a time”), as it follows directly after supplicio adfectus erat. It does not mean a continuing effect from Tiberius until 64 (“until this time”). When the next sentence begins with igitur “then, therefore,” this is not in a temporal sense that would support a reawakening in the early 60s. Rather, this is a typically Tacitean use of igitur to mark resumption of the main theme, here after the digression on Christ.
Goguel, Life of Jesus , 95.
Pace Paul Winter, who argues that Tacitus had no direct dealings with Christians and writes from hearsay (“Tacitus and Pliny: The Early Christians,” JHistStud 1 [1967-68] 31-40; idem, “Tacitus and Pliny on Christianity,” Klio 52 [1970] 497-502).
For an apocryphal work known as the Acts of Pilate , see Felix Scheidweiler, “The Gospel of Nicodemus, Acts of Pilate, and Christ’s Descent into Hell,” in New Testament Apocrypha, ed. Wilhelm Schneemelcher, English trans. ed. R. McL. Wilson (rev. ed.; 2 vols.; Cambridge: James Clarke; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1991) 1:501- 36. “The prevailing view today is that Christian Acts of Pilate were first devised and published as a counterblast to pagan Acts [fabricated under the anti-Christian emperor Maximin], and that previously there had been nothing of the sort. Justin’s testimony is thereby set aside” (p. 501).
E.g., Henri Daniel-Rops, “The Silence of Jesus’ Contemporaries,” in F. Amiot, J. Danielou, A. Brunot, and H. Daniel-Rops, The Sources for the Life of Christ (London: Burns & Oakes, 1962), 14. Bruce, Jesus and Christian Origins, 19-20, seems to favor such a report also.
France, Evidence, 22-23.
For the Syriac text, English translation, and brief treatment, see W. Cureton, Spicilegium Syriacum (London: Rivington, 1855); German translation and treatment, F. Schulthess, “Der Brief des Mara bar Serapion,” ZDMG 51 (1897), 365-91. See also Blinzler, Trial of Jesus, 52-57; Brown, Death of the Messiah, 1:382, 476; Bruce, Jesus and Christian Origins, 30-31; Evans, “Jesus in Non-Christian Sources,” 455-57; France, Evidence , 23-24; Moreau, Temoinages sur Jésus, 9-11; G. N. Stanton, The Gospels and Jesus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989) 142.
British Museum Syriac MS Additional 14,658. Blinzler, Trial of Jesus, 34, exclaims that the preservation of this letter is a “lucky turn of fate.” However, Syriac Christians probably saw this letter as worth preserving despite its Stoic teachings, some of which were opposed to Christian teaching. They would have appreciated its high moral tone, especially its repeated warnings against pride and the pursuit of wealth, warnings not dissimilar to the teaching of Jesus. They also would have appreciated the seeming monotheism of Mara’s characteristic reference to “God”; only once does he speak of “our gods,” and here he is quoting the words of his fellow prisoners. The positive allusion to Jesus may also have helped to preserve the letter.
Cureton, Spicelegium Syriacum, xv, argues that this may be the Serapion who became bishop of Antioch around 190, claiming that Bishop Serapion’s short epistles are similar to this one in purpose and tendency, and were influenced by it. But no direct literary link can be traced between them, and as Cureton himself admits (p. xiii), Serapion is a common name.
The Syriac lacks a verb in this clause, but the strong parallel with how Socrates and Pythagoras died makes it plain that killing is meant here.
Blinzler, Trial of Jesus, 35.
Cureton, Spicelegium Syriacum, xiii; he suggests that this is the persecution under Marcus Antoninus (p. xv).
Bruce, Jesus and Christian Origins , 30.
Blinzler, Trial of Jesus, 34-38; Evans, “Jesus in Non-Christian Sources,” 456.
Moreau, Temoinages sur Jesus, 9.
France, Evidence, 23-24; Brown, Death of the Messiah, 1:382.
DBSup , 6:1422-23.
Cureton, Spicelegium Syriacum, xv.
We have only Christian evidence for this decree of Hadrian, but nevertheless it is widely accepted by classical historians. For references and general treatment, see Schürer, History of the Jewish People, 1:553.
As Bruce, Jesus and Christian Origins, 31, remarks, Mara “led the way in what later became a commonplace—the placing of Christ on a comparable footing with the great sages of antiquity.” This was indeed a commonplace among Christian apologists, especially Justin Martyr, who argued for a positive view of the best Greek philosophers on the basis that they shared the same Logos incarnate in Jesus (2 Apology 10). This argument was rare among non-Christians.
Mara’s appreciative use of Christianity contrasts with the sharp attack made on it by another Stoic, Marcus Aurelius (Roman emperor 161-180), in his Meditations 11.3.
C. P. Jones, Culture and Society in Lucian (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986) 132.
The Greek text and English translation of Peregrinus are in A. M. Harmon, Lucian, vol. 5 (LCL; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1936). For an interpretive overview of Peregrinus, see Jones, Culture , 117-32. For the relationship of Lucian and early Christianity, see H. D. Betz, Lukian von Samosata und das Neue Testament (TU 76; Berlin: Akadamie, 1961) and idem, “Lukian von Samosata und das Christentum,” NovT 3 (1959) 226-37. See also J. Hall, Lucian’s Satire (New York: Arno, 1981) 212-15.
G. Bagnani argues that Peregrinus joined an “Essene Ebionism.” When the Palestinian church was reorganized along Gentile lines in the second century, foods formerly forbidden were now lawful, and Peregrinus was excommunicated for his refusal to eat them (“Peregrinus Proteus and the Christians,” Historia 4 [1955] 107-12). This explanation is unnecessarily complex, and Lucian does not say that Peregrinus was expelled for refusal to eat permitted food, but rather for eating forbidden food.
On this last point, see Jones, Lucian, 122.
Jones, Lucian, 122, points out that these titles have no place in early Christianity.
“The allusion is so obviously to Christ himself that one is at a loss to understand why Paul, let alone Moses, should have been suggested” (Harmon, Lucian, 15).
See J. Louis Martyn, Galatians (AB 33A; New York: Doubleday, 1997) 548- 49.
Jones, Lucian, 129 remarks that while Lucian’s description of a “transfigured” Peregrinus dressed in white, walking about while crowned with wild olive leaves, may recall passages from the New Testament about Jesus, the material is “fully pagan.”
It also does not seem to derive from Jewish polemic against Christianity, despite the claim of R. Joseph Hoffmann, Celsus, On the True Doctrine: A Discourse Against the Christians (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987) 25. None of the sources cited by Hoffmann uses this term, but rather typical Jewish terms such as “deceiver” and “one who leads astray.”
LSJ, 1622.
“No doubt Lucian is reflecting the common knowledge ‘in the air’ at the time, not an independent source of historical data” (Meier, Marginal Jew, 1:92).
For the Greek text, with a French translation, see M. Borret, Origène: Contre Celse (SC 132, 136, 147, 150, 227; Paris: Cerf, 1967-1976); for a German translation see Paul Koetschau, Die Textüberlieferung der Bücher des Origenes gegen Celsus in der Handschriften dieses Werkes und der Philokalia (GCS 2, 3; Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1889). For an older English translation, see ANF 4:395-669; a convenient synopsis of its contents is found on pp. 681-88. Translations and reconstructions include, most importantly, Henry Chadwick, Origen: Contra Celsum (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980) and Hoffmann, Celsus. Both Borret’s Greek text and Chadwick’s English translation put in italics those words they consider to belong to Celsus. See also Gary Tapp Burke, “Celsus and Late Second-Century Christianity” (dissertation, University of Iowa, 1981); Eugene V. Gallagher, Divine Man or Magician? Celsus and Origen on Jesus (SBLDS 64; Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1982); Graham N. Stanton, “Jesus of Nazareth: A Magician and a False Prophet Who Deceived God’s People?” in Jesus of Nazareth: Lord and Christ , ed. Joel B. Green and Max Turner (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994) 169-71; Robert L. Wilken, The Christians as the Romans Saw Them (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984) 94-125.
These headings largely follow Hoffmann, Celsus.
See Burke, “Celsus,” 93.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1949, 1970, 1996.
See, e.g., Arthur Drews, The Existence of Christ Disproved (London: Heatherington, 1841) 214. More recently, see Michael Martin, The Evidence against Christianity (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991).
On this loss and on efforts to recover what was written in this silent period, see T. E. Goud, “Latin Imperial Historiography Between Livy and Tacitus” (dissertation, University of Toronto, 1996).
M. Giebel, ed., C. Velleius Paterculis, Historia Romana (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1989).
Mellor, Tacitus, 2.
“For the whole of Roman society in the first century, Christianity was merely a contemptible Eastern superstition. It was ignored, save when it proved the occasion of political and social ferment. It is from this point of view alone that the Latin authors speak of it, and it is natural that they should not take the trouble to collect and examine the real or fictitious traditions to which those whom they regarded as agitators referred” (Goguel, Life of Jesus, 98-99).
The Teubner text edited by Wellesley in fact puts the reference to Christ in parentheses.
On Jesus and the Scrolls, see James H. Charlesworth, ed., Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls (New York: Doubleday, 1992); Klaus Berger, The Truth under Lock and Key? Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1995); Otto Betz and Rainer Riesner, Jesus, Qumran, and the Vatican (New York: Crossroad, 1994); Craig A. Evans, “The Recently Published Dead Sea Scrolls and the Historical Jesus,” Studying the Historical Jesus: Evaluations of the State of Current Research, ed. Bruce Chilton and Craig A. Evans (NTTS 19; Leiden: Brill, 1994) 547-65; Harmut Stegemann, The Library of Qumran (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998); James C. VanderKam, The Dead Sea Scrolls Today (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994).
This exaggeration would prove ironic, for Pliny himself died from poisonous fumes on the Mediterranean coast when he approached too near the erupting Mount Vesuvius.
A. Dupont-Sommer, The Dead Sea Scrolls: A Preliminary Survey (New York: Macmillan, 1952). J. L. Teicher explicitly identified the Teacher of Righteousness as Jesus (“Jesus in the Habakkuk Scroll,” JJS 3 [1952] 53-55).
The verb is hophia’, “appeared.” Dupont-Sommer gave it a supernatural meaning and said that its implied subject was the Teacher of Righteousness. Theodore Gaster refers it to the Wicked Priest with no supernatural meaning (The Dead Sea Scriptures , 3d ed. [Garden City, N.Y: Doubleday, 1976] 324) and Geza Vermes does likewise (The Dead Sea Scrolls in English , 3d ed. [Baltimore: Penguin, 1987] 288- 89).
Edmund Wilson, The Scrolls from the Dead Sea (New York: Oxford University Press, 1955). This grew out of an article by the same title in The New Yorker, 14 May 1955, pp. 45-131. Wilson was the first to write that scholars were covering up the Scrolls because their contents posed a threat to traditional Judaism and Christianity.
John M. Allegro, “Jesus and Qumran,” in Jesus in Myth and History, ed. R. Joseph Hoffmann and Gerald A. Larue (Buffalo: Prometheus, 1986) 95-96.
John M. Allegro, The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1970). Cf. “The Untold Story of the Dead Sea Scrolls,” Harper’s Magazine , vol. 232 (1966) 46-64.
Woody Allen, “The Scrolls,” The New Republic, 31 August 1974, pp. 18-19. Allen does not deal with Jesus in the Scrolls.
Robert Eisenman, James the Just in the Habakkuk Pesher (SPB 35; Leiden: Brill, 1986); idem, James the Brother of Jesus (New York: Viking, 1997).
John N. Wilford, “Messianic Link to Christianity Is Found in Scrolls,” The New York Times , 8 November 1991, p. A8.
G. Vermes, “The Oxford Forum for Qumran Research Seminar on the Rule of War from Cave 4 (4Q285),” JJS 43 (1992) 85-90. See also Marcus Bockmuehl, “A ‘Slain Messiah’in 4Q Serekh Milhamah (4Q285)?” TynBul 43 (1992) 155-69; Martin G. Abegg, Jr., “Messianic Hope and 4Q285: A Reassessment,” JBL 113 (1994) 81-91; VanderKam, Dead Sea Scrolls Today, 179-80; J. D. Tabor, “A Pierced or Piercing Messiah? The Verdict is Still Out,” BARev 18:6 (1992) 58-59. Eisenman and Wise later acknowledged, “This might also read, depending on the context, ‘and the leader of the Community, the Bran[ch of David], will put him to death’ ” (Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered [Shaftesbury, Dorset, UK: Element, 1992] 29).
John Painter concludes, “Not only are [Eisenman’s] conclusions at variance with mainstream scholarship, but his methods of handling evidence and developing arguments are also different.” Painter notes that this book features scarcely a reference to any contemporary scholar (Just James: The Broker of Jesus in History and Tradition [Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, 1997] 277-78).
M. Baigent and R. Leigh, The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception (New York: Summit, 1991) 137. Graham Stanton reports that “in Germany alone over 400,000 copies were sold in just over a year, largely as the result of an unprecedented advertising campaign which played on gullibility and anti-Christian sentiments” (Gospel Truth? New Light on Jesus and the Gospels [Valley Forge, Penn.: Trinity Press International, 1995] 21). See also J. A. Fitzmyer, “The Dead Sea Scrolls: The Latest Form of Catholic Bashing,” America, 15 February 1992, pp. 119-22.
E. Gruber and H. Kirsten, The Original Jesus: The Buddhist Sources of Christianity (Shaftesbury, Dorset, UK: Element, 1995) 215, 224. (A bodhisattva is a human who reaches Nirvana but postpones its full enjoyment to help others reach it.)
K. V. Hosking, Yeshua the Nazorean (London: Janus, 1995). His swoon argument follows the sensational best-selling book by Hugh Schonfield, The Passover Plot (New York: Random House, 1965).
Barbara E. Thiering, Redating the Teacher of Righteousness (Sydney: Theological Explorations, 1979). See also her The Gospels and Qumran (Sydney: Theological Explorations, 1981).
Barbara E. Thiering, Jesus and the Riddle of the Dead Sea Scrolls (San Francisco: Harper, 1992).
For a review of this program, which was broadcast throughout Australia and Great Britain, see P. S. Allen, “The Riddle of the Dead Sea Scrolls,” Arch 44:1 (1991) 72- 73.
J. O’Callaghan, “Papiros neotestamarios en la cueva 7 de Qumran?” Bib 53 (1972) 91-100; English translation, “New Testament Papyri in Qumran Cave 7?” Supplement to JBL 91:2 (1972).
C. P. Thiede, The Earliest Gospel Manuscript? (London: Paternoster, 1992). For refutation of the views of O’Callaghan and Thiede, see, e.g., Stanton, Gospel Truth? 20-32,197-98.
Vanderkam, Dead Sea Scrolls Today, 184.
For the text and translation of Josephus’s works, see the Loeb edition edited by Henry St. J. Thackeray, Ralph Marcus, and Louis Feldman (LCL 186, 203, 210, 242, 281, 326, 365, 410, 433, 456; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1926-65). For recent studies, see Harold W. Attridge, “Josephus and His Works,” in Jewish Writings of the Second-Temple Period, ed. Michael Stone (CRINT 2.2; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984) 185-232; P. Bilde, Josephus Between Jerusalem and Rome (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1988); Shaye J. D. Cohen, Josephus in Galilee and Rome: His Vita and Development as a Historian (CSCT 8; Leiden: Brill, 1979); Louis Feldman, “Josephus,” ABD, 3:981-98; Steven Mason, Josephus and the New Testament (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1992); Tessa Rajak, Josephus: The Historian and His Society (London: Duckworth, 1983). Still valuable is Henry St. J. Thackeray, Josephus: The Man and the Historian (New York: Jewish Institute of Religion, 1929). On the question of Jesus in Josephus, see Paul Winter, “Excursus II: Josephus on Jesus and James: Ant. xviii 3, 3 (63-4) and xx 9, 1 (200-3),” in Emil Schürer, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ (3 vols.; vol. 3 in two parts; rev. and ed. Geza Vermes, Fergus Millar, Matthew Black, and Martin Goodman; Edinburgh: Clark, 1973-87) 1:428-41; Raymond E. Brown, The Death of the Messiah: From Gethsemane to the Grave: A Commentary on the Passion Narratives of the Gospels (ABRL; 2 vols.; New York: Doubleday, 1994) 1:373-77; Claudia Setzer, Jewish Responses to Early Christians: History and Polemics, 30-150 C.E. (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994) 105-9; Gerd Theissen and Annette Merz, The Historical Jesus: A Comprehensive Guide (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998) 64-74; Graham Twelftree, “Jesus in Jewish Traditions,” in Jesus Traditions Outside the Gospels, ed. David Wenham (Sheffield: Sheffield University Press, 1982) 290-310.
The medieval Jewish book Josippon is a Hebrew digest of Josephus, widely quoted and used, but ascribed to “Joseph ben Gorion.” Its earlier versions have no mention of Jesus; later, expanded versions have brief, negative mention of Jesus with material seemingly drawn from the Talmud and Toledot Yeshu. See Abraham A. Neuman, “A Note on John the Baptist and Jesus in Josippon,” HUCA 23 (1951) 136-49. A good example of modern marginalizing is Joseph Klausner’s Jesus of Nazareth (New York: Macmillan, 1949). Josephus is in a chapter with Suetonius and Tacitus, not in the chapter on “Jewish tradition.” For about the last two generations, however, Jewish scholars have been at the forefront of research into Josephus.
See Joan E. Taylor, The Immerser: John the Baptist within Second Temple Judaism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), for a careful treatment of the Baptizer within Judaism, including Josephus’s reports on him.
For a recent argument against its authenticity, see Twelftree, “Jesus in Jewish Traditions,” 299-301.
Winter, “Josephus on Jesus and James,” 431, says that Josephus mentions about twelve other people named Jesus.
For the few occurrences of the phrase “called Christ” in the New Testament, see Matt 1:16 (Matthew’s genealogy, where it breaks the long pattern of only personal names); Matt 27:17, 22 (by Pontius Pilate); John 4:25 (by the Samaritan woman). Twelftree, “Jesus in Jewish Traditions,” 300, argues from these instances that “called Christ” is “a construction Christians used when speaking of Jesus” and therefore an indication that this passage is not genuine. He also cites John 9:11, but there the phrase is “called Jesus” and so does not apply to this issue. But if these passages are indicative of wider usage outside the New Testament, “called Christ” tends to come from non-Christians and is not at all typical of Christian usage. Christians would not be inclined to use a neutral or descriptive term like “called Christ”; for them, Jesus is (the) Christ.
Twelftree, “Jesus in Jewish Traditions,” 300, gives good evidence from Josephus’s style to establish this point.
Passages from the Slavonic Josephus are taken from F. F. Bruce, Jesus and Christian Origins Outside the New Testament (London: Hodder & Stoughton; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974) 43-53.
R. Eisler, IẼSOUS BASILEUS OU BASILEUSAS (2 vols.; Heidelberg: Winter, 1929-30); (partial) English translation by Alexander Krappe as The Messiah Jesus and John the Baptist (London: Methuen, 1931). The title of the German edition of the book, “Jesus a King Who Did Not Reign,” is taken from the third Slavonic insertion above. See G. A. Williamson, The World of Josephus (Boston: Little, Brown, 1964) 308-9.
Winter, “Josephus on Jesus and James,” 440.
Louis Feldman, Josephus and Modern Scholarship (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1984) 673-703. Also useful are Feldman’s “The Testimonium Flavianum: The State of the Question,” in Christological Perspectives , ed. R. F. Berkey and S. A. Edwards (New York: Pilgrim, 1982) 179-99; and Geza Vermes, “The Jesus-Notice of Josephus Re-examined,” JJS 38 (1987) 1-10.
W. Whiston, The Works of Josephus, Complete and Unabridged (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1987; first published 1736) 815-22.
Wolfgang A. Bienert, “The Witness of Josephus (Testimonium Flavianum),” in New Testament Apocrypha , ed. Wilhelm Schneemelcher, English trans. ed. R. McL. Wilson, rev. ed., 2 vols. (Cambridge: James Clarke; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1991) 1:490.
The most prolific has been Franz Dornseiff; see especially “Zum Testimonium Flavianum,” ZNW 46 (1955) 245-50. See also Etienne Nodet, “Jesus et Jean-Baptiste selon Josèphe,” RB 92 (1985) 320-48, 497-524. For an earlier defender, see F. C. Burkitt, “Josephus and Christ,” TT 47 (1913) 135-44.
This is implicit in Lucian when he states that Jesus taught his followers to deny the Greek gods. See above, p. 59.
Theissen and Merz broadly claim without any documentation, “That Jesus attracted Jews and Gentiles accords with Christian sources,” but then add that this can be better explained as an anachronism (Historical Jesus, 67) . For a comprehensive study of Jesus and the Gentiles, see Joachim Jeremias, Jesus’ Promise to the Nations (London: SCM, 1958).
See Meier, Marginal Jew, 1:64-65, for full treatment of this point.
In James 1:1 the author calls his Jewish-Christian audience the “Twelve Tribes.” Elsewhere in early Christianity, “tribe” is almost always used of Israel; the exception that proves the rule is Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 3.3.3, “the Christian tribe.”
Setzer, Jewish Responses to Early Christians, 107.
See J. Neville Birdsall, “The Continuing Enigma of Josephus’ Testimony about Jesus,” BJRL 67 (1984-85) 609-22. Birdsall points to six expressions that he argues are incompatible with other uses in Josephus. See also Hans Conzelmann, “Jesus Christus,” RGG III (3d ed., 1959), cols. 619-53.
Mason, Josephus and the New Testament, 165.
Josephus uses Xρıστoς only of Jesus, here and in 20.9.1, and does not explain the title to his Roman readers despite the difficulties they had understanding it (see above, pp. 34-36).
Thackeray, Josephus, 144. Thackeray would later adopt the view that this passage has Christian additions to an authentic text.
This neutral reconstruction follows closely the one proposed in the latest treatment, by John Meier (Marginal Jew , 1:61). For other recent neutral reconstructions, see Brown, Death of the Messiah, 1:373-74; Theissen and Merz, Historical Jesus, 71-74.
Eisler, IẼSOUS BASILEUS OU BASILEUSAS, engages in a wholesale rewriting of the passage. See also Wolfgang A. Bienert, Das älteste nichtchristliche Jesusbericht: Josephus über Jesus (Halle, 1936); idem, “Witness of Josephus,” 1:489-91; Ernst Bammel, “A New Variant Form of the Testimonium Flavianum,” in his Judaica (WUNT 37; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1986) 190-93 (the most careful and sophisticated in method among this group); S. G. F. Brandon, Jesus and the Zealots (New York: Scribner, 1967); Bruce, Jesus and Christian Origins , 38-41; Graham N. Stanton, “Jesus of Nazareth: A Magician and a False Prophet Who Deceived God’s People?” in Jesus of Nazareth: Lord and Christ , ed. Joel B. Green and Max Turner (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994) 169-71; Twelftree, “Jesus in Jewish Traditions,” 303, 310.
Bruce, Jesus and Christian Origins, 39 (italics mine).
Cited from Thackeray, Josephus, 144.
Bruce, Jesus and Christian Origins , 38.
Eisler, Messiah Jesus, 1:51-54.
Thackeray, Josephus, 145.
Bammel, “New Variant Form,” 190-93.
Vermes, “Jesus-Notice,” p. 10, n. 46. Vermes takes his argument a step farther by suggesting that if Josephus’s witness to Jesus had been negative, Christian scribes would have been unlikely to copy the Antiquities at all.
Bruce, Jesus and Christian Origins , 40: “‘The Christ’ is required at this point; otherwise Josephus’ readers might not understand how in fact the ‘tribe of Christians’ got its name from Jesus.”
See above, p. 43.
Of course, this pattern of citation could be explained in other ways as well. For example, Paul Garnet argues that Josephus wrote two editions of the Antiquities, one pro-Christian and the second with no Testimonium section at all. This second edition was the one available to Origen and other pre-Constantinian Christians (“If the Testimonium Flavianum Contains Alterations, Who Originated Them?” in Studia Patristica 19 [1989], ed. E. A. Livingstone [Leuven: Peeters, 1989] 57-61).
S. Pines, An Arabic Version of the Testimonium Flavianum and Its Implications (Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1971) 16.
The value of the negative reconstruction, if correct, should be indicated. It gets Jesus’ name right, places him in the right time period, and of course assumes his historicity. He is a wise (or clever) man who worked miracles. He was put to death by order of Pilate. Jesus’ death is more politically charged in the negative construction; the ties to later “deceiver” polemic against Jesus are explicit; and trouble in the later Christian movement is tied to trouble in the life of Jesus. In some ways, the negative reconstruction yields richer and more interesting results than the neutral one, but this is of course no reason for arguing its likelihood.
“In Josephus’ eyes, Jesus’ primary appeal to his followers was as a miracle-worker, a view that corresponds to various pictures of Jesus in later rabbinic and pagan literature, as well as certain gospel traditions” (Setzer, Jewish Responses to Early Christians, 107).
Vermes, “Jesus-Notice,” gives careful attention to Josephus’s description of Jesus as a wise man and miracle-worker.
See above, p. 46.
Twelftree, “Jesus in Jewish Traditions,” 294-95.
Meier, Marginal Jew, 1:68.
Klausner, Jesus, 19.
Cohen, Josephus in Galilee and Rome , 253.
Jacob Neusner, From Politics to Piety: The Emergence of Pharisaic Judaism (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1972) 94.
Twelftree, “Jesus in Jewish Traditions,” 311.
L. H. Silberman, “Once Again: The Use of Rabbinic Material,” NTS 42 (1996) 153-55; R. E. Brown, “The Babylonian Talmud on the Execution of Jesus,” NTS 43 (1997) 158-59. The “Once Again” in Silberman’s article is an allusion to an earlier article in NTS 24 (1978) 415-17.
Several authors have collected and analyzed proposed Jesus traditions in the Talmud and related literature: G. H. Dalman, The Words of Jesus (Edinburgh: Clark, 1902); H. Laible, Jesus Christ in the Talmud, Midrash, Zohar, and the Liturgy of the Synagogue (Cambridge: Deighton & Bell, 1893); R. Travers Herford, Christianity in Talmud and Midrash (London: Williams & Norgate, 1903; reprint, Clifton, N.J.: Reference Book Publishers, 1966); Joseph Klausner, Jesus of Nazareth (London: Macmillan, 1925); Morris Goldstein, Jesus in Jewish Traditions (New York: Macmillan, 1950); Jacob Z. Lauterbach, “Jesus in the Talmud,” in his Rabbinic Essays (New York: Ktav, 1973) 473- 570; Johann Maier, Jesus von Nazareth in der talmudischen Überlieferung (ErFor 82; Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1978). See also Bruce, Jesus and Christian Origins, 54-65; Meier, Marginal Jew , 1:93-98.
The only exception is the name “Ben Netzer,” which some before Herford maintained was a reference to Jesus, but which Herford rightly rejects (Herford, Christianity in Talmud and Midrash , 95-96).
In general, the earlier the material Maier deals with, the less tendentious and forced his arguments are. Therefore, his conclusions on Tannaitic traditions are useful for our study.
The translations of the Babylonian Talmud offered here are based on the text of the Soncino edition.
“Cuts in the flesh” are skin alterations such as scratching and scarring, perhaps combined with tattooing, thought to bring magical, supernatural power.
Pumbeditha was a town in Babylonia with a noted rabbinical academy.
The Beth Din (“house of judgment”) is the rabbinical law court where this deceiver would be tried, with the two witnesses as his accusers.
See 2 Pet 2:15, Jude 11; Rev 2:14. Balaam is presented as an outsider who seduces the people of God to false religion, a traditional picture shared by rabbinic writers.
Alexander Janneus was a Hasmonean king known for his general cruelty and especially his opposition to the Pharisees.
aksania can mean either “inn” or “innkeeper.” Rabbi Joshua uses it in the former sense, and Jesus (to his discredit) uses it in the second.
In this context aksania means only “hostess.”
The point of this seems to be that Mary was indeed worthy of an early death. Evidently the “grim reaper” also has a grim sense of humor!
J. Louis Martyn, History and Theology in the Fourth Gospel (2d ed.; Nashville: Abingdon, 1979) 78.
A. Geiger, “Bileam und Jesus,” Jüdische Zeitschrift für Wissenschaft und Leben 6 (1868) 31-37. He was followed in this by Laible and Herford.
Herford, Christianity in Talmud and Midrash , 70-71.
Klausner, Jesus, 33-34.
Perhaps the reason this identification comes later is that earlier, Tannaitic rabbis knew that Jesus was Jewish, an insider, not (like Balaam) a deceiver threatening from the outside. Later, more intense polemic overlooked this.
Origen, Against Celsus 1.32. See above, pp. 66-67. See also Henry Chadwick, Origen: Contra Celsum (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980) 31, n. 3 (on Against Celsus 1.32).
Besides Martyn, who relates it to the Fourth Gospel, see also Brown, Death of the Messiah, 1:376-78; idem, “Babylonian Talmud”; Herford, Christianity in Talmud and Midrash, 344-60; Lauterbach, Rabbinic Essays, 473-96; Maier, Jesus von Nazareth in der talmudischen Überlieferung, 216-29; Silberman, “Once Again.”
Brown, “Babylonian Talmud,” 159, points to John 11:45-53 as evidence that “a Sanhedrin decided to put Jesus to death weeks before he died on Passover eve.” But the passage speaks of a plot to put Jesus to death (v. 53) and then of an “arrest warrant” for him (11:57), not an actual early arrest which could fit the forty-day period envisioned here.
In ancient practice as prescribed by Jewish law, the criminal would be stoned first to induce death, and then his body would be hung in public exposure until the end of the day. Here, death itself appears to be by hanging, and the references to stoning seem to be in deference to the biblical mandates.
Maier, Jesus von Nazareth in der talmudischen Überlieferung, 229.
Stanton, “Jesus of Nazareth: A Magician and a False Prophet,” has argued carefully from the canonical Gospels that a Jewish charge that Jesus was a magician most probably goes back to the lifetime of the historical Jesus. Yet, though the charge may go back to Jesus’ lifetime, the rabbinic tradition cannot be shown to preserve this first-century charge.
Joseph Klausner, Das Leben Jesu nach jüdischen Quellen (Berlin: Calvary, 1902) 246-47.
Solomon Schechter, in Jacob Agus, ed., Judaism and Christianity: Selected Accounts 1892-1962 (New York: Arno, 1973) 415.
To my knowledge, the last edition of the Toledot Yeshu seems to be the Yiddish one published in 1932 in an appendix to M. Wechsler’s edition of Isaac ben Abraham Troki’s Hizuq Emunah [“Faith Strengthened”] (New York: General Lainataip, 1932).
For general studies of the Toledot Yeshu, see especially J.-P. Osier, L’evangile du ghetto (Paris: Berg, 1984); Günter Schlichting, Ein judishces Leben Jesu: Die verschollene Toledot-Jeschu-Fassung Tam ū-mū‘ād (WUNT 24; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1982). See also William Horbury, “The Trial of Jesus in Jewish Tradition,” in The Trial of Jesus , ed. Ernst Bammel (SBT 2d series 13; London: SCM, 1970) 103-16; Twelftreee, “Jesus in Jewish Traditions,” 312-13; and Hillel I. Newman, “The Death of Jesus in the Toledot Yeshu Literature,” JTS 50 (1999) 59-79. English translations of the Toledot Yeshu are treated by Martin I. Lockshin, “Translation as Polemic: The Case of Toledot Yeshu, ” in Minhah le-Nahum, ed. M. Brettler and M. Fishbane (JSOTSup 154; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1993) 226-241. Older treatments include Goldstein, Jesus in Jewish Traditions , 147-166; Klausner, Jesus, 47-54; Samuel Kraus, Das Leben Jesu nach jüdischen Quellen (Berlin: 1902). An excellent study has unfortunately never been published: William Horbury, “A Critical Examination of the Toledoth Jeshu” (dissertation, Cambridge University, 1970).
Johann Christopf Wagenseil, Tela ignea Satanae [“Fiery darts of Satan”] (Altdorf: Noricorum, 1681).
Adapted from Goldstein, Jesus in Jewish Traditions, 148-54.
Here the Toledot Yeshu gives a negative explanation (“deterioration”) of the shortened form Yeshu, which originally had no negative implication. This is likely an inference from the Talmud and other Jewish usage, where Jesus is called Yeshu, and other Jews with the same name are called by the fuller name Yehoshua , “Joshua” (e.g., b . Sanh. 107b on p. 111 above).
Ernst Bammel, “Eine übersehene Angabe zu den Toledoth Jeschu,” NTS 35 (1989) 479-80.
This is the conclusion of Newman, “Death of Jesus.”
See Newman, “Death of Jesus.”
The expansion of the one arrest and trial sequence found in Christian tradition into two separate arrests and trials is also perhaps a popularizing trait here. Note that the Slavonic Josephus also narrates two arrests and trials of Jesus, seemingly with no literary dependence on the Toledot Yeshu.
Jane Schaberg, The Illegitimacy of Jesus: A Feminist Theological Interpretation of the Infancy Narratives (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995) 174-77.
Schaberg, Illegitimacy of Jesus , 177.
G. Lüdemann, Virgin Birth? (London: SCM, 1998) 55.
Setzer, Jewish Responses to Early Christians , 144-46.
A rough indication of the proportional treatment given to Jesus and Christians in rabbinic literature can be inferred from Herford, Christianity in Talmud and Midrash , where passages relating to Jesus are cited and discussed in 61 pages, whereas passages relating to minim are treated in 246 pages.
“It is noteworthy that in the scant reports about Jesus and his disciples in Rabbinic literature they are primarily described as enchanters and sorcerers” (Ephraim E. Urbach, The Sages [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987] 115-16).
For a fuller discussion, see Setzer, Jewish Responses to Early Christians , 40- 41. She concludes that this tradition does not go back to Jesus’ death (or presumably its immediate aftermath), but has “more historical utility as hints of what Jews and Christians may have been saying about one another in Matthew’s community and elsewhere” (p. 40). Setzer seems to imply that this charge originated in popular Jewish anti-Christian polemic, but Matthew’s tracing of its origin to the Jewish leadership and Trypho’s use of it suggest that it may have been more than popular in both origin and use.
For a study of pre-Markan miracle collections, see Paul J. Achtemeier, “Toward the Isolation of Pre-Markan Miracle Catenae,” JBL 89 (1970) 265-91; idem, “Origin and Function of Pre-Markan Miracle Catenae,” JBL 91 (1972) 198-211. Achtemeier implies that these are written sources behind Mark 4-6 and 6-8. On an apocalyptic source behind Mark 13, see Egon Brandenburger, Markus 13 und die Apokalyptik (FRLANT 134; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1984). While many have argued for a written pre-Markan passion narrative, there is no consensus regarding its exact contents. See Marion Soards, “Appendix IX: The Question of a Pre-Marcan Passion Narrative,” in Raymond E. Brown, The Death of the Messiah: From Gethsemane to the Grave : A Commentary on the Passion Narratives of the Gospels (ABRL; 2 vols.; New York: Doubleday, 1994) 2:1492-1524. In the next chapter we will treat the Secret Gospel of Mark and the Gospel of Peter as potential sources of canonical Mark. For a recent attempt to reconstruct an outline of a possible pre-Markan gospel, see Michael Goulder, “The Pre-Marcan Gospel,” SJT 47 (1994) 453-71.
For the most recent study, see Loveday Alexander, The Preface to Luke’s Gospel (SNTSMS 78; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
The exceptions are the omissions of material from Mark 6:17-29 and 6:45- 8:26. On the other hand, Luke’s composition of the travel account in his “Central Section” (9:51-19:27) is based on Mark 10.
B. Weiss, Die Quellen des Lukasevangeliums (Stuttgart: Cotta’schen Buchhandlung, 1907); P. Feine, Eine vorkanonische Überlieferung des Lukas in Evangelium und Apostelgeschichte (Gotha: Perthes, 1891). See also B. H. Streeter, The Four Gospels (London: Macmillan, 1924). For a concise overview of scholarship on L, see Kevin Giles, “‘L’ Tradition,” in Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels , ed. Joel B. Green, Scot McKnight, and I. Howard Marshall (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1992) 431-32.
Hans Klein, Barmherzigkeit gegenüber den Elenden und Geächteten: Studien zur Botschaft des lukanishcen Sondergutes (Biblisch-theologische Studien 10; Neukirchen: Neukirchener Verlag, 1987); Gerd Petzke, Das Sondergut des Evangeliums nach Lukas (ZWB; Zurich: Theologischer Verlag, 1990); Bertram Pittner, Studien zum lukanischen Sondergut: Sprachliche, theologische und formkritische Untersuchungen zum Sonderguttexten in Lk 5-19 (ETS 18; Leipzig: Benno, 1991); Bernhard Heininger, Metaphorik, Erzahlstruktur und szenisch-dramatische Gestaltung in den Sondergutgleichnissen bei Lukas ( NTAbh 24; Münster: Aschendorff, 1991); Kim Paffenroth, The Story of Jesus according to L (JSNTSup 147; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997).
1. H. Marshall, The Gospel of Luke (NIGTC; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978) 31: “The general fidelity of Luke to his sources M[ark] and Q, where these can be certainly identified, makes one skeptical of suggestions that he created material in the Gospel on any large scale. It is much more plausible that Luke’s own attitudes were in considerable measure formed by the traditions which he inherited.”
Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The Gospel according to Luke (AB 28-28A; 2 vols.; New York: Doubleday, 1981-85) 1:83-84. Despite his uncertainty whether L was a written or oral source, and whether it is to be put on a par with Q or Mark, in his list of “passages ... that I think have been derived from L” he includes all the special Lukan material.
H. Koester, Ancient Christian Gospels: Their History and Development (Philadelphia: Trinity Press International; London: SCM, 1990) 336-37. Heterogeneity is indeed a valid issue here; but in a source, why should size matter?
Udo Schnelle, The History and Theology of the New Testament Writings (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994) 250.
E. Schweizer, “Zur Frage der Quellenbenutzung durch Lukas,” in idem, Neues Testament und Christologie im Werden (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1982) 84-85.
Paffenroth, Story of Jesus according to L, 143.
Paffenroth’s content analysis to distinguish source from Lukan composition may at times result in too much disjunction between them. For example, many interpreters of L have held that the Zacchaeus story is in line with Luke’s theology, not at odds with it. Second, his use of catchwords to discover the compositional and thematic unity of the source can be faulted for inexact method, as for example when he repeatedly reads into his source the word “honor,” which does not explicitly occur and therefore cannot be the basis of catchword composition as commonly understood. Finally, it can be questioned whether Luke used L in its original order. Paffenroth advances some good arguments from content and style to indicate that Luke did so. However, because Luke used Mark mostly in its order and also used Q in its likely original order, it might have been difficult for him to use his L source in its original order as well. These criticisms notwithstanding, Paffenroth’s overall analysis makes a solid contribution to research into L, and one that future research must take into account.
Distilled from Paffenroth, Story of Jesus according to L, 159-65, an English translation of his reconstructed L source.
Paffenroth, Story of Jesus according to L, 158.
Here we must remind ourselves that we only possess these hypothetical sources insofar as they are used by the Gospel writers . That Luke, for example, could use Mark selectively and creatively is a good indication he may have used L in the same way.
For a general introduction to M, with history of research, see Fred W. Burnett, “‘M’ Tradition,” in Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels , ed. Green, McKnight, and Marshall, 511-12.
London: Macmillan, 1927, esp. 223-70.
2d ed.; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1935, esp. 21-44; see also T. W. Manson, The Sayings of Jesus (London: SCM, 1949) 21-26.
G. D. Kilpatrick, The Origins of the Gospel of St . Matthew (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1946) esp. 8-36.
Kilpatrick, Origins , 35.
Kilpatrick, Origins, 36.
Hans T. Wrege, Das Sondergut des Matthaus-Evangeliums (ZWB; Zurich: Theologischer Verlag, 1991) offers a commentary on the M texts and an eight-page conclusion discussing general features and theological themes of M. However, his analysis of M is marred by his inclusion of many texts commonly assigned to Q.
Manson, Sayings of Jesus, 26.
Schnelle, Writings , 174. However, Hans Klein has argued that M is organized in three categories by form and content: the parables speak of turning to the poor and suffering; the sayings about the law warn against a lax life; and the sayings about the community, both leaders and followers, build a strong foundation for church life (“Judenchristliche Frömmigkeit im Sondergut des Matthaus,” NTS 35 [1989] 466-74).
S. H. Brooks, Matthew’s Community: The Evidence of his Special Sayings Material (JSNTSup 16; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1987).
Brooks, Matthew’s Community , 112-13.
Julius Wellhausen, Erweiterungen und Anderungen in vierten Evangelium (Berlin: Reimer, 1907); idem, Das Evangelium Johannis (Berlin: Reimer, 1908); Wilhelm Bousset, “Der Verfasser des Johannesevangeliums,” TRu 8 (1905) 225-44, 277-95; idem, “1st das vierte Evangelium eine literarische Einheit?” TRu 12 (1909) 1-12, 39-64; M. Goguel, Les sources du recit johannique de la passion (Paris, 1910); E. Schweizer, Ego eimi ... : Die religionsgeschichtliche Herkunft und theologische Bedeutung der johannischen Bildreden, zugleich ein Beitrag zur Quellenfrage des vierten Evangeliums (FRLANT 38; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1939; 2d ed., 1965); J. Jeremias, “Johanneische Literarkritik,” TBl 20 (1941) 33-46; R. Bultmann, Das Evangelium des Johannes (KEK; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1941; English translation, Oxford: Blackwell, 1971; 21st German ed., 1986). The Greek text of Bultmann’s signs source is conveniently given in D. Moody Smith, The Composition and Order of the Fourth Gospel (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1953) 38-44; an English version by B. S. Easton is given in JBL 65 (1946) 143-56.
Bultmann’s signs source includes the following (minor modifications within a verse are not mentioned): 1:35-49; 2:1-12; 4:4-7, 9, 16-19, 25-26, 28-29, 30, 40, 46-47, 50-54; 6:1-3, 5, 7-13, 16-22, 25; 7:2-4, 6, 8-10; 5:2-3, 5-15, 18; 7:19-23; 9:1-3, 6-14, 16- 21, 24-28, 34, 35-38; 10:40-42; 11:2-3, 5-7, 11-15, 17-19, 33-34, 38-39, 41, 43-44; 12:37- 38; 20:30-31 (Smith, Composition , 48-51).
Bultmann held that the signs source was largely invented by Hellenist Jewish Christians when they took their message to an environment that needed miracles; the historical Jesus worked no miracles, because miracles cannot happen. Most later studies which accept the existence of Bultmann’s signs source have rejected his views of its origins.
We may take the conclusion of Rudolf Schnackenburg as typical: “Even though the division of sources proposed by Bultmann is not convincing in general, his various observations in favour of a [signs] source have considerable weight” (The Gospel according to John [HTKNT; 3 vols.; Freiburg: Herder; Montreal: Palm, 1968] 1:64).
R. T. Fortna, The Gospel of Signs (SNTSMS 11; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970); U. C. von Wahlde, The Earliest Version of John’s Gospel (GNS 30; Wilmington, Del.: Glazier, 1989). See Fortna’s The Fourth Gospel and Its Predecessor (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1988), which follows up the earlier book with a treatment of the signs source in the context of the whole Gospel. See also W. Nicol, The Semeia in the Fourth Gospel: Tradition and Redaction ( NTSup 32; Leiden: Brill, 1972). Other efforts at source criticism are discussed by D. A. Carson, “Source Criticism of the Fourth Gospel: Some Methodological Questions,” JBL 97 (1978) 411-29; Robert Kysar, The Fourth Evangelist and His Gospel (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1975) 13-37. A recent contribution by Gilbert van Belle, The Signs Source in the Fourth Gospel: Historical Survey and Critical Evaluation of the Semeia Hypothesis (BETL 116; Louvain: Leuven University Press, 1994), is a massive (503 pages) attack on the signs source hypothesis, especially Fortna’s. As a history of research, it is quite useful; but its critique of the signs source hypothesis is tendentious at several points. It seems to be based on the program of the “Leuven School,” which argues that John is dependent upon the Synoptics, especially Mark. Another recent work arguing Synoptic connections is Thomas L. Brodie, The Quest for the Origin of John’s Gospel: A Source-Critical Approach (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).
Fortna, Gospel of Signs, 235-45.
Fortna, Gospel of Signs, 221-34.
Fortna, Gospel of Signs, 221.
Fortna, Gospel of Signs, 225. D. Moody Smith makes the interesting suggestion that the signs source (minus passion and resurrection) was a mission tract directed to Jewish followers of John the Baptizer to convince them that Jesus was the Messiah (“The Milieu of the Johannine Miracle Source: A Proposal,” 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) 164-80.
This view runs counter to the common understanding that early Christian literature was for internal use.
Asterisks introduce “secondary texts,” those not identified by primary criteria but still thought to be part of the source: 1:19-28; 1:35-42, 44-49; 2:1-11; 2:23, 26- 3:2 ; 3:22-26; 4:1-4; 4:5-9, 16-19, 25-30, 39; 4:43, 45; 4:46-47, 49-54; 5:1-9; 6:1-3; 6:4-5, 7-14; * 6:16-21; 6:26; 7:25-27; 7:31-32; * 7:40-44; 7:45-52; 8:12-13; 9:1, 6-17, 24-34; 10:19-21; 10:40-42; 11:1, 3, 6, 11-15a, 17-20, 28-39, 43-45; 11:46-50, 53; 11:54-57; *12:1-8; 12:9-11; 12:18-19; *12:20-22; 12:37-42; 18:1-3, 7-8, 10-13; *18:19-24; 18 :28- 29, 33-35; 18:39-19:6a; 19:13-16; 19:17-25a; *19:39-42; 20:1, 11, 14-16; 20:30-31.
Two other reconstructions of the signs source should be outlined here. Of all reconstructions of the signs source, Nicol’s is the shortest. Here the signs source is confined to the material of six miracles plus the call of the first disciples, the story of the Samaritan woman, and the walking on the water (1:35-51; 2:1-11; 4:5-9, 16-19, 28-30, 40; 4:46-54; 5:2-9b; 6:1-3, 5-22; 9:1-3a, 6-7; 11:1-3, 6, 11-15, 17-19, 33-39, 43-44 (Nicol, The Semeia in the Fourth Gospel , 30-40). Finally, in his commentary on the Gospel of John, Schnackenburg provides a brief analysis of the signs. His list includes 2:1-11 a; 4:46-54; 6:1-21; 5:2-9; 9:1, 6-7; 11:1a, 3, 17, 33-34, 38, 39a, 41a, 43-44; 20:30 (Schnackenburg, Gospel, 64-67).
Raymond E. Brown, An Introduction to the New Testament (ABRL; New York: Doubleday, 1997) 364.
Koester, Ancient Christian Gospels , 251-55.
The siglum “Q” is commonly said to derive from the German Quelle, ≪ source,≫ but this is not at all certain. See John J. Schmitt, “In Search of the Origin of the Siglum Q,” JBL 100 (1981) 609-11.
“Parallel material” usually refers to passages very close in wording, not just about the same topic. Thus, the first two chapters in Matthew and Luke, commonly called the “infancy narratives,” are not parallel to each other. The scope of Q is complicated by the so-called Markan overlaps, pericopes in Mark that appear to be related to Q despite the common definition of Q that would seem to preclude it. In addition, several sayings from Q may have been utilized by only one Gospel. Among these are Luke 3:10-14; 7:3-6, 29-30; 9:61-62; 11:5-8; 12:16-21, 47-48; 15:8-10; 17:7-10; Matt 5.5, 7-9, 19, 21-30, 33-37; 6:2-8, 16-18; 7:6; 10:5-6, 23; 19:10-12. Scholars differ on whether these belong to Q or are to be assigned to the special material of Luke and Matthew, respectively.
The literature on Q is voluminous and growing. Some of the most important studies include David Catchpole, The Quest for Q (Edinburgh: Clark, 1993); Richard A. Edwards, A Theology of Q (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1976); Alan Kirk, The Composition of the Sayings Source (NovTSup 91; Leiden: Brill, 1998); Koester, Ancient Christian Gospels, 128-72; idem, “The Sayings of Q and Their Image of Jesus,” in Sayings of Jesus: Canonical and Non-Canonical, ed. William Petersen et al. (NovTSup 89; Leiden: Brill, 1997) 137-54; John S. Kloppenborg, The Formation of Q (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987); idem, The Shape of Q (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994); Burton L. Mack, The Lost Gospel Q (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1993); Edward P. Meadors, Jesus the Messianic Herald of Salvation (WUNT 2/72; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1995); Ronald A. Piper, Wisdom in the Q-Tradition (SNTSMS 61; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); idem, ed., The Gospel Behind the Gospels: Current Studies on Q (NovTSup 75; Leiden: Brill, 1995); C. M. Tuckett, Q and the History of Early Christianity (Edinburgh: Clark, 1995).
See especially C. M. Tuckett, “The Existence of Q,” in Gospel Behind the Gospels, ed. Piper, 19-47. For a pointed argument against the existence of Q and recent use made of certain Q reconstructions, see Eta Linnemann, “The Lost Gospel of Q—Fact or Fantasy?” Trinity Journal 17 (1996) 3-18.
M. Goulder, “Is Q a Juggernaut?” JBL 115 (1996) 667-81.
See especially W. R. Farmer’s essay “The Statement of the Hypothesis,” in The Interrelations of the Gospels, ed. David L. Dungan (BETL 95; Leuven: Peeters, 1990) 67- 82. I am indebted here to the discussion in Schnelle, New Testament Writings, 176-79.
See Pierre Benoit and M. E. Boismard, Synopse des quatre évangiles, en français, Tome II: Commentaire (Paris, 1972). See also Dungan, ed., Interrelations, 231- 88.
M. Goulder, Luke: A New Paradigm (JSNTSup 20; Sheffield: Sheffield University Press, 1989).
A. M. Farrer, “On Dispensing with Q,” in Studies in the Gospels , ed. D. E. Nineham (Oxford: Blackwell, 1957) 55-88.
B. Reicke, The Roots of the Synoptic Gospels (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986).
Freely adapted from Raymond E. Brown, Introduction to the New Testament, 118-19. I have put chapter and verse references to Luke in the first column to match the conventional citation of Q by its Lukan reference numbers, added section topics, and revised some wording in the third column.
See Kloppenborg, Formation, 51-64. The study of the Aramaic background of the canonical Gospels has proven difficult, and where exact wording of the Greek cannot be ascertained with certainty, as in the case of Q, this makes reconstruction of an Aramaic source even more difficult.
Kloppenborg, Formation, 102-70.
D. Lührmann, Die Redaktion der Logienquelle (WMANT 33; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Keukirchener Verlag, 1969).
S. Schultz, Q —Die Spruchquelle (Zurich: Theologischer Verlag, 1972).
M. Sato. Q und Prophetie (WUNT 2/29: Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck,1988) 40-46.
See John J. Collins, “Wisdom, Apocalypticism, and Generic Compatibility,” in In Search of Wisdom: Essays in Memory of John G. Gammie, ed. Leo G. Perdue, Bernard B. Scott, and W. J. Wiseman (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1993) 165-86, reprinted in Collins, Seers, Sibyls, and Sages in Hellenistic-Roman Judaism (JSJSup 54; Leiden: Brill, 1997) 385-408.
A. Yarbro Collins, “The Son of Man Sayings in the Saying Source,” in To Touch the Text: Biblical and Related Studies in Honor of Joseph A. Fitzmyer , S .J ., ed. Maurya P. Horgan and Paul J. Kobelski (New York: Crossroad, 1989) 375-82. See also Koester, “Sayings of Jesus,” 154: ‟[Q’s] trajectory belongs, from the very beginning, to the interpretation of an eschatological tradition of Jesus’ sayings, mirroring an image of Jesus as an eschatological prophet in the history of Israel.”
Using Victor Turner’s anthropological paradigm of separation, liminality, and reaggregation, Alan Kirk argues that John’s “threshold speech” in Q creates the conditions necessary for reception of Jesus’ wisdom. On this basis, Kirk criticizes stratifications of Q that argue that John’s and Jesus’ opening speeches are from different strata (“Crossing the Boundary: Liminality and Transformative Wisdom in Q,” NTS 45 [1999] 1-18).
On the relationship of settled communities and wandering itinerants, see Gerd Theissen, Sociology of Early Palestinian Christianity (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1978) 7-23.
Recall, for example, the missionary activity of the apostle Paul and the difficulties it caused for the settled churches in Antioch (described in Acts as Paul’s commissioning church) and Jerusalem. In the Didache, settled communities are instructed on dealing correctly with wandering prophets. Farther along in church history, the seventeenth-century Jesuits in China under Matteo Ricci adapted Catholicism to Chinese culture in one of the first experiments in “inculturation” until Rome learned of it and ended the experiment. The modern ecumenical movement among Protestant churches in Europe and North America began with ecumenical cooperation on the mission fields.
Alan Kirk, “Some Compositional Conventions of Hellenistic Wisdom Texts and the Juxtaposition of 4:13; 6:20b-49; and 7:1-10 in Q,” JBL 116 (1997) 257.
E. Meadors, “The ‘Messianic’ Implications of the Q Material,” JBL 118 (1999) 255-77.
Songs 1.2.10.
For the promotion of the view that Jesus was a Cynic, see F. Gerald Downing, “The Social Context of Jesus the Teacher,” NTS 33 (1987) 439-51; idem, “Deeper Reflections on the Jewish Cynic Jesus,” JBL 117 (1998) 97-104; idem, Cynics and Christian Origins (Edinburgh: Clark, 1994). See also Lief Vaage, Galilean Upstarts: Jesus ’ First Followers according to Q (Valley Forge, Penn.: Trinity Press International, 1994); idem, “Q and Cynicism,” Gospel Behind the Gospels , ed. Piper, 199-229 (a response to Tuckett’s article, below); J. D. Crossan, The Historical Jesus (New York: HarperCollins, 1991); Mack, Lost Gospel Q .
For opposition to this thesis, see Christopher M. Tuckett, “A Cynic Q?” Bib 70 (1989) 349-76; Hans Dieter Betz, “Jesus and the Cynics: Survey and Analysis of a Hypothesis,” JR 74 (1994) 453-75; Paul R. Eddy, “Jesus as Diogenes?” JBL 115 (1996) 449- 69 ; Ben Witherington, Jesus the Sage (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994); Gregory A. Boyd, Cynic Sage or Son of God? (Wheaton, Ill.: Victor, 1995); and, most pointedly for its orientation to the “Claremont School” where the Cynic thesis seems to be centered, James M. Robinson, “Building Blocks in the Social History of Q,” in Reimagining Christian Origins: A Colloquium Honoring Burton L. Mack, ed. Elizabeth A. Castelli and Hal Taussig (Valley Forge, Penn.: Trinity Press International, 1996) 87-112; “Galilean Upstarts: A Sot’s Cynical Disciples?” in Sayings of Jesus , ed. Petersen et al., 223-49.
For a nuanced critique in the middle of these two positions, see David Seeley, “Jesus and the Cynics Revisited,” JBL 116 (1997) 704-12 [on Eddy’s article]; idem, “Jesus and the Cynics: A Response to Hans Dieter Betz,” JHC 3 (1996) 284-90.
From a later time, the Jerusalem Talmud twice refers to the kinukos (sic) as a madman (y . Gittin 38a, y Terumot 2a). To call someone an “Epicurean” (epikoros ) is also negative in the Talmud.
For an excellent recent overview of Cynicism, see R. Bracht Branham and Marie-Odile Goulet-Cazé, eds., The Cynics ( Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996).
See Derek Krueger, “The Bawdy and Society,” in The Cynics , ed. Branham and Goulet-Cazé, 229.
E.g., Manson, Sayings of Jesus , 13-7; Werner G. Kümmel, Introduction to the New Testament (rev. ed.; Nashville: Abingdon, 1975) 74; Marinus de Jonge, Christology in Context (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1988) 83-84.
S. Patterson, “Q, the Lost Gospel,” BibRev 9 (October 1993) 62.
J. Kloppenborg, “The Sayings Gospel Q and the Quest of the Historical Jesus,” HTR 89 (1996) 331-32.
N. T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God (London: SPCK, 1992) 441.
Erik Franklin, “A Passion Narrative for Q?” in Understanding, Studying and Reading: New Testament Essays in Honour of John Ashton, ed. Christopher Rowland and Crispin H. T. Fletcher-Louis (JSNTSup 153; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998) 30-47.
See, e.g., Carson, “Source Criticism of the Fourth Gospel,” 429.
Goulder, “Juggernaut,” 669.
Tuckett, “Existence,” 37.
Fortna, The Fourth Gospel and Its Predecessor, 237.
For recent research, see James H. Charlesworth and Craig A. Evans, “Jesus in the Agrapha and Apocryphal Gospels,” in Studying the Historical Jesus: Evaluations of the State of Current Research , ed. Bruce Chilton and Craig A. Evans (NTTS 19; Leiden: Brill, 1994) 483-91; Joachim Jeremias, The Unknown Sayings of Jesus (2d ed.; London: SPCK, 1964); Otfried Hofius, “Isolated Sayings of the Lord,” in New Testament Apocrypha, ed. Wilhelm Schneemelcher, English trans. ed. R. McL. Wilson (rev. ed.; 2 vols.; Cambridge: James Clarke; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1991) 1:88-91; idem, “Unknown Sayings of Jesus,” in The Gospel and the Gospels, ed. Peter Stuhlmacher (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991) 336-60; William G. Morrice, Hidden Sayings of Jesus (London: SPCK, 1997); William D. Stroker, ‟Agrapha,” in ABD, 1:92-95; idem, Extracanonical Sayings of Jesus (SBLRBS 18; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989).
See Johan S. Vos, “Das Agraphon ‘Seid Kundige Geldwechsler!’ bei Origenes,” in Sayings of Jesus: Canonical and Non-Canonical, ed. William Petersen et al. (NovTSup 89; Leiden: Brill, 1997) 277-302.
Stroker, Extracanonical Sayings.
John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus , 2 vols. (New York: Doubleday, 1991) 1:114.
Parts of this section, and of the sections below on the Gospel of Peter and Jewish-Christian literature, are taken from my essay ‟Extra-canonical Accounts of the Death of Jesus, ” in The Death of Jesus in Early Christianity, ed. John Carroll and Joel B. Green (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1995) 148-61. Used by permission of Hendrickson Press.
Johannes van Oort, “New Light on Christian Gnosis,” LS 24 (1999) 24.
On Jesus, see the concise treatment by Craig A. Evans, “Jesus in Gnostic Literature,” Biblica 62 (1981) 406-12; also the full treatment by Majella Franzmann, Jesus in the Nag Hammadi Writings (Edinburgh: Clark, 1996) 149-56 and Christopher Tuckett, Nag Hammadi and the Gospel Tradition (Edinburgh: Clark, 1986).
When Gnostics placed their teachings in the mouth of Jesus, it was the risen Jesus who spoke them, even those sayings that are attested in other traditions as belonging to the earthly Jesus. In what came to be orthodox Christianity, most of Jesus’ teaching is presented as deriving from the period of his public ministry, before his death and resurrection. Some recent scholarship has argued that the tradition which culminated in the canonical Gospels had a tendency to place certain forms of the risen Christ’s words given through prophets back into the earthly life of Jesus—the opposite of the Gnostic tendency.
See Elaine Pagels, “Gnostic and Orthodox Views of Christ’s Passion: Paradigms for the Christian’s Response to Persecution?” in The Rediscovery of Gnosticism , ed. Bentley Layton (SHR 41; Leiden: Brill, 1980) 1:262-83; a more popular version of this article can be found in Pagels’s The Gnostic Gospels (New York: Vintage, 1979) 84-122.
Trans. Francis E. Williams in James M. Robinson, ed., The Nag Hammadi Lib rary in English (3d ed.; San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988) 33.
Pagels, “Gnostic and Orthodox Views.”
For scholarship on the Gospel of Thomas , see especially Raymond E. Brown, “The Gospel of Thomas and St. John’s Gospel,” NTS 9 (1962-63) 155-77; Ron Cameron, “The Gospel of Thomas and Christian Origins,” in The Future of Early Christianity: Essays in Honor of Helmut Koester , ed. Birger A. Pearson (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991) 381-92; Bruce Chilton, “The Gospel of Thomas a Source of Jesus’ Teaching,” in Jesus Traditions Outside the Gospels , ed. David Wenham (Sheffield: Sheffield University Press, 1982) 155-75; Stevan L. Davies, The Gospel of Thomas and Christian Wisdom (New York: Seabury, 1983); Boudewijn DeHandschutter, “Recent Research on the Gospel of Thomas,” in The Four Gospels, ed. Frans van Segbroeck et al. (F. Neirynck Festschrift; 3 vols.; Leuven: University Press, 1992) 3:2257-62; Franzmann, Jesus in the Nag Hammadi Writings; Helmut Koester, Ancient Christian Gospels: Their History and Development (Philadelphia: Trinity Press International; London: SCM, 1990) 75-128; Bradley H. McLean, “On the Gospel of Thomas and Q,” in The Gospel Behind the Gospels: Current Studies on Q, ed. Ronald A. Piper (NovTSup 75; Leiden: Brill, 1995) 321- 45 ; Meier, Marginal Jew, 1:124-39; Gregory J. Riley, Resurrection Reconsidered: Thomas and John in Controversy (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995).
Reprinted by permission from Documents for the Study of the Gospels, ed. David R. Cartlidge and David L. Dungan, copyright 1994 Augsburg Fortress.
As stated in Gerd Theissen and Annette Merz, The Historical Jesus: A Comprehensive Guide (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998) 38-39.
So S. Patterson, “Q, the Lost Gospel,” BibRev 9 (October 1993) 59-64.
For general treatment and English translations of the Infancy Gospels sketched here, see NTApoc 1.414-69; J. K. Elliott, The Apocryphal Jesus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996) 19-38.
Cullmann, NTApoc 1.416.
For some of the more important studies, see Raymond E. Brown, “The Gospel of Peter and Canonical Gospel Priority,” NTS 33 (1987) 321-43; idem, “The Gospel of Peter—A Noncanonical Passion Narrative,” Appendix I in his The Death of the Messiah: From Gethsemane to the Grave: A Commentary on the Passion Narratives of the Gospels (ABRL; 2 vols.; New York: Doubleday, 1994) 2:1317-49; John Dominic Crossan, The Cross that Spoke: The Origins of the Passion Narrative (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1988); Albert Fuchs, Das Petrusevangelium (SNTSU 2; Linz, Austria: Plöchl, 1978); Joel Green, “The Gospel of Peter ,” ZNW 78 (1987) 293- 301; Alan Kirk, “Examining Priorities: Another Look at the Gospel of Peter’s Relationship to the New Testament Gospels,” NTS 40 (1994) 572-95; Helmut Koester, “Apocryphal and Canonical Gospels,” HTR 73 (1980) 105-30; idem, Ancient Christian Gospels , 216-39; Meier, Marginal Jew , 1:116-18; Susan E. Schaeffer, “The ‘Gospel of Peter,’ the Canonical Gospels, and Oral Tradition” (dissertation, Union Theological Seminary, New York, 1990).
The Greek version relied on here is from F. Neirynck, “The Apocryphal Gospels and the Gospel of Mark,” in The New Testament in Early Christianity, ed. J.-M Sevrin (BETL 86; Louvain: University Press, 1989) 171-75.
For Smith’s account of the discovery, the text and translation of the letter, and treatment of it, see his Clement of Alexandria and a Secret Gospel of Mark (Cambridge : Harvard University Press, 1973) and the popular treatment in idem, The Secret Gospel: The Discovery and Interpretation of the Secret Gospel According to Mark (New York: Harper & Row, 1973). See also Barry L. Blackburn, “The Miracles of Jesus,” in Studying the Historical Jesus , ed. Chilton and Evans, 379-84; Raymond E. Brown, “The Relations of the ‘Secret Gospel of Mark’ to the Fourth Gospel,” CBQ 36 (1974) 466-85; Koester, Ancient Christian Gospels, 293-303; Stephen Gero, “The Secret Gospel of Mark,” ANRW II.25.5 (1988) 3976-78; Howard M. Jackson, “Why the Youth Shed His Cloak and Fled Naked: The Meaning and Purpose of Mark 14:51-52,” JBL 116 (1997) 273-89.
See the concise discussion in Meier, Marginal Jew , 1:122-23.
For introduction and translation, see NTApoc 1.96-99. For fuller treatments, see especially J. B. Daniels, “The Egerton Gospel: Its Place in Early Christianity” (dissertation, Claremont, 1989); C. H. Dodd, “A New Gospel,” in his New Testament Studies (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1936). For concise treatment, see Meier, Marginal Jew, 1:118-19; Theissen and Merz, Historical Jesus , 44-45.
Koester, Ancient Christian Gospels , 205-16.
I cannot enter fully here into the controversial issue of the definition of “Jewish Christianity.” For our purposes, we can understand it informally as that part of early Christianity that was predominantly Jewish in membership (birth or conversion), practice (especially observance of the Mosaic law), and belief (the attempt to express Christianity in Jewish concepts). As various scholars have suggested, the label “Christian Jews” is often more accurate than “Jewish Christians.” For two of the several recent attempts at definition, see A. F. J. Klijn, “The Study of Jewish Christianity,” NTS 20 (1974) 419-31; R. E. Brown, “Not Jewish Christianity and Gentile Christianity but Types of Jewish/Gentile Christianity,” CBQ 45 (1983) 74-79.
See, most recently, A. F. J. Klijn, Jewish-Christian Gospel Tradition (Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 17; Leiden: Brill, 1992).
Klijn, Jewish-Christian Gospel Tradition , 27.
See my study The Ascents of James (SBLDS 112; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989). See also F. Stanley Jones, An Ancient Jewish Christian Source on the History of Christianity: Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions 1.27-71 (SBLTT 37; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995); idem, “The Pseudo-Clementines: A History of Research,” SecCent 2 (1982) 1-33, 63-96.
Current scholarship is somewhat divided (as it has been for more than a century) on whether the passion narrative in Book 1 of the Recognitions does in fact belong to the Ascents of James . H.-J. Schoeps assigns it to another source document, an Ebionite Acts of the Apostles (Theologie und Geschichte des Judenchristenturns (Tubingen: Mohr, 1949) 383, 406. More recently and influentially, G. Lüdemann has argued that it belongs to an “R 1 Source” (Paulus, der Heidenapostel [FRLANT 130; 2 vols.; Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1983] 228-57). He is followed in this by Jones, Source . Perhaps it is safe to conclude that, although scholars assign this passion narrative to different sources, probably all would see this as a second- or third-century Jewish-Christian narrative. J. L. Martyn’s conclusion still applies: “There is, in fact, no section of the Clementine literature about whose origin in Jewish Christianity one may be more certain” (Martyn, The Gospel of John in Christian History [New York: Paulist, 1978] 62).