World War II was the theater in which the “Greatest Generation” gave its stellar performance. The war, however, had its darker features, among them the deliberate targeting of civilians by both sides. The nadir was reached with the Holocaust. In this horrendous endeavor the German National Socialists exterminated six million Jews. The mastermind of the program was Adolf Hitler, who came to office in 1933 and soon attained absolute power. In 1935 the “Nuremberg Laws,” designed to protect German “blood” and its purity, were enacted. These laws deprived Jews of their civil and political rights. The Nazis moved relentlessly toward their “final solution”: the extermination of all the Jews in the German empire. Jews were herded into boxcars like cattle and transported to the gas chambers of detention camps at notorious sites like Auschwitz and Buchenwald. Most of this took place with the knowledge and tacit consent of many Christians. Even the “Confessing Church,” which opposed the pro-Nazi “German Christians,” was largely silent in face of the anti-Judaism of the Hitler regime.[1] Most of the European nations and the United States had been unwilling to accept Jewish refugees during the 1930s.
The Holocaust provoked NT scholars to a reassessment of Judaism.[2] A new review of history, for example, revealed the rise of anti-Semitism in the ancient and medieval world, and especially in the Reformation. Scholars who formerly investigated Judaism from a Christian perspective, viewing the religion of the Jews as the dark backdrop for the more important drama of Christianity, now turned to the study of Judaism in its own right. Some advocated a “new perspective” for understanding the epistles of Paul.[3]
The scholars who engaged in the renewed study of Judaism were provided with a rich treasury of resources.[4] In the area of introduction to Judaism the standard work for American students had been Pfeiffer’s History of New Testament Times.[5] This useful work included a history of Judaism from 200 BCE to 100 CE, and an introduction to the Apocrypha. In the late twentieth century an exemplary introduction, Jewish Literature Between the Bible and the Mishnah, was published by George W. E. Nickelsburg.[6] This introduction focuses on the Jewish sources: the literature of the “intertestamental” period, including all of the Apocrypha, most of the Pseudepigrapha, and selections from the Dead Sea Scrolls. The material is presented in chronological order. Each chapter begins with a historical survey; the discussion within the chapters of each individual document includes historical-critical introduction, summary of content, review of religious ideas, and bibliography.
Although primarily a scholar of Judaism, Nickelsburg was also sensitive to its significance for the understanding of early Christianity. His Ancient Judaism and Christian Origins: Diversity, Continuity, and Transformation was written for non-specialists.[7] The book is concerned with two questions: “How have the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls and revolutions in methodology of biblical scholarship in the past two generations changed our perceptions of Judaism in the Greco-Roman period, and how do—or should—these developments lead us to rethink the origins of Christianity?”[8] The body of the book presents the results of recent research in Judaism, ordered according to major topics: Torah and religious life, God’s activity on behalf of humanity, agents of God’s activity, and eschatology. The conclusion recognizes the diversity of both early Judaism and early Christianity and notes the importance of eschatology for both. Also important for the study of early Christianity is Nickelsburg’s Resurrection, Immortality, and Eternal Life in Intertestamental Judaism.[9] This book, based on his dissertation, presents a history of the theology of Judaism in regard to important features of eschatology. Nickelsburg argues (contra Oscar Cullmann) that the Jewish sources do not affirm a single idea of bodily resurrection but express variety, including the idea of bodiless existence after death.[10]
Nickelsburg has made a significant contribution to the study of the sources of Judaism by editing studies on Jewish texts, including the Testament of Moses and the Testament of Joseph.[11] With Michael E. Stone he published a collection of Jewish texts (in English translation) that illuminates the life and thought of early Judaism.[12] A major work for the study of Judaism is Nickelsburg’s monumental commentary on 1 Enoch. This first volume of a two-volume work is concerned with 1 Enoch 1–36 and 81–108; the commentary on the Parables of Enoch (1 Enoch 37–81) is presented in second volume.[13] The comprehensive introduction (125 pages) thoroughly investigates all of the significant historical-critical issues. The commentary proper (pp. 129–560) presents the critical text in English translation with extensive notes on the text and translation, and concludes with a bibliography of over ten pages. This book, the abundant harvest of thirty years of labor, is a crowning achievement of a career of distinguished scholarship.
In the first half of the twentieth century the standard collection of Jewish texts was R. H. Charles, The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament.[14] In 1972 James H. Charlesworth was invited by Doubleday to prepare a new edition of these documents in order to replace Charles’s second volume (on the Pseudepigrapha), which contained only seventeen documents. The result was The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, edited by Charlesworth.[15] In Charlesworth’s two-volume work, which contains fifty-two documents, the material is organized according to literary types: Apocalyptic, Testaments, Expansions of the OT and Legends, Wisdom and Philosophical Literature. Within these categories the documents are presented in chronological order. Each document was assigned to an editor—a total of fifty-one scholars for the entire work. Each contributor followed a format: a synopsis of the central ideas, the original language, date, provenance, historical importance, theological importance, relation to canonical books, relation to apocryphal books, and cultural importance of the document. The text of each document is presented in English translation with notes and a bibliography. Charlesworth has prefaced the entire collection with a useful introduction for the general reader.
Collections of the documents of the Pseudepigrapha have been published in other languages, including Danish, Italian, Spanish, French and Hungarian. Of special interest to students of the history of NT research are the editions in German.[16] Corresponding to the work of Charles is the two-volume Die Apokryphen und Pseudepigraphen desAlten Testaments, edited by Emil Kautzsch.[17] Volume I includes the books of the Apocrypha, with a historical-critical introduction to each document and the text (in German) with notes. Volume II on the Pseudepigrapha consists of 528 pages and includes introduction and translation of thirteen documents. In 1958 a new German edition was proposed and launched under the editorship of Werner G. Kümmel.[18] The result is a publication of six volumes within which the documents are arranged according to literary type: Historical and Legendary Narratives, Instruction in Narrative Form, Instruction in Didactic Form, Poetic Texts, Apocalypses, and a supplementary volume with additional texts and bibliography. The collection includes fifty-two documents from both Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha (which are not segregated into separate sections). For each document a historical-critical introduction, bibliography, German translation, and extensive notes are provided. The editorship was assumed by Hermann Lichtenberger in 1987.
The conventional view that focuses on Judaism through the lens of early Christianity was refined by Joachim Jeremias.[19] Born in Dresden, Jeremias was the son of a Lutheran pastor. From age 10 to 15 he lived in Jerusalem, where his father served as leader of the German Christian congregation. Jeremias was educated at Leipzig, where he studied under Gustaf Dalman. He began teaching at the theological seminary of the Brüdergemeinde in Herrnhut and was appointed instructor at Leipzig in 1925. In 1928 he became associate professor in Berlin and director of the Institutum Judaicum. Jeremias served as professor at Greifswald from 1929 to 1934, and from 1935 to 1968 at the University of Göttingen. He was awarded honorary degrees from Oxford, St. Andrews, and Uppsala. He wrote more that 250 articles (including 28 for Kittel’s famous Theological Dictionary) and over thirty books. Jeremias was noted for his prowess as a teacher and for his authentic Christian piety. J. Louis Martyn, who was studying in Göttingen in 1957–58, recalls his amazement at seeing Jeremias stride to the blackboard, open his Greek NT to Mark, and begin to transcribe the text into Aramaic.[20]
Jeremias’s interest in the study of Judaism emerged early in his career. He edited the two volumes of excurses for the Strack-Billerbeck Kommentar zum Neuen Testament aus Talmud und Midrasch.[21] His archaeological, geographical, and historical research were already evident in his Leipzig qualifying dissertation (Habilitationsschrift) entitled Golgotha.[22] In this work Jeremias addressed the question of the location of Golgotha and the tomb of Jesus. After reviewing the evidence from the NT, archaeology, topography, and history, he concluded: “The history of the tradition about Golgotha and the Holy Sepulcher shows that their sites are rightly to be sought in the present Church of the Holy Sepulcher.”[23] Jeremias proceeded with a fascinating account of the legendary traditions about Golgotha: that the skull of Adam was buried there; that Golgotha is the center of the earth; that it is the place of the sacrifice of Isaac. He also investigated the use of “rock” as symbol in the NT, observing that the Jewish shrine of Golgotha has been replaced by the Christian tradition about the place of crucifixion.
Jeremias also engaged in archaeological observation and field archaeology. Of special interest is his eyewitness account, with photographs, of a celebration of the Passover by Samaritans in 1931.[24] Jeremias believed that the modern Samaritan observance reflects some of the features of the pre-Deuteronomic ritual of the Passover.
Jeremias also visited and collected data about forty-six ancient tombs in Palestine and neighboring regions. On the basis of this information he reflected on the meaning of tomb-building in the folk religion of the time of Jesus.[25] He presents a more detailed investigation of a particular site in his Die Wiederentdeckung von Bethesda: Johannes 5,2.[26] This monograph presents a history and interpretation of the archaeological research on the pool depicted in John 5:2. On the basis of his analysis of the textual data, Jeremias argues that the translation should be “Sheep Pool” (rather than “Sheep Gate”) and that the name of the pool is “Bethesda.” The location of the Pool, according to Jeremias, is the site near the Church of St. Anne where extensive excavation has been undertaken. He concludes: “The find with which we have dealt has a special significance in that it presents new and imposing evidence for the reliability of our Gospel tradition in general, but in particular for the validity of local references concerning Jerusalem in the Fourth Gospel.”[27] Similarly, in another monograph Jeremias argues that the Dead Sea Scrolls provide evidence that the Gospel of John is not Hellenistic but Jewish, and that there is a broad gap between the Essenes and Jesus.[28]
Jeremias published a widely-used history of Jerusalem in the first century.[29] This book deals with the economic conditions of Jerusalem under Roman rule and the economic and social status of the people of Jerusalem in the time of Jesus. Jeremias believes the Jerusalem Jews were much concerned with maintaining “racial” purity:
Up to the present, it has not been sufficiently recognized that from a social point of view the whole community of Judaism at the time of Jesus was dominated by the fundamental idea of the maintenance of racial purity. . . . [T]he entire population itself, in the theory and practice of religious legislation at the time of Jesus, was classified according to purity of descent. Only Israelites of legitimate ancestry formed the pure Israel.[30]
Other examples of Jeremias’s historical research can be seen in his monographs on infant baptism. In 1938 he produced a work contending that the church practiced infant baptism, a practice that had its background in Jewish proselyte baptism, virtually from the beginning. He expanded his argument in Infant Baptism in the First Four Centuries and maintained his position in debate with Kurt Aland in the 1960s.[31]
Jeremias published two major works: a book on the Lord’s Supper and one on the Parables. The book on the Supper, entitled in English The Eucharistic Words of Jesus, was first published in 1935, expanded in a second edition, and further expanded in a third.[32] Jeremias begins with the question: was the Last Supper a Passover meal? The Synoptic Gospels agree that the Supper observed the Passover, but John 18:28 implies that it took place twenty-four hours before the official time of observance. Jeremias rejects the possibility that the Last Supper was some other type of Jewish meal. He also answers arguments contending that events are recorded that could not have occurred on the day of the Passover. Jeremias concludes that the Lord’s Supper was a Passover meal.
Jeremias investigates the meaning of the eucharistic words of Jesus within the framework of the Jewish Passover. The meal had four features: (1) the preliminary course (which included a word of dedication over the first cup), (2) the Passover liturgy (which involved the recounting of the Passover story, the singing of the first part of the Passover hymn, and the drinking of the second cup), (3) the main meal (which included grace over the unleavened bread, eating of the meal, and grace over the third cup), and (4) the conclusion (which involved the singing of the second part of the Passover hymn and grace over the fourth cup). According to Jeremias’s analysis of the Last Supper, Jesus pronounced the word concerning the bread in connection with the grace over the main meal, and after the eating of the meal pronounced the word over the cup. In other words, the main events of the Last Supper correspond to the third element of the Passover observance.
Jeremias believes the account of the Supper, especially the words of institution, represent independent, early tradition. This tradition is preserved in 1 Cor 11:23, a text written, according to Jeremias, before Mark and recounting a pre-Pauline tradition. In investigating the tradition Jeremias concludes that the earliest written accounts are 1 Cor 11:23-25 and Mark 14:22-25. He detects Semitisms in the text that prove the primitive character of the Markan account. He believes both 1 Corinthians and Mark are dependent on the earliest form of the tradition, which was transmitted in Aramaic or Hebrew. Paul’s assertion that he “received” the words “from the Lord” indicate, according to Jeremias, that the tradition goes back to Jesus himself. As to the meaning of the eucharistic words, Jeremias stresses the importance of the meal as anticipating the eschatological consummation. He also believes that in the words of institution Jesus speaks of himself as sacrifice, as the eschatological Passover lamb. “This is therefore what Jesus said at the Last Supper about the meaning of his death: his death is the vicarious death of the suffering servant, which atones for the sins of the ‘many,’ the peoples of the world, which ushers in the beginning of the final salvation and which effects the new covenant with God.”[33]
Jeremias’s book on the Parables, a book of 118 pages, first appeared in 1947. He expanded the work in subsequent editions until is morphed into a work of 242 pages; the English version is based on this sixth edition.[34] Jeremias, going beyond the work of Jülicher and Dodd, takes up the questions: “What did Jesus intend to say at this particular moment? What must have been the effect of his word upon his hearers?”[35] The first part of the book deals with the developing tradition of the parables. During their transmission the parables were transformed: translated into Greek, placed in different settings, embellished with details, influenced by the church. Major transformations have had a detrimental effect on the parables, especially changing them into allegories. Jeremias also observes the role of the redactor of the gospel texts, including placing the parable into different contexts, adding introductions and conclusions, and consequently changing the meaning; but he views none of these obstacles as insurmountable. “Our task is a return to the actual living voice of Jesus. How great the gain if we succeed in rediscovering here and there behind the veil the features of the Son of Man!”[36]
The balance of the book is dedicated to explicating the message of the parables. According to Jeremias the main themes are the announcement of the day of salvation (the present is the eschatological time, for the Savior is here); the declaration of God’s mercy for sinners (vindication of Jesus’ proclamation of good news to the outcasts); announcement of the imminent catastrophe (judgment and warning); the call to discipleship (encouraging the hearers to labor in the harvest and share the suffering Jesus faced). Jeremias believes that Jesus not only spoke parables but performed parabolic actions like “cleansing” the temple. “The Messianic Age has arrived. That means that the symbolic actions are kerygmatic actions; they show that Jesus not only proclaimed the message of the parables, but that he lived it and embodied it in his person.”[37] Jeremias concludes:
In attempting to recover the original significance of the parables, one thing above all becomes evident: it is that all the parables of Jesus compel his hearers to come to a decision about his person and mission. For they are all full of “the secret of the Kingdom of God” (Mark 4.11), that is to say, the recognition of “an eschatology that is in the process of realization.”[38]
Besides his two major books, Jeremias published notable exegetical works. These include a short monograph on the Sermon on the Mount.[39] He believes the Sermon is a composition by the author of Matthew, who collected and arranged individual sayings of Jesus. “What we find in the Matthean composition . . . is not simply the ethic of late Judaism, but a refined, humanized, radicalized, simplified, concentrated Judaism that finds its fulfilment in the confession of Jesus.”[40] Jeremias also published a short commentary on the Pastoral Epistles for a popular German series.[41] In the introduction he concludes that the situation reflected in these documents must reflect events after Paul’s release from a first Roman imprisonment. Jeremias believes Paul to have been the author; the differences from the main Pauline letters can be explained by different situations and the use of a different amanuensis.
Jeremias published a number of works dedicated to the study of NT theology. He is especially concerned with Christology, and fundamental to Jeremias’s Christology is his understanding of the historical Jesus.[42] Jeremias rejects the view of Bultmann that dismisses the historical Jesus in favor of the kerygma of the church. Jeremias believed “we are in danger of surrendering the affirmation ‘the Word became flesh’ and of dissolving ‘salvation history,’ God’s activity in the man Jesus of Nazareth and in his message; we are in danger of Docetism, where Christ becomes an idea; we are in danger of putting the proclamation of the apostle Paul in the place of the good tidings of Jesus.”[43] According to Jeremias, the kerygma is based on Jesus; it is the interpretation of the historical event. “According to the witness of the New Testament, there is no other revelation of God but the incarnate Word. The preaching of the early church, on the other hand, is the divinely inspired witness to the revelation, but the church’s preaching is not itself the revelation.”[44]
For Jeremias, Jesus’ use of the Aramaic term abba (אבּא) in address to God is the key to understanding the significance of Jesus for Christology.[45] He investigates Jesus’ usage in relation to the idea of God as Father in the OT and Judaism, concluding that “there is as yet no evidence in the literature of ancient Palestinian Judaism that ‘my Father’ is used as a personal address to God.”[46] In the Gospels, on the other hand, “Father” is used as a title for God over 170 times. In the Gospel texts “Father” is used in three ways: ὁ πατήρ (without personal pronoun), “your Father,” and “my Father.” Jeremias argues that all three expressions represent authentic words of Jesus. “Jesus bases his authority on the fact that God has revealed himself to him like a father to his son. ‘My Father’ is thus a word of revelation. It represents the central statement of Jesus’ mission.”[47]
According to Jeremias the Aramaic word Jesus uses in his prayers is abba, a term used by children in speaking to their father. Jeremias finds not a single use of the term in the literature of Jewish prayers, but he asserts that Jesus, with the sole exception of Mark 15:34 (Matt 27:46), always addressed God by this term. In investigating the Lord’s Prayer he contends that Jesus taught his disciples to pray in the same way, addressing God as abba.[48] Jeremias, in an appendix to the Prayers of Jesus, presents the characteristics of what he calls the ipsissima vox Jesu (the very voice of Jesus). Jeremias is too careful a historian to claim that he can detect the exact words (ipsissima verba) of Jesus, but he believes that in Jesus’ use of abba and ἀμήν (in expressions like Ἀμὴν λέγω ὑμῖν σοι [“truly I tell you”]) we hear the authentic voice—we experience the presence of Jesus himself.
Another example of Jeremias’s enlistment of linguistics in the service of theology is seen in his article on παῖς θεοῦ for Kittel’s Theological Dictionary of the New Testament.[49] Jeremias notes that the phrase can be used in two ways: as “child of God” or “servant of God.” In the LXX it translates עבד יהוה and is used in the plural for the righteous people (“servants of God”) and in the singular for important instruments of God like Moses. According to Jeremias the phrase “Servant of God” is also used for the Messiah. The phrase appears frequently in Second Isaiah, where it was understood in a collective sense, but also in the singular as referring to the prophet himself or to the Messiah. Jeremias believes 1 Enoch describes the “Son of Man” in features borrowed from Second Isaiah. He notes that in the NT the phrase is used five times to refer to Jesus; he believes that this was a title used for Jesus in Palestinian Christianity. Jeremias acknowledges that quotations from Second Isaiah that refer to Jesus as Servant of God are rare, but he detects several allusions. He believes that Jesus thought of himself as the Servant of Second Isaiah. “Because He goes to His death innocently, voluntarily, patiently, and in accordance with the will of God (Is. 53), His dying has unlimited atoning power. The life which He pours out is life from God and with God.”[50]
These ideas about abba and the Servant are incorporated in Jeremias’s The Central Message of the New Testament.[51] The substance of this book was originally presented in lectures given at various theological schools in America in 1963, and it has been translated into French, Japanese, Spanish, and Italian.[52] Chapter 1, “Abba,” is a condensed version of material found in “Abba” and Prayers of Jesus, described above. Chapter 2 on “The Sacrificial Death” investigates the doctrine of atonement as found in Hebrews, 1 Peter, and the Pauline letters. Paul, according to Jeremias, affirms the idea of substitutionary atonement. In regard to the words of Jesus predicting his own death, Jeremias argues that these were not vaticinia ex eventu; Jesus expected and interpreted his death. In regard to “Justification by Faith” (ch. 3), he acknowledges that the doctrine is not found in all of Paul’s epistles, but insists that it is central to the apostle’s theology:
To sum up: it remains true that justification is forgiveness, nothing but forgiveness. But justification is forgiveness in the fullest sense. It is not only a mere covering up of the past. Rather, it is an antedonation of the full salvation; it is the new creation by God’s Spirit; it is Christ taking possession of the life already now, already here.[53]
Chapter 4, “The Revealing Word,” is an exposition of the Prologue of the Gospel of John. Jeremias notes that the use of “Logos” as a title for Jesus is unique in the NT, but argues that its source is to be found in Hellenistic Judaism (the LXX, Wisdom of Solomon), not in Gnosticism.[54]
Late in his career Jeremias began publishing a major work, New Testament Theology.[55] He was able to finish only the first part on “the proclamation of Jesus,” but this constitutes a volume of over three hundred pages and is, for all practical purposes, a summary of Jeremias’s work and thought. In regard to the authenticity of the sayings of Jesus, Jeremias questions the criterion of dissimilarity because it overlooks the continuity of Jesus with Judaism. More reliable, according to Jeremias, are the evidence of Jesus’ use of Aramaic and the distinctive features of Jesus’ teaching. Ironically, Jeremias affirms a sort of dissimilarity in his claim that Jesus’ speech—his parables, his use of ἀμήν] and abba—lacks contemporary analogies.[56]
In regard to the mission of Jesus, Jeremias observes that all the accounts of the baptism agree that the Spirit descended—a clear sign of prophetic inspiration. According to Jeremias the Jews of Jesus’ time believed that the Spirit had become silent. Jesus’ address to God as abba proves, according to Jeremias, that Jesus was conscious of his authorization by divine revelation. Jeremias believes that Jesus viewed himself as the messenger of God who understood his message as the proclamation of an eschatological event. Although he acknowledges that the developing tradition enlarged Jesus’ miraculous activity, Jeremias believes that Jesus cast out demons and healed the sick—activity demonstrating that Satan was being defeated. The central feature of the preaching of Jesus is the proclamation of the kingdom, the announcement that the day of salvation was dawning. This message was directed to the poor and translated into action with Jesus’ practice of dining with publicans and sinners. This message and action demonstrated that God was infinitely gracious, the expression of the love of God. According to Jeremias, “nothing comparable is to be found in contemporary Judaism.”[57]
Jeremias characterizes the time of Jesus’ activity as the “Period of Grace.” The message had two sides: the proclamation of salvation and the announcement of judgment. The present was a time of woe, a time to repent. During this period Jesus gathered the community of salvation in which the people were called to a life of discipleship, becoming like children, obeying the rule of love. By way of contrast, Jeremias perceives Pharisaic Judaism as a “religion of achievement.”[58] He finds evidence of Jesus’ own testimony to his mission. “In short, he designated his preaching and his actions as the eschatological saving event. An awareness of mission of this kind can no longer be kept in the prophetic sphere. Rather, all these statements mean that Jesus believed himself to be the bringer of salvation.”[59]
Crucial to Jeremias’s Christology is his understanding of “Son of Man.” He notes that, except for Acts 7:56, this phrase is used exclusively by Jesus himself. This usage, according to Jeremias, belongs to the earliest tradition and goes back to Jesus himself. Jeremias believes that Jesus understood the “Son of Man” in the context of 1 Enoch (where the title refers to a person) and 4 Ezra (where the attributes of the Servant of Second Isaiah are transferred to the Son of Man). He acknowledges that Jesus always refers to the Son of Man in the third person, apparently distinguishing himself from the Son of Man. But Jeremias believes that Jesus, in speaking this way, distinguishes between his present and his future: “he is not yet the Son of man, but he will be exalted to be the Son of man.”[60]
Jeremias believes that Jesus’ predictions of his resurrection belong to early, authentic tradition. Jesus, he thinks, expected his own suffering and death and understood his death in the light of Isaiah 53 as a death of atonement. Jeremias also believes that Jesus predicted his own resurrection; the references to after “three days” (Mark 8:31; 9:31) belong to the pre-Easter tradition. He does not appear to sense that prescience of the resurrection tends to blunt the impact of the crucifixion.[61] As to the resurrection accounts, Jeremias recognizes the puzzling disparity of the texts and believes they reflect the developing tradition, which involves elaboration of details and apologetic purpose. For the early Christians, according to Jeremias, the resurrection of Jesus is the eschatological event that heralds the future enthronement of Christ: the dawn of the parousia.
Looking back over the work of Joachim Jeremias we see a scholar of great erudition with command of a mass of primary and secondary sources and mastery of linguistic and exegetical detail. According to Martin Hengel, Jeremias is “the most significant New Testament scholar of the last generation in Germany.”[62] In the German context Jeremias represents the antithesis to Rudolf Bultmann and his school.[63] The distinctive feature of Jeremias’s work is his detection of the ipsissima vox Jesu, in particular his claim that Jesus always addressed God with the term abba is the key to unlocking the self-understanding of the historical Jesus. According to this understanding, Jesus saw himself as standing in unique relationship to God as God’s eschatological messenger, as the messiah. Jeremias, in filling in this portrait, believed that Jesus viewed himself as a combination of the Servant of Isaiah and the Son of Man of Jewish apocalyptic. The resulting Christology, in Jeremias’s opinion, is the foundation of the Christian faith and the heart of Christian theology—a theology that affirms the doctrine of atonement and the centrality of justification by faith.
To be sure, Jeremias is not without his critics. Attention, for example, has been given to his analysis of the Aramaic word abba. Scholars have demonstrated that this term did not originate with the babbling of infants.[64] Nevertheless, Jeremias’s claim that the term was never (or hardly ever) used in Jewish prayers seems to have been sustained.[65] More serious is the observation that Jeremias continues to view Judaism from a pre-Holocaust perspective, as the somber background against which Christianity is depicted.[66] The result is a presentation of Judaism from the standpoint of Christian confession rather than an understanding of Judaism in its own right.
Black was born in Scotland and educated at the Universities of Glasgow and Bonn.[67] He taught at Glasgow, Manchester, Aberdeen, Leeds, and Edinburgh. Most of his career was spent at the University of St. Andrews, where he served as Professor of Divinity and Biblical Criticism and Principal of St. Mary’s College. Black was the first editor (from 1954–57) of New Testament Studies, the periodical of the SNTS.
Black’s overview of Judaism is presented in his article, “The Development of Judaism in the Greek and Roman Periods,” in Peake’s Commentary on the Bible.[68] This article provides a summary of the history of Judaism from Alexander to the Bar Cochba revolt and a survey of the development of the religious ideas of Judaism. Black discusses the importance of eschatology and the replacement of apocalyptic with rabbinic Judaism. “It was succeeded by the perpetuation in the Judaism of the rabbis (the descendants of the Pharisees), of the religion of the Book, the legalism and exclusive nationalism, which have gone to the making of what is called ‘normative’ Judaism.”[69]
Black made important contributions to the study of Jewish texts. He published The Book of Enoch or I Enoch,[70] which was earlier than and less extensive than Nickelsburg’s work. Of interest to NT scholars is Black’s discussion of the “Parables of Enoch” in which he rejects J. T. Milik’s argument that this part of 1 Enoch was not composed until 250 CE; Black believes the “Parables” were written earlier than the Gospels. Previously Black had collaborated with Milik on a study of the Aramaic fragments of Enoch found in Cave 4 at Qumran.[71] Still earlier he had published a critical edition of the Greek text of Enoch.[72] Black also published research on early Christian liturgical texts written in Syriac.[73] All these works attest to Black’s mastery of Semitic linguistics.
Black’s affirmation of the importance of Jewish texts for understanding early Christianity is seen in his work on the Dead Sea Scrolls: The Scrolls and Christian Origins.[74] In this book he accepts the scholars’ consensus that the Scrolls were produced by the Essenes living at Qumran. He believes that the link between the Essenes and the Jerusalem church is to be found in the “Hebrews” of Acts 6:1. As to religious ideas, Black believes the sectarians of Qumran advocated legalistic perfection and embraced apocalyptic beliefs, including the recognition of three messianic figures: the messiah of Israel, the high-priestly messiah, and the prophet like Moses.
Black’s most important contribution to NT research is his An Aramaic Approach to the Gospels and Acts.[75] Since Jesus spoke Aramaic, there must be an Aramaic tradition behind the texts of the Gospels. “The ‘Aramaic problem’ of the Gospels is to determine, by internal evidence, to what extent the Greek Gospels are written in or embody ‘translation Greek’ or how much Aramaic influence can be detected in them.”[76] The sources available to reconstruct the Aramaic of Jesus include Christian Palestinian Syriac, the Palestinian Targum of the Pentateuch, and texts and fragments from Qumran.[77] Black also notes the importance of textual criticism; he detects Semitisms in the Western text (Codex D).[78] Important for investigating Aramaic influence are the linguistic features of syntax, grammar, and vocabulary. Also important is the Semitic poetic form.
Jesus did not commit anything to writing but by His use of poetic form and language He ensured that His sayings would not be forgotten. The impression they make in Aramaic is of carefully premeditated and studied deliverances; we have to do with prophetic utterance of the style and grandeur of Isaiah, cast in a medium which can express in appropriate and modulated sound the underlying beauty of the sentiment or the passion out of which the thought arose—soft and gentle in the kindly sayings, as in the promise to the heavy-laden, inexorable and hard in the sayings about Offences, strongly guttural and mockingly sibilant where hypocrites and ‘the rest of men’ are contrasted with the Christian disciples.[79]
Black employs this sort of data in an effort to identify Greek documents as translations of written Aramaic sources. In investigating Q he concludes that a case for an Aramaic original cannot be proved. Black also takes up the attempt to identify underlying Aramaic texts on the basis of “mistranslations.” The major weakness with this method, he says, is that it rests largely on conjecture. Black believes that the presence of Semitic influence is found most frequently in the words of Jesus, and that an Aramaic sayings-source lies behind the Synoptic Gospels. “Whether that source was written or oral, it is not possible from the evidence to decide.”[80] In conclusion, Black writes: “The consequence is that, in the transmission of the Teaching of Jesus, the end-product in Greek is often less the mind of Jesus than the ideas and interpretation of the Greek Evangelists.”[81]
In sum, Matthew Black made important contributions to NT research. His discussion of the Aramaic backgrounds is a classic work of continuing importance. In the main, however, Black reflects the view of Judaism that was conventional before the “new perspective.” He views Judaism from the perspective of Christian conviction. This is particularly evident in his article on the “Pharisees” in the Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible (1962).
Pharisaism is the immediate ancestor of rabbinical (or normative) Judaism, the arid and sterile religion of the Jews after the fall of Jerusalem, and finally, the Bar Cocheba debacle (A.D. 135). . . . It is a sterile religion of codified tradition, regulating every part of life by a halachah, observing strict apartheid, and already as entrenched in its own conservatism as that of the Sadducees.[82]
This view is confirmed in Black’s commentary on Romans.
The key to an understanding of Paul’s essential thesis is his conviction of the total bankruptcy of contemporary Pharisaic “scholasticism,” which seemed to base the whole range of active right relationships within the Covenant (“righteousness”) on the meticulous observation of torah as expounded and expanded in the “tradition of the elders.” This was “legalistic righteousness,” a form of ethics based entirely on a code, external and “written,” losing sight entirely of the gracious personal will of a holy and good God, of which it was originally intended to be the divine vehicle of expression.[83]
As these quotations indicate, “anti-Judaism” is not limited to German Lutherans.
Born in a village in South Wales, Davies was educated at the University of Wales, Memorial College (Wales), and Cambridge, where he studied with C. H. Dodd (with whom he shared a common Welsh heritage).[84] Davies was appointed professor of New Testament at Yorkshire United College in 1946, and four years later moved to America, where he taught successively at Duke, Princeton University, Union Theological Seminary (New York), and Texas Christian University. In rehearsing his own development in biblical studies, Davies recalls his realization that the dominant Hellenistic approach had to be abandoned. “It became even clearer that the ark of the New Testament floated on Jewish waters.”[85] This led to a new understanding of Paul. Davies came to the conviction that “many aspects of Paulinism previously labeled Hellenistic were better understood as Pharisaic.”[86] In reflecting on the history of NT research Davies was disturbed by the tendency to see Christianity over against Judaism. He concluded “that Judaism and Christianity need not be in opposition; that Christianity is not an anti-Judaic phenomenon, but itself, in its origin, a particular form of Messianic Judaism; that both Judaism and Christianity belong to the same family, so that the tension that inevitably exists between them need not develop into an antithesis.”[87]
Davies’s overview of the NT can be seen in his Invitation to the New Testament: A Guide to Its Main Witnesses, a book based on lectures presented on educational television in 1963.[88] In the introduction Davies affirms the importance of the study of Judaism for understanding the NT. Regarding the Synoptic Problem, Davies accepts the 2DH and is sympathetic to B. H. Streeter’s four-source theory.[89] The Gospels, he says, present the message of the kingdom of God, with Jesus as the messianic agent of the kingdom. On Paul, Davies accepts the seven major letters plus 2 Thessalonians, and believes Colossians and Ephesians may be Pauline. Davies thinks the Gospel of John was written between 90 and 100. “[W]hile the author of the Fourth Gospel is unlikely to have been an apostle, he did draw upon early sources which contained the apostolic testimony.”[90] Davies concludes: “Like the Synoptics and Paul, and all the New Testament writers, the Fourth Gospel points us to one figure, Jesus, as the revelation of the glory of God.”[91]
Davies’s most important book is Paul and Rabbinic Judaism: Some Rabbinic Elements in Pauline Theology.[92] The fourth edition is prefaced with a paper on “Paul and Judaism since Schweitzer,” which Davies had originally presented to the SBL in 1964.[93] In this paper Davies traces a shift in understanding the background of Paul from an overemphasis on Hellenism to a recognition of the greater importance of Judaism. In the preface to the first edition (1947), Davies sets forth his purpose: “The work is . . . an attempt to set certain pivotal aspects of Paul’s life and thought against the background of the contemporary Rabbinic Judaism, so as to reveal how, despite his Apostleship to the Gentiles, he remained, as far as was possible, a Hebrew of the Hebrews, and baptized his Rabbinic heritage into Christ.”[94]
In the extensive preface to the fourth edition (1980) Davies reviews research on Paul and Judaism since 1948. Citing the work of Martin Hengel, he advocates the elimination of the sharp line of distinction between Hellenism and Judaism.[95] Davies also believes that the old dichotomy between law and gospel in the understanding of Paul should be abolished. “The centre of his theology lay not in justification by faith as opposed to works, important as that was, but in participation in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus the Christ. Christ crucified . . . was his point of departure.”[96] As to the practice of viewing Judaism as a foil for understanding early Christianity, Davies praises the work of E. P. Sanders. Davies differs from Sanders, however, and argues that Sanders’s distinction between Paul’s Judaism and his Christianity is overdrawn; Davies believes there is more continuity.
In his introduction to Paul and Rabbinic Judaism, Davies records his intent “to prove that Paul belonged to the main stream of first-century Judaism, and that elements in his thought, which are often labelled as Hellenistic, might well be derived from Judaism.”[97] Davies goes on to say that “we shall endeavor to show that in the central points of his interpretation of the Christian dispensation Paul is grounded in an essentially Rabbinic world of thought, that the Apostle was, in short, a Rabbi become Christian and was therefore primarily governed both in life and thought by Pharisaic concepts, which he had baptized ‘unto Christ’.”[98]
The subsequent chapters present Davies’s understanding of the major Pauline concepts. In regard to “The Old Enemy: the Flesh and Sin,” Davies agues that these ideas do not reflect Hellenistic dualism but an anthropology found in the OT and in harmony with rabbinic thought. In regard to “The Old and the New Humanity: the First and the Second Adam,” Davies believes this concept is grounded in the Jewish idea of two ages. As to “the Old and the New Israel,” Davies observes a tension in Judaism between nationalism and universalism; Paul proclaimed a new universalism in Christ but continued to be concerned with the salvation of Israel. In regard to “The Old and the New Man,” Davies says that Paul affirmed a personal relation to Christ but did not borrow this idea from Hellenistic mysticism; Paul’s ethical teaching reflects the practice of a Jewish rabbi. Very important for Davies’s understanding is his chapter on “The Old and the New Torah: Christ the Wisdom of God.” In this chapter Davies contends that Paul identifies Christ and Torah. He writes: “[N]ot only did the words of Jesus form a Torah for Paul, but so also did the person of Jesus. In a real sense conformity to Christ, His teaching and His life, has taken the place for Paul of conformity to the Jewish Torah. Jesus Himself—in word and deed or fact is a New Torah.”[99] The background of Paul’s Christology, according to Davies, is found in the OT idea of personified Wisdom; Davies believes Paul combined the ideas of Christ as Wisdom and Christ as Torah, producing a Christology with cosmic dimensions.
In regard to “The Old and the New Obedience,” Davies rejects the notion that Christianity is a religion of the Spirit and Judaism a religion of works.
In the light of this, even if we could accurately characterize Rabbinic Judaism as entirely a religion of works we must deprecate the approach to our problem which exaggerates the antithesis between Pauline Christianity as a religion of Faith and the Spirit and Rabbinic Judaism as a religion of obedience and the Torah, and which has elevated the doctrine of Justification by Faith to the primary place in Paul’s thought. In some contexts justification is merely one metaphor among many others employed by Paul to describe his deliverance through Christ, and we are not justified in petrifying a metaphor into a dogma. Moreover, in those contexts where the idea of Justification by Faith is central, we find that this is so only because of certain polemical necessities. It is only in those Epistles, namely, Galatians and Romans, where Paul is consciously presenting the claims of his Gospel over against those of Judaism that Justification by Faith is emphasized.[100]
Under this same rubric Davies investigates Paul’s understanding of the death of Christ; Paul viewed that death as sacrifice, but like the rabbis he did not stress blood and sacrifice. In regard to the resurrection, Davies notes that the rabbis expected resurrection at the coming of the messiah; for Paul the resurrection of Christ is the dawn of the new age. Davies concludes: “The source of Pauline Christianity lies in the fact of Christ, but in wrestling to interpret the full meaning and implications of that fact Paul constantly drew upon concepts derived from Rabbinic Judaism; it was these that formed the warp and woof if not the material of his thought.”[101] This understanding of the Jewish background does not, in Davies’s opinion, erode the distinctiveness of Paul’s Christianity. “While, therefore, our study has led us to the recognition of Paul’s debt to Rabbinic Judaism, it has also led us to that challenge which Pauline Christianity, and indeed all forms of essential Christianity, must issue to Judaism no less than to other religions: What think ye of Christ.”[102] A shorter, more recent presentation of Paul and Judaism is found in Davies’s essay, “Paul: From the Jewish Point of View.”[103] The major lines from the larger work are maintained, and some attention is given to the apostle’s biography—his birth in Tarsus, his call to Gentile mission.
W. D. Davies made a significant contribution to the study of the Gospel of Matthew.[104] In this area the primary work is his masterful book, The Setting of the Sermon on the Mount.[105] Davies goes beyond studies that view the Sermon as a mere collection of individual sayings to a consideration of the whole Sermon in the context of the Gospel of Matthew. At the outset he investigates the thesis that the author of Matthew understands the Christian dispensation in terms of the New Exodus. He finds this motif in the distinctive Matthean material of the Gospel of Matthew.
The case would seem to be that, while the category of a New Moses and a New Sinai is present in v–vii, as elsewhere in Matthew, the strictly Mosaic traits in the figure of the Matthaean Christ, both there and in other parts of the Gospel, have been taken up into a deeper and higher context. He is not Moses come as Messiah, if we may so put it, so much as Messiah, Son of Man, Emmanuel, who has absorbed the Mosaic function. The Sermon on the Mount is therefore ambiguous: suggestive of the Law of the New Moses, it is also the authoritative word of the Lord, the Messiah: it is the Messianic Torah.[106]
Davies proceeds to consider the setting of the Sermon within the purview of Jewish messianic expectation.[107] Here he notes the importance of the Exodus motif for the OT and Judaism. In the OT, Jeremiah predicts a new covenant whereby the Torah will be written on the heart, and Second Isaiah presents the Servant of YHWH as the teacher of Torah. In the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha Davies finds the hope for the true understanding of Torah in the messianic age. The rabbinic sources, according to Davies, stress the idea that the Torah is perfect and unchangeable, yet the rabbis did expect Elijah to return and give the true interpretation. “One thing is clear: even if the concept of a new Torah in the Messianic Age had not become explicit in Judaism before Christ (which is not at all sure), his figure was a catalyst which gave life to what was inchoate: with him came also a νόμος χριστοῦ.”[108] As to the Judaism of the time of Matthew, Davies notes that both the Essenes and the early Christians claimed to be the eschatological community. Davies discusses the relationship of the Matthean community to rabbinic religion as formalized by the Council of Jamnia and believes the Sermon on the Mount may be understood as the Christian answer to Jamnia.[109]
Turning to the setting of the Sermon in the early church, Davies refutes the argument that Matthew was written in opposition to Paul. Paul speaks of the “law of Christ,” and according to Davies, Paul understands Christ as the New Torah. After considering other NT evidence, Davies writes: “In sum, there is no reason to believe that Matthew’s presentation of the teaching of Jesus as the Law of the Messiah would have been alien even to the Gentile Churches.”[110] In regard to the setting in the ministry of Jesus, Davies notes that “Matthew drew around the figure of Jesus the mantle of a lawgiver. . . . There remains to ask the question whether in thus rabbinizing Jesus . . . Matthew has decked his Lord in an alien garb which falsifies the ‘Jesus of history.’”[111] In response, Davies points out that the historical Jesus did teach like a rabbi. Although Matthew fosters moralism, Davies believes the author remains true to the Jesus of history. On the larger question of authenticity of the teachings of Jesus as preserved in the Gospels, Davies concludes that “the actual words of Jesus had a fair chance of survival. . . . That there was a wholesale creation of sayings by the primitive communities, which were foisted on to the earthly Jesus, we should not assume. Far more likely is it that the Church inherited and preserved sayings of Jesus which floated in the tradition, modified them for its own purposes, and then again ascribed them to Jesus in a new form.”[112]
Davies is credited with the publication of a massive, three-volume commentary on the Gospel of Matthew,[113] in which all three volumes list him as the lead author. Although Davies was the inspiration, architect, and supervisor of this monumental project, most of the actual research and writing (virtually all in volumes 2 and 3) was done by Dale Allison. Allison became a student of Davies at Duke in 1977 and worked with him on the Gospel of Matthew for almost two decades. He served as Davies’s research assistant during the time when Davies was at Texas Christian University (1981–85). Allison knew the mind and method of Davies and incorporated them into this comprehensive commentary on Matthew.
Davies made a unique contribution to NT research with his The Gospel and the Land.[114] This book has two main parts. In the first, Davies deals with the understanding of the land in Israelite religion and in Judaism. He finds that in the first part of the OT emphasis is place on the promise of the land. “Of all the promises made to the patriarchs it was that of the land that was most prominent and decisive. It is the linking together of the promise to the patriarchs with the fulfilment of it in the settlement that gives to the Hexateuch its distinctive theological character.”[115]
With the prophets, the exile from the land was understood as judgment, but they also expressed hope for the restoration of Israel to the land. Davies believes that the concern for the land continued in the Apocrypha, Pseudepigrapha, and the Dead Scrolls. He says that the rabbis maintained that “Jewish sanctity is only fully possible in the land.”[116] Davies rejects the theories that Israel embraced a nomadic idea, or that Judaism tended to spiritualize or understand the land as mere symbol. Instead, the land is “accorded its full terrestrial or physical and historical actuality.”[117] Davies concludes: “Among many Jews the certainty of the ultimately indissoluble connection between Israel and the land was living and widespread in the world within which Christianity emerged.”[118]
In the second part of the work Davies turns to the meaning of the land in the NT. He believes that Jesus was not concerned with the religious or theological significance of the land. As to Paul, Davies finds no explicit references to the land, but he notes the apostle’s recognition of the importance of Jerusalem and the temple.
For a long time Paul apparently felt no incongruity [in] retaining his apocalyptic geography, centered in Jerusalem, even though, since he was “in Christ,” it had become otiose. Theologically he had no longer any need of it: his geographical identity was subordinated to that of being “in Christ,” in whom was neither Jew nor Greek.[119]
The authors of Mark and Matthew, according to Davies, in locating the ministry of Jesus in Galilee ran counter to the Jewish conviction that Jerusalem would be the place of the advent of the messiah. Davies notes that the author of Luke-Acts viewed Jerusalem as the center of Christian beginnings but emphasized the imperative of moving beyond the land of Israel. “The New Testament finds holy space wherever Christ is or has been: it personalizes ‘holy space’ in Christ, who, as a figure of History, is rooted in the land; he cleansed the Temple and died in Jerusalem, and lends his glory to these and to the places where he was, but, as Living Lord, he is also free to move wherever he wills.”[120]
In sum, Davies was a scholar of immense learning and thoughtful reflection. He handled the sources with care and did not force the material into a mold to support his own position. He criticized the conventional assessment of Judaism, but without rancor. He demonstrated that a scholar can investigate Judaism objectively and in its own right without abandoning one’s own Christian convictions. He wrote with clarity, even elegance.
A student of W. D. Davies, like the zealous Paul in relation to tolerant Gamaliel, Sanders does not share his teacher’s spirit of moderation.[121] Sanders is a militant foe of every vestige of anti-Judaism. Born in Grand Prairie, Texas, to a family of low economic status, Sanders was educated at Texas Wesleyan College (1955–59), which, as he said, was “the only college I could afford.”[122] After graduation he moved to Perkins School of Theology (at Southern Methodist University), where he was befriended by William R. Farmer. Sanders graduated from Perkins in1962, and with the help of Farmer and others received funds to support study in Oxford, Göttingen, and Jerusalem, where he was instructed in both modern Hebrew and rabbinics. In 1963 he entered Union Theological Seminary, where he decided that his career would be devoted to the investigation of Judaism. At Union, Sanders studied with W. D. Davies and also walked across the street for courses at Jewish Theological Seminary. He completed his doctoral dissertation in 1966; it was concerned with the transmission of tradition and had implications for the Synoptic Problem, to which he had been introduced by Farmer.
Sanders began teaching at McMaster University in Canada in 1966. In 1968 he won a fellowship that allowed him to study for a year in Jerusalem with Mordechai Kamrat, an expert in rabbinic Judaism. When he returned to McMaster, Sanders continued to concentrate on the study of Judaism and also began to investigate the epistles of Paul. This came to fruition in his Paul and Palestinian Judaism (1977). In the period from 1975 to 1984 Sanders concentrated on the study of Jesus, an effort culminating in his Jesus and Judaism (1985). In 1984 he was named Dean Ireland’s Professor of Exegesis at Oxford and Fellow of Queens College, a singular honor. During his time at Oxford, Sanders further investigated Jewish sources, leading to Judaism: Practice and Belief, 63 B.C.E.–66 C.E. (1992). Sanders joined the faculty of Duke University in 1990; he retired in 2005.[123]
Sanders’s most influential book is Paul and Palestinian Judaism (1977), but his overview of Judaism is presented in later publications. In Judaism: Practice and Belief, his intent is to present the theology of Judaism within the context of religious practice.[124] After a sketch of the history of Judaism in the Roman period, Sanders concentrates on religious practice: what he calls “common Judaism.” The religion of Judaism, according to Sanders, was centered in the temple, where the primary ritual was the offering of sacrifices. The common people participated in the worship of the temple and its annual festivals. Basic to the religious life of the people, according to Sanders, was observance of the law of God. The law was concerned with purity, and ordinary people kept the rules of purity. The law, continues Sanders, stressed love of neighbor, charity, and honesty. The Jews shared a common theology that stressed the worship of the One God who was creator of all and ruler of history; Sanders characterizes this religion as “covenantal nomism,” a religion that stressed election and covenant and obedience to the Law. Sanders points out that early Judaism was a religion of grace; the grace of God preceded the requirement of obedience.
During the Roman period, parties developed within Judaism. The Sadducees were the aristocrats and included the high priest; they did not believe in the resurrection, but stressed morality and public responsibility. The Essenes (known through the Dead Sea Scrolls) understood their community as replacement for the temple. The Pharisees were active in the Herodian period and were popular with the people; they stressed purity and precise interpretation of the law; they were not exclusive, and they affirmed election and grace. Sanders believes the Pharisees have been unfairly maligned as self-righteous legalists who controlled almost everything in Judea. According to Sanders “they loved God, they thought he had blessed them, and they thought that he wanted them to get everything just right. I do not doubt that some of them were priggish.”[125] Sanders’s portrait of the common people is illuminating: “They worked at their jobs, they believed the Bible, they carried out the small routines and celebrations of the religion: they prayed every day, thanked God for his blessings, and on the sabbath went to the synagogue, asked teachers questions, and listened respectfully.”[126]
Sanders’s view of Judaism is further explicated in Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah.[127] In this book he investigates Judaism in relation to Jesus as presented in the Synoptic accounts—texts that present Jesus in relation to Jewish practice. In regard to the observance of the Sabbath, Sanders writes: “I conclude, then, that the synoptic Jesus behaved on the sabbath in a way which fell inside the range of current debate about it, and well inside the range of permitted behaviour.”[128] The saying attributed to Jesus that “whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile” (Mark 7:18) would have been, according to Sanders, a direct rejection of dietary laws, but Sanders believes it not to be authentic. He insists that the Jewish sources do not support the supposition that Pharisees always washed before ordinary meals. In regard to tithing, Sanders notes that the Pharisaic practice of tithing trivial things reflects their concern to bring all aspects of life under the law. This practice, Sanders maintains, does not mean that the Pharisees were unconcerned with justice, mercy, and faith. Summarizing the practice of Jesus, Sanders writes: “The synoptic Jesus was a law-abiding Jew. . . . He attended the synagogue, he did not eat pork, he did not work on the sabbath in any obvious way. He accepted the sacrificial system both as atoning (Matt. 5.23f.) and purifying (Mark 1.40-44).”[129]
Sanders takes up the question: Did the Pharisees observe oral law? He notes that they did accept tradition that had the support of antiquity, but they did not view tradition as equal with Moses. “The Pharisees intentionally went beyond the letter of the law, and they seem to have considered themselves to be doing so voluntarily, rather than because they ‘knew’ more laws than did others and thought that obedience to these further laws was strictly required.”[130] In regard to the religious practice of Jews in the Diaspora, Sanders argues that the assumption that the Pharisees ran everything in Palestine and that their authority extended into the Diaspora is mistaken. “Yet Diaspora practice, where we can test it, seems not to have been dependent on rules from Jerusalem—much less on rules originating from the Pharisees there.”[131]
E. P. Sanders’s most influential book, the Magna Carta of the new perspective on Paul, is Paul and Palestinian Judaism.[132] Sanders says that this project emerged as he immersed himself in the study of rabbinic literature. He became convinced that a host of NT scholars had misrepresented the religion of the rabbis. As to method, Sanders intends to compare an entire religion with another entire religion according to “patterns of religion.” His method focuses on how a person “gets in” and “stays in” a religion and how the practice of a particular religion is understood by its adherents.
The first part of the book (about 400 pages) is devoted to the study of the history, theology, and religious practice of Judaism during the period of the origin of Christianity. At the outset Sanders traces the development of the distorted view whereby rabbinic Judaism is depicted as a legalistic religion devoted to works-righteousness. He notes the wide influence of Ferdinand Weber, whose path was followed by such notables as R. H. Charles and Wilhelm Bousset, who promoted the idea that Judaism viewed God as remote and inaccessible.[133] Major support was given to this approach by the massive Kommentar zum Neuen Testament aus Talmud und Midrasch by Strack and Billerbeck.[134] Sanders intends to demolish this approach “by showing that the Weber/Bousset/Billerbeck view, as it applies to Tannaitic literature, is based on a massive perversion and misunderstanding of the material.”[135]
In contrast to this distorted view, Sanders presents a summary of his own understanding of rabbinic Judaism:
There does appear to be in Rabbinic Judaism a coherent and all-pervasive view of what constitutes the essence of Jewish religion and of how that religion “works,” and we shall occasionally, for the sake of convenience, call this view “soteriology.” The all-pervasive view can be summarized in the phrase “covenantal nomism.” Briefly put, covenantal nomism is the view that one’s place in God’s plan is established on the basis of the covenant and that the covenant requires as the proper response of man his obedience to its commandments, while providing means of atonement for transgression.[136]
Sanders proceeds to present the major elements in the Jewish pattern of religion—the pattern that represents “covenantal nomism.”[137] Of fundamental importance is the idea of election. “We may begin by noting several passages in which a Rabbi explicitly states that entrance into the covenant was prior to the fulfilment of commandments; in other words, that the covenant was not earned, but that obedience to the commandments is the consequence of the prior election of Israel by God.”[138] Sanders points out that the rabbis believed that election was totally gratuitous and that the gift of the covenant was the fruit of God’s love. The rabbis did expect obedience to the commands of God; they believed that God rewarded obedience and punished transgression, but Sanders finds evidence that they warned against obeying the commandments in order to receive a reward. Moreover, “the Rabbis state that God’s mercy predominates over his justice when the two conflict, just as they thought that God’s reward is always greater than his punishment.”[139]
Since the rabbis believed in the resurrection, they discussed reward and punishment in the world to come. Again, the rabbis stressed the justice and mercy of God. They did not believe that obedience had to be perfect.
Although obedience is required, no number of good deeds can earn salvation if a man acts in such a way as to remove himself from the covenant. Obedience and the intention to obey are required if one is to remain in the covenant and share in its promises, but they do not earn God’s mercy.[140]
In short, membership in the covenant assured salvation. For sins committed by those within the covenant, including the ordinary people, God has provided a means of atonement. “The intent and effort to be obedient constitute the condition for remaining in the covenant, but they do not earn it.[141]
Sanders proceeds to extensive study of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha. He points out that the Essenes were much concerned with election and covenant. This is true also of most of the books of the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha. A notable exception is 4 Ezra, where Sanders discovers that the author promoted a religion of self-righteousness and legalistic perfectionism. Apart from this exception, the Judaism of 200 BCE to 200 CE reflects a common pattern:
The “pattern” or “structure” of covenantal nomism is this: (1) God has chosen Israel and (2) given the law. The law implies both (3) God’s promise to maintain the election and (4) the requirement to obey. (5) God rewards obedience and punishes transgression. (6) The law provides for means of atonement, and atonement results in (7) maintenance or re-establishment of the covenantal relationship. (8) All those who are maintained in the covenant by obedience, atonement and God’s mercy belong to the group which will be saved. An important interpretation of the first and last points is that election and ultimately salvation are considered to be by God’s mercy rather than human achievement.[142]
The second part of the book is devoted to Paul, a section of a little more than a hundred pages; the book might better have been entitled Palestinian Judaism and Paul. As to sources, Sanders accepts seven epistles as genuine and rejects the use of Acts. He believes that Paul is not a systematic theologian but he is a coherent thinker.[143] According to Sanders, two major convictions govern Paul’s life: that Jesus is Lord through whom salvation is provided for all who believe; that Paul was called to be the apostle to the Gentiles. To discover the pattern of Paul’s religion, Sanders believes, attention must be focused on soteriology. Paul expected that salvation would be realized in the near future and believed that Christians had been given the Spirit as a guarantee. According to Sanders, Paul emphasized the idea of participation and unity: there is one body and one Spirit. He used various terms to describe the transfer of persons into Christ: participation in the death of Christ, freedom from sin, new creation, reconciliation, and justification.
In regard to the law and the human plight, Sanders insists “that, for Paul, the conviction of a universal solution preceded the conviction of a universal plight.”[144] Since God has provided universal salvation, all persons must need salvation, and since salvation is only in Christ, all other ways, including the law, must be wrong. “Faith represents man’s entire response to the salvation offered in Jesus Christ, apart from law; and the argument for faith is really an argument against the law.”[145] Sanders thinks that in Paul’s soteriological expressions participative categories are more important than juristic categories; “the goal of religion is ‘to be found in Christ’ and to attain, by suffering and dying with him, the resurrection.”[146] Like Davies (and contra Jeremias), Sanders rejects the idea that justification is the center of Paul’s thought. He also rejects Bultmann’s belief that anthropology is the center and Davies’s theory that the coming of the Messiah has replaced the law.[147] In sum, Sanders believes that Paul affirms salvation by grace and judgment by works. “On both these points—punishment for transgression and reward for obedience as required by God’s justice, but not as constituting soteriology, and correct behaviour as the condition of remaining ‘in’—Paul is in perfect agreement with what we found in Jewish literature.”[148]
Despite these agreements, Sanders concludes that Paul’s religion cannot be designated “covenantal nomism.”
Thus in all these essential points—the meaning of “righteousness,” the role of repentance, the nature of sin, the nature of the saved “group” and, most important, the necessity of transferring from the damned to the saved—Paul’s thought can be sharply distinguished from anything to be found in Palestinian Judaism. . . . Further, the difference is not located in a supposed antithesis of grace and works . . . but in the total type of religion.[149]
Paul’s opposition to the law, according to Sanders, is grounded in his exclusivist soteriology: his conviction that one can be saved only by faith in Christ. “In short, this is what Paul finds wrong in Judaism: it is not Christianity.”[150]
Sanders further explicated his position in Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People.[151] This book includes two essays. In the first, Sanders presents Paul’s understanding of the law. According to Sanders, Paul does not consider the law to be a requirement for salvation. Salvation is through faith in Christ; Paul advocates a soteriology different from that of Judaism. As to the purpose of the law, Paul, according to Sanders, believes that God gave the law in order to condemn all people and prepare for salvation by faith. Although he rejects the law as a way to salvation, Paul, according to Sanders, advocates obedience to the law—a law that has been reduced in regard to such matters as circumcision, days and seasons, and dietary restrictions. In conclusion, Sanders rejects the notion that Paul opposes the law because it is impossible to keep or because keeping the law leads to self-righteousness; he opposes it simply because it does not provide the way to salvation.
God has appointed Christ for the salvation of the world, for the salvation of all without distinction. God always intended this—he proclaimed it in advance to Abraham—and his will is uniform and stated in Holy Writ. That salvation is being accomplished now, in the last days, with himself, Paul, unworthy though he is, as the apostle whose task is to bring in the Gentiles.[152]
In the second essay Sanders considers Paul’s understanding of the Jewish people. Paul considered Christians to be the true Israel—a new people, neither Jew nor Greek. Sanders believes that Paul continued to grapple with a problem he could not resolve: God would keep his promise to Israel, but salvation was granted only by faith in Christ. In conclusion, Sanders observes that Paul departed from Judaism at two important points: he rejected the traditional Jewish doctrine of election; he insisted that faith in Christ was necessary for entrance into the people of God.[153]
Less known, but even more provocative, is Sanders’s Jesus and Judaism.[154] “It is the purpose of the present work to take up two related questions with regard to Jesus: his intention and his relationship to his contemporaries.”[155] Sanders is also concerned with the question: Why was Jesus executed? In regard to method, Sanders contends that the attempt to understand Jesus primarily from his teaching has failed. He prefers to focus on the “facts” about Jesus. To understand the facts (the actions of Jesus), Sanders believes one must begin with an investigation of Jesus’ intention. According to Sanders, Jesus’ primary intention is to herald the restoration of Israel. The point of departure for understanding this intention, says Sanders, is Jesus’ action in “cleansing” the temple. Sanders believes this event was a dramatic act that symbolized the destruction and restoration of the temple. “Thus we conclude that Jesus publicly predicted or threatened the destruction of the temple, that the statement was shaped by his expectation of the arrival of the eschaton, that he probably also expected a new temple to be given by God from heaven, and that he made a demonstration which prophetically symbolized the coming event.”[156] Sanders presents the evidence that Jewish texts also expected the eschatological temple, but he observes that Jesus did not promote the traditional way to restoration. “What is surprising is that, while looking for the restoration of Israel, he did not follow the majority and urge the traditional means towards that end: repentance and a return to observance of the law.”[157]
In regard to Jesus’ proclamation, Sanders believes Jesus understood the kingdom of God as an eschatological reality. According to Sanders the kingdom refers to the future, but the power of God is working in the present.
Just as we cannot yet say precisely what Jesus thought would happen in the future, so also we cannot say just what he thought was taking place in the present. Our study of sayings confirms general points—Jesus looked for a future event and saw his own work as important—but does not precisely define them.[158]
Sanders rejects the notion that the miracles identify Jesus as a particular religious type, for example, a “divine man”; Jesus probably saw the miracles as evidence of his status as a spokesman for God. Sanders agrees that Jesus called sinners and associated with them, and these sinners were truly wicked: traitors like the tax collectors, not ordinary people who might be ritually impure. Judaism provided atonement and a way for sinners to repent, but Sanders argues that Jesus offered the kingdom to sinners without first requiring repentance.
Sanders proposes two main causes for Jesus’ execution: his attack on the temple and his acceptance of sinners. Jesus’ view that the wicked had a place in the kingdom was contrary to the law, as was his implicit rejection of the command to honor one’s father and mother (Matt 8:21-22; Luke 9:59-60). Regarding the meaning of the crucifixion, “We should begin our study with two firm facts before us: Jesus was executed by the Romans as would-be ‘king of the Jews,’ and his disciples subsequently formed a messianic movement which was not based on the hope of military victory.”[159] Sanders believes that evidence for the charge that Jesus entertained royal expectations is found in his entry into Jerusalem, which Sanders understands as a historical event that symbolized the coming kingdom and Jesus’ role in it. The opposition to Jesus, according to Sanders, was led not by the Pharisees but by the Jewish aristocracy and temple leaders. In sum, Sanders believes we can know the basic facts about Jesus: it is certain that he proclaimed the coming kingdom of God as eschatological miracle; it is probable that he believed the kingdom would have leaders and that his disciples thought of him as king, and it is conceivable that Jesus identified himself with the cosmic Son of Man. What cannot be supported by the evidence, according to Sanders, is the notion that Jesus was an exceptional Jew who alone believed in love, mercy, grace, and forgiveness, and that for such views he was executed.
Toward the end of the book Sanders provides insight into to his own methodology. “I have been engaged for some years in the effort to free history and exegesis from the control of theology; that is, from being obligated to come to certain conclusions which are pre-determined by theological commitment.”[160] He continues:
I am a liberal, modern, secularized Protestant, brought up in a church dominated by low christology and the social gospel. I am proud of the things that that religious tradition stands for. I am not bold enough, however, to suppose that Jesus came to establish it, or that he died for the sake of its principles.[161]
Thus Sanders affirms an objectivity that is colored by polemic. His book may be seen as a new Schweitzer: a picture of Jesus set in distant Judaism, alien to the modern world, devoid of relevance.[162] Sanders’s result, however, may be even more potent since it avoids the sort of fanciful reconstruction of Jesus that debilitated Schweitzer’s entire project.
In a later book, The Historical Figure of Jesus, Sanders presents a survey of Jesus’ life and work.[163] “The aim of this book is to lay out, as clearly as possible, what we can know, using the standard methods of historical research, and to distinguish this from inferences, labelling them clearly as such.”[164] According to Sanders, Jesus must be seen in his political and religious setting. Jesus called disciples and was supported by a larger group, including women. In regard to the miracles, Sanders believes Jesus should be viewed from the perspective of his own contemporaries; they probably saw the miracles, especially the exorcisms, as signs of the beginning of God’s triumph over evil. The main message of Jesus was the coming of the kingdom, which, according to Sanders, Jesus expected in the near future. Sanders believes that the message of Jesus involved a reversal of values; it called for ethical perfectionism but was compassionate toward human frailty. In answer to the question why one who affirmed God’s love would be executed, Sanders repeats the answers from the previous book: Jesus’ attack on the temple and his action that led people to hail him as king. Sanders believes that Jesus regarded himself as owning the authority to speak and act on behalf of God. “Jesus was a charismatic and autonomous prophet; that is, his authority (in his own view and that of his followers) was not mediated by any human organization, not even by scripture.”[165] At the Last Supper, according to Sanders, Jesus anticipated the coming of the kingdom, and on the cross he expected the kingdom would arrive immediately, but after a few hours he cried out that he had been forsaken. Sanders concludes that much can be known about the historical Jesus, but historical reconstruction is never certain. “Perhaps most important, we know how much he inspired his followers, who sometimes themselves did not understand him, but who were so loyal to him that they changed history.”[166]
Sanders’s work on the historical Jesus was informed by his research on the Synoptic Problem. At Perkins he had studied with William R. Farmer, the champion of the Griesbach hypothesis,[167] and at Union he wrote a dissertation on the Synoptic Problem (directed by Davies).[168] The purpose of the dissertation was to investigate criteria by which developing tradition can be assessed. Sanders’s method was to trace the development of tradition in post-canonical literature (including the Apostolic Fathers and early Christian apocryphal texts) in order to discern criteria for investigating the pre-canonical, synoptic tradition. His assessment was made on the basis of three categories: length (was the tendency toward greater length or toward abbreviation?), detail (was the tendency toward detail or toward simplicity?), Semitism (was the tendency toward use of Semitisms or toward “better” Greek?). Sanders concluded that, in regard to length, the evidence argued against the priority of Mark and against the 2DH. In the category of details, some of the evidence supports Markan priority, some the priority of Matthew. In regard to the use of Semitisms, Sanders contends that the residue of Semitic syntax and grammar does not prove that a tradition is earlier. He concludes: “The evidence does not seem to warrant the degree of certainty with which many scholars hold the two-document hypothesis.”[169]
Many years later Sanders (with Margaret Davies) published Studying the Synoptic Gospels.[170] The authors survey the various theories on the Synoptic Problem and conclude that there is no totally satisfactory solution. They believe that Matthew used Mark and other sources, and Luke used Mark and Matthew and other sources; there was cross-copying among the Gospels. They believe the form-critical method is useful in seeking information about Jesus. They also note the usefulness of redaction criticism for understanding each Gospel as a whole. They believe historical information about Jesus can be recovered and that some of the criteria (dissimilarity, multiple attestation) are useful; they especially favor tradition that is “against the grain” and material that is “common to friend and foe.” The result of these methods is a picture of a Jesus who expected the kingdom as a cosmic event or a new social order or both. His mission was to all Israel, including sinners; he advocated love of neighbor and enemy; he believed the new order demanded new ethical standards.
The work of E. P. Sanders generated a storm of controversy,[171] most of it centered around Sanders’s “new perspective on Paul.”[172] Some scholars called for a more nuanced treatment of the issues and many suggested that there were several “new perspectives.” Major opposition came from scholars who considered the doctrine of justification by faith to be central to Paul and basic to the Christian gospel. Actually, the opposition to Sanders was directed more to his interpretation of Paul than to his understanding of Judaism. In regard to the latter a large number of scholars agreed with Sanders’s rejection of the older view that evaluated Judaism from the perspective of Christianity and caricatured it as a religion of legalism and self-righteousness. Of course, some scholars acknowledged that covenantal nomism could have been distorted at times and by individuals. The NT appears to oppose legalism, but this does not prevent fundamentalists from reading it in another way. In the main, Sanders’s positive assessment of Judaism has been accepted; what he achieved was a “new perspective” on Judaism.
Since he is the next major figure to be treated in this History, Martin Hengel can be cited as an example of sharp criticism of Sanders.[173] Hengel argues that Sanders has minimized the role of the Pharisees in opposition to Jesus. He also believes Sanders does not give adequate attention to Jesus’ messianic claim. Hengel charges Sanders with “radical historical skepticism” and says that Sanders caricatures the position of his opponents in order to “make it look ridiculous.”[174] No doubt much of Hengel’s attack is in reaction to Sanders’s criticism of Hengel’s teacher, Joachim Jeremias. It is also true that Hengel was a staunch supporter of the centrality of justification by faith; he did not share the new perspective. “Sanders’ concern is apologetic and is directed against the anti-Judaism which he thinks is traditional in New Testament scholarship, not least in Germany.”[175] Actually, much of the difference between Sanders and Hengel is rooted in their presuppositions, their basic points of view. Sanders believes the trouble with many NT scholars is their preoccupation with theology. Hengel, on the other hand, believed that NT interpreters must be dedicated to the pursuit of truth.[176] Careful examination of these commitments may suggest that Sanders is more of a theologian than he supposes, while Hengel is less.
Hengel was born in Reutlingen in Baden Württemberg.[177] As a school boy of seventeen he was drafted into the German Army in 1943 and served on the Western Front. Hengel studied at Heidelberg and at Tübingen under Otto Michel. He completed his Promotion (doctorate) at Tübingen in 1959 and, interrupted by work in his family’s textile business, his Habilitation (also at Tübingen) in 1966. Hengel taught at Erlangen (1968–1972) and then at Tübingen from 1972 until his retirement in 1992. In Tübingen, Hengel served as director of the Institute for Ancient Judaism and Hellenistic Religion. He was elected president of the SNTS in 1993. Hengel received honorary degrees from several universities including Uppsala, Cambridge, and Durham. He produced a mountain of publications, including major works in retirement.[178]
Hengel is devoted to the use of the historical critical method, which he characterizes as “philological-historical.” “There is only one appropriate exegesis, namely that which does justice to the text (and its contexts).”[179] Hengel is critical of much of contemporary scholarship.
Unfortunately, theologians today increasingly lack historical knowledge and an interest in history, and above all are too ignorant of the legacy of the past, whether of the Old Testament and Judaism, or of Graeco-Roman antiquity. Since the so-called “scholars” are gradually failing us here, it is doubly important for us as Christians to try to acquire a deeper historical understanding of what took place more than 1900 years ago; without such historical understanding our theological thinking, too, will all too easily become barren.[180]
In his presidential address to the SNTS, Hengel eschews the new methods in favor of the old. “The decisive point of departure remains—in spite of reader response and deconstructionism—the early Christian author . . . what he meant, and in the perspective of those addressed, hearer and reader, what he intended.”[181] Hengel is skeptical of skepticism.
The destructive scepticism, a particular feature of the modern world, which works in a predominantly analytical way, often ultimately ends up, not by furthering real historical understanding but by making it impossible. It is striking here that in particular those authors who apply radical criticism to early Christian narrators . . . often invent facts of their own which have no basis whatever in the sources and indeed go directly against them. Despite the anxiety of fundamentalists we cannot and should not refrain from the consistent application of historical methods. . . . A few months ago my American publisher asked me, “Why are you so conservative?” At that time I simply replied, “Why not?” Perhaps I should have added: these distinctions between “conservative” and “liberal” or even “progressive” . . . are ultimately meaningless. We are concerned only with the truth, theological and historical. The truth is our sole obligation; we have to seek and to present it, and in the end it will prevail against all our conjectures, all our desires to be right, our imaginative constructions and our anxiety.[182]
Hengel began his research on Judaism early; his qualifying dissertation (Habilitationsschrift) at Tübingen was on the Zealots.[183] The purpose of the dissertation was to investigate the nature and development of the Zealot movement from the time of Herod to the Jewish War. Hengel’s thesis is “that the ‘Zealots’ formed a relatively exclusive and unified movement with its own distinctive religious views, and that they had a crucial influence on the history of Palestinian Judaism in the decisive period between 6 and 70 A.D.” [184] After a discussion of the sources (Josephus, contemporary Jewish writings, Christian texts), Hengel investigates the various names by which the freedom movement was identified: “robbers,” “Sicarii” (users of daggers), and οἱ ζηλωταί (the Zealots)—the term Josephus uses to designate the freedom party within Judaism at the time of Jesus.
According to Hengel the pioneering figure in the emergence of the freedom movement was “Judas the Galilean” (Acts 5:37), who led a revolt in reaction to the census enacted by Quirinius in 6/7 CE. Judas believed the census would result in slavery to Rome. Hengel thinks Judas’s movement was entirely religious. It was inspired by the OT idea of zeal for God and was fueled by the eschatological hope. The Zealots, according to Hengel, believed the eschatological message called for militant action; they affirmed the sole rule of God and embraced the idea of martyrdom. Evidence of the activity of the movement in the time of Jesus can be seen in Simon, “who was called the Zealot,” one of the Twelve (Luke 6:15). Zealots increasingly resisted the action of Roman governors in 40s, and with the appointment of Gessius Florus in 64 the country erupted in chaos. In the beginning of the revolt against Rome the Zealots had the support of most of the inhabitants of Jerusalem. But the movement came increasingly under the control of the radicals, the Sicarii, and the Zealots divided into factions. With the fall of Jerusalem in 70, the movement of the Zealots crumbled. Hengel believes the activity of the Zealots illustrates the eschatological ferment of the time. He thinks Jesus was handed over to the Romans as an alleged Zealot, a messianic pretender.
Hengel’s magnum opus is his Judaism and Hellenism.[185] His intent is to illuminate the social, religious, and historical background of early Christianity. Hengel is particularly concerned to overcome the distinction between Judaism and Hellenism that dominated earlier scholarship. He begins with a survey of Hellenism as a political and economic force. Hellenism reached Palestine with the conquest of Alexander and increased its influence during the time of conflict between the Ptolemies and the Seleucids; it attained a high point with the invasion of Jerusalem by Antiochus IV (169 BCE). However, according to Hengel, Hellenism affected only the urban centers.
Interest in Hellenistic civilization, however, remained predominantly limited to the well-to-do aristocracy of Jerusalem. Intensive economic exploitation and social unconcernedness of the new masters and their imitators, who were concerned purely with economics, only served to exacerbate the situation of the lower strata of the population. It prepared the ground for apocalyptic speculation and later revolts, which had increasingly strong social elements, right down to the time of the Bar Kochba rebellion.[186]
Most important, according to Hengel, was the influence of Hellenism as a cultural force. The Greek language, he says, was widely used in Jerusalem, and Greek education is attested by the establishment of a gymnasium in Jerusalem in 176 BCE; Hellenistic literature and philosophy were introduced. “From about the middle of the third century BC all Judaism must really be designated ‘Hellenistic Judaism’ in the strict sense.”[187]
Hengel turns to the conflict between the older Judaism (which he continues to call “Palestinian Judaism”) and Hellenism. He points out that Hellenization was opposed by apocalyptic writers like Daniel. “The picture of history in apocalyptic is above all a fruit of the Jewish struggle for spiritual and religious self-determination against the invasion of Jerusalem by the Hellenistic spirit.”[188] The Hasidim, the forerunners of the Essenes, who appeared in the second century BCE, also opposed Hellenization. In the struggle against Hellenizing, the Jews affirmed the centrality of the temple and the primacy of the law. Hengel believes that the Jewish reaction led to a strident nationalism and a strict understanding of Torah. He sees evidence of this in the opposition to the Jesus movement.
Here is the profound tragedy of the reaction of Judaism to the primitive Christian movement which developed from its midst. Jesus of Nazareth, Stephen, Paul came to grief among their own people because the Jews were no longer in a position to bring about a creative, self-critical transformation of the piety of the law with its strongly national and political colouring.[189]
Within this religious context Christianity had its origin. “Christianity is to be seen as an eschatological and revolutionary movement within Judaism itself.”[190] The depth and breadth, the mastery of material, the attention to detail of Hengel’s research are abundantly evident in the second volume of Judaism and Hellenism, which consists of over two hundred pages of notes and a bibliography of fifty pages.
Hengel continued his work on Judaism and Hellenism in later publications. His book on Jews, Greeks, and Barbarians summarizes the earlier work, clarifies some issues, and updates the research (for instance, the archaeological evidence).[191] In this book Hengel points out that “Hellenism” refers to more that a historical period; “it is to be understood as the designation of an apparently clearly defined culture which because of its aggressive character also sought to take over ancient Judaism.”[192] Hengel also notes the complexities of the subject.
Thus when analysing the concept of “Hellenization,” we have to distinguish between very different components. These would include: first, close professional contacts; secondly, the physical mixing of populations; thirdly, the adoption of Greek language and culture by orientals; and fourthly, the complete assimilation of “orientalized” Greeks and “Hellenized” orientals.[193]
In The “Hellenization” of Judaea in the First Century after Christ, Hengel presents a short version of what he had originally planned as the sequel to Judaism and Hellenism.[194] Here he turns to the effects of Hellenism (Greek lifestyle, economy, technology, education, philosophy, and religion) on Palestine in the first century. Hengel finds evidence of Hellenizing in the building of cities in Galilee like Sepphoris and Tiberias. In regard to political and social aspects of Hellenization, Hengel notes the Jewish desire to emulate Hellenistic rulers and to get along with Rome. He observes that Christianity may be understood as influenced by both Jewish and Hellenistic ideas, yet he believes the whole development of Christianity could have taken place within Judaism. Despite the force of Hellenistic influence, Hengel recognizes that most of the writers of the NT were Jewish Christians, unschooled in Greek writing and culture. “We may assume that those men who bore the new message from Jewish Palestine to Syria and Asia Minor and indeed to Rome came neither from the illiterate proletariat nor from the aristocracy but from the creative middle class, which nowadays is so readily dismissed as ‘petty-bourgeois,’ a social milieu from which Jesus and Paul probably came.”[195]
In various essays Hengel treated subtopics within the larger framework of Judaism and Hellenism. In “Jerusalem als jüdische und hellenistische Stadt,” he traces the efforts to transform the Holy City into a Hellenistic center.[196] Hengel finds evidence of Hellenization in the use of the Greek language and in the building program of Herod. A test-case for Hengel’s theory that Hellenism had penetrated Judaism is presented in “Qumran und der Hellenismus.”[197] Although the Essenes, with their retreat into the wilderness, would appear to be the epitome of anti-Hellenistic Judaism, Hengel finds evidence of Hellenistic influence among them. The water system at Qumran displays technical knowledge, and the War Scroll shows familiarity with Hellenistic military tactics. The Essenes’ stress on the two spirits (“sons of light” and “sons of darkness”) reflects Hellenistic dualism, and they affirmed immortality of the soul rather than resurrection of the body. Hengel’s “‘Schriftauslegung’ und ‘Schriftwerdung’ in der Zeit des Zweiten Tempels” highlights the Jewish concern with the interpretation of Scripture in the Hellenistic period.[198] Hengel notes the formalizing of the canon of the Pentateuch and the Prophets in the first century CE, an action that shows that Judaism had become a religion of the book. According to Hengel the Jews believed the prophetic line ended with Ezra, with the result that the scribe was honored as interpreter; in order to be taken as authoritative, writings had to claim authorship by an ancient prophet like Daniel.
Hengel’s stress on the importance of Judaism as background to early Christianity is expressed in “Early Christianity as a Jewish-Messianic Movement.”[199] In this essay he contends that the entire background of Christianity is to be found exclusively in Judaism; if pagan influences can be detected, they have been filtered through Judaism. Hengel understands the early Christians as a sect of Judaism; the dispute between the followers of Jesus and the Jews was an inner-family quarrel. Christology, which is the heart of the Christian message, is grounded, according to Hengel, in the Jewish idea of the messiah; it is not a syncretism of Jewish and Greek concepts. Hengel rejects the idea that the NT expresses anti-Judaism and insists that it is a reliable source for understanding first-century Judaism.
Important for Hengel’s understanding of Christianity is his monograph, Nachfolge und Charisma.[200] In the preface to the English edition of 1996 Hengel notes impediments to the study of the historical Jesus, including the continuing skepticism of the Bultmann school and recent fanciful work by Americans. “Today a special danger seems to arise from the pseudo-critical ignorance expressing itself in a flood of ‘modern’ and ‘fashionable’ books on Jesus.”[201] Hengel believes that understanding the historical Jesus can be facilitated by investigating his call to discipleship. To the excuse “first let me go bury the dead,” Jesus responds, “let the dead bury their own dead” (Matt 8:21-22). Hengel believes this text reveals the radical nature of the call, since Jesus’ response constitutes an attack on the Fourth Commandment. Hengel observes that “this hardness on Jesus’ part as to the unconditional nature of following him . . . is to be explained only on the basis of his unique authority as the proclaimer of the imminent Kingdom of God.”[202] Comparing this with other calls—for example, Elijah’s call of Elisha—Hengel stresses “the charismatic and eschatological distinctiveness” of the call of Jesus.[203] This distinctive character of Jesus’ call, according to Hengel, indicates that Jesus fits none of the contemporary categories: rabbi, scribe, wisdom teacher; “Jesus stood outside any discoverable uniform teaching tradition of Judaism.”[204]
Hengel’s understanding of the historical Jesus is advanced in The Four Gospels and the One Gospel of Jesus Christ.[205] In regard to the Gospels, Hengel argues that Mark was earliest, written in Rome and recording the reminiscences of Peter.[206] Hengel questions the existence of Q as a single document but finds the theory of a logia source to be plausible. He believes Matthew was dependent on Mark and Luke and probably on collections of logia. In the developing history of the church, the view emerged that there is one gospel but four apostolic witnesses. Hengel believes the Christians at Rome replaced the tabernacle in the Jewish synagogue with a cupboard in the place of worship that contained the four canonical Gospels in codex form. The narrative of the Gospels had its ultimate source in the reports of eyewitnesses, and the early Christians and the Gospel writers, according to Hengel, were conservative in preserving the tradition. “Despite all the sometimes considerable differences and tensions, these authors all point back to the one centre: the person of Christ, the foundation stone, the Son of God incarnate of John 1.14 and the salvation brought about by him.”[207]
The historical Jesus is the basis for Christology, a topic of major important for Hengel. His book on the Son of God and the origin of Christology is based on his inaugural lecture at Tübingen in 1973.[208] The book grapples with the problem of the discrepancy between the shameful death of Jesus and the confession of him as pre-existent divine figure within only two decades. Hengel investigates the attempt to solve the problem by the history of religion school. He finds their theories—that the origin of the divine Son was to be found in the mystery cults or in the gnostic redeemer—to be hopelessly mistaken. According to Hengel the background of the idea of the Son of God is to be found in ancient Judaism, where pre-existence is attributed to Wisdom, the mediator of creation.[209] In this context Hengel traces the rise of early Christology as witnessed by such texts as Rom 1:3-4, a pre-Pauline tradition that confesses the messiahship of Jesus (son of David) and the divine sonship of Jesus. Hengel believes this primitive confession to be confirmed by history: Jesus’ unique relation to God is expressed in his use of Abba and proved by his execution as a messianic pretender. “Thus the problem of ‘pre-existence’ necessarily grew out of the combination of Jewish ideas of history, time and creation with the certainty that God had disclosed himself fully in his Messiah Jesus of Nazareth.”[210]
Hengel’s understanding of Christology is developed in essays published in his Studies in Early Christology.[211] The first of these, “Jesus, The Messiah of Israel,” was originally presented in lectures at the University of Cardiff in 1991.[212] In this essay Hengel raises the question: Does the title “Christ” (the Anointed, the Messiah) have any connection with the historical person of Jesus? He rejects the idea that the title was first applied to Jesus after the resurrection and argues that its usage has its origin in the messianic claim of Jesus himself. The most compelling evidence, according to Hengel, is the fact that Jesus was executed as a messianic pretender, as King of the Jews. Hengel acknowledges that Jesus did not use this title for himself but observes that he did not reject its use by others. “In my judgement,” says Hengel, “the messianic secret in the Second Gospel stems in nuce from the—eschatological—secret of Jesus himself, and his conduct. In other words, the messianic ‘mystery’ originates in the ‘mystery’ of Jesus.”[213] In regard to the Son of Man, a title exclusively used by Jesus, Hengel believes it to be a messianic title. “The earthly and suffering Son of Man are a cipher with which Jesus, in certain situations, expresses both his authority as ‘eschatological proclaimer of salvation’ (indeed, we may say as ‘Messias designatus’), and his humility and tribulation, which ultimately lead him to suffering and death.”[214]This essay offers Hengel the platform to expound on the frailties of contemporary scholarship.
Orthodox-fundamental biblicism has its counterpart in critical biblicism. Both are naïve and in danger of doing violence to historical reality—the one, because of its ahistorical biblical literalism, and the other, because it selects and interprets in accordance with its modern world-view, and theological interests. Against the view, since Wrede, of the unmessianic Jesus, it must be admitted that Jesus conducted himself with ‘messianic’ authority, and was executed as a messianic pretender. Only thus are the development of post-Easter christology, the account of his Passion, and his efficacy historically comprehensible.
Crucial to Hengel’s Christology is the doctrine of the atonement. In his book on that subject he investigates the question: How was the death of Jesus understood as atoning sacrifice so early?[215] At the outset Hengel points out that the idea of death as atoning sacrifice is not unknown in the Greco-Roman world, but he argues that the Christian idea is distinctive. According to Hengel’s reading of the Christian view atonement was universal, the action of God that had eschatological significance. Hengel searches for the origin of the soteriological understanding of the death of Jesus and finds the first written evidence in 1 Cor 15:3, a text that preserves pre-Pauline tradition. Hengel believes the idea of atonement is also present in the pre-Markan tradition of the passion narrative and that it has its origin in Jesus himself. Hengel finds evidence for this in the earliest tradition of the Lord’s Supper. At the Supper, Jesus, according to Hengel, interprets his own impending death as universal, atoning sacrifice.
In regard to Paul, Hengel presents interesting research on the lesser-known periods of the apostle’s life. His book, The Pre-Christian Paul, examines Paul’s life in Judaism.[216] Hengel believes Paul was born in Tarsus, but in his adolescence moved to Jerusalem where he was educated in a Greek-speaking Pharisaic school. Although the nature of Pharisaic thought in this period cannot be ascertained, Hengel believes parallels can be found in rabbinic literature. For this he finds Billerbeck’s Kommentar helpful. About Billerbeck, Hengel says that “his work is still unsurpassed. . . . He contributed more towards a positive understanding of early Judaism in the sphere of theology than any New Testament scholar of his time and indeed down to the present day.”[217] Hengel thinks it probable that Paul had personally witnessed the crucifixion of Jesus.
As a Pharisee, Paul persecuted the Christians in Jerusalem, who were divided into two groups: Hebrews (Aramaic speaking) and Hellenists (Greek-speaking); Paul, according to Hengel, attacked the latter. Hengel believes Paul accepted a commission from the synagogues of Jerusalem to pursue and persecute the Hellenistic Christians who had fled to Damascus. On the way to Damascus, Paul had a vision of the risen Christ.
The Jewish teacher becomes the missionary to the Gentiles; the “zeal for the law” is replaced by the proclamation of the gospel without the law; justification of the righteous on the basis of their “works of the law” is replaced by justification of the “godless” through faith alone; the free will is replaced by the faith which is given by grace alone as the creation of the word; and hatred of the crucified and accursed pseudo-messiah is replaced by a theology of the cross which grounds the salvation of all men and women in the representative accursed death of the messiah on the cross.[218]
Despite this radical change, Paul, in Hengel’s opinion, still stood in the shadow of Judaism.
Despite this rigorous reversal of all previous values and ideals (Phil. 3.7-11), Pauline theology—and therefore also Christian theology—remains very closely bound up with Jewish theology. Its individual elements and thought-structure derive almost exclusively from Judaism. This revolutionary change becomes visible precisely in the fact that its previous theological views remain present even in their critical reversal as a negative foil, and help to determine the location of the new position. Paul first learned his theological thinking in no other place than at a Jewish house of learning, and before he proclaimed Christ to the Gentiles, he had interpreted the law in the synagogue—very probably in Jerusalem itself—to Jews of the Diaspora.[219]
Continuing his research on Paul, Hengel turns to the life of the apostle from his conversion to his ministry in Antioch.[220] He describes Paul’s conversion experience as “a real, objective seeing of a supernatural reality in divine splendor of light.”[221] Paul, according to Hengel, was baptized by the Christian community of Damascus, from whom he received Christian tradition. Hengel believes that Paul did not immediately return to Jerusalem because he had been called to preach; he began his mission in Nabatea where he preached to “God-fearers” in the synagogues. After two years he returned to Damascus and then visited Jerusalem. Hengel believes the account in Acts 9:26 displays inconsistencies; he prefers Paul’s own account (Gal 1:18-20), which indicates that the important feature of the trip was a visit with Peter. After the short stay in Jerusalem, Paul moves his mission to Tarsus and Cilicia and neighboring regions including Syria. Although Acts does not report Paul’s mission to Gentiles until his visit to Antioch of Pisidia (13:46), Hengel believes Paul had been preaching to Gentiles already in Damascus and Nabatea. In Antioch of Syria and the surrounding region, Paul, according to Hengel, worked with Barnabas for eight or nine years. Hengel rejects the theory that Paul’s theology was influenced by Hellenistic ideas during the Antioch period.
[A]ll the elements of Pauline theology, in so far as they have not been shaped by the apostle himself—and their proportion should not be over-estimated—come from the abundantly rich Jewish tradition of his time. In so far as they are of Greek or “oriental” origin, they are mediated by Judaism (which was many-sided). Basically speaking, this is also true of the whole of earliest Christianity.[222]
Hengel believes that Paul’s thought did not undergo major changes and was largely formulated by the time of his Antioch mission. “‘Justification of the godless by grace alone’ is not an insight from the apostle’s late period, but shaped his proclamation from his earliest period as the cause of his theology of the cross.”[223]
Hengel notes the importance of eschatology in Paul’s theology, especially his interest in apocalyptic.[224] He observes that liberalism scorned apocalyptic and Bultmann demythologized it. In contrast, Hengel argues that apocalyptic was crucial for Judaism, Jesus, and the NT. He writes that “the whole of Christianity (just as for Paul), on the basis of its Christology which rests on the eschatological revelation of God, its self-understanding as the eschatological people of the end-time redeemer, and its intensive hope must be designated as ‘apocalyptic.’”[225] The background of Paul’s apocalyptic thought is found, according to Hengel, in the synoptic tradition, which has its source in Jesus himself.
Hengel further explicates apocalyptic eschatology in his discussion of Paul’s understanding of the burial and bodily resurrection of Jesus.[226] Important for this issue is the formulation of the early kerygma found 1 Cor 15:3-5; the phrase καὶ ὅτι ἐτάφη (“and that he was buried”) indicates to Hengel that the body was important and the tomb was empty. The background of this kerygmatic expression is to be found, according to him, in Jewish apocalyptic: a view of life after death that affirmed bodily resurrection. Hengel believes Paul’s idea of bodily resurrection had its origin in the earliest tradition, and that it is crucial for the Christian faith.
Late in his career Hengel published a provocative monograph on Peter, “the underestimated apostle.”[227] The crucial text, Matt 16:17-19, does not originate with Jesus but, according to Hengel, was added by Matthew at the time of writing his gospel (ca. 90–100). This points to the importance of Peter in the post-apostolic age. However, Hengel believes the nicknaming of Simon as the Rock does go back to the historical Jesus and proves the importance of Peter in the early tradition. Peter was the first witness to the resurrection; he was the leader of the earliest church in Jerusalem. Hengel also accepts the tradition that Mark was the interpreter of Peter and wrote his Gospel in Rome a few years after Peter’s martyrdom. As to the conflict between Peter and Paul in Antioch, Hengel notes that the story is told by Paul, with Peter’s side unfairly neglected. “The deep divide that was signified by the dramatic, public, drawn-out dispute between Peter and Paul is something we cannot portray deeply enough.”[228] Hengel attempts to fill in the unknown years between Peter’s disappearance after the conflict with Paul (Gal 2:11-14) and his martyrdom at Rome. Hengel detects evidence of Peter’s important role as organizer and leader of extensive mission and as theological thinker. He believes it possible that some reconciliation between Peter and Paul occurred; they were both executed under the Neronian persecution. Hengel concludes: “Peter was still a theologically powerful thinker, an impressive proclaimer, and a competent organizer; otherwise, he would not have played such a unique role within the circle of Jesus’ disciples, in Jerusalem and later as missionary to both Jews and Gentiles, and he would not have been able to achieve a unique position and be held in such high regard.”[229]
Hengel did important research on the Acts of the Apostles. In his essay on early Christian historical writing he investigates Christian texts in the context of historical writings of antiquity.[230] In regard to Acts, Hengel acknowledges that his own view is unfashionable: that it was written by Luke, the traveling companion of Paul. He considers Luke to be the first theological historian of Christianity; “as a Christian ‘historian’ he sets out to report the events of the past that provided the foundation for the faith.”[231] Although Acts is not wholly accurate (for instance, the account of Paul’s first visit to Jerusalem and the point of the beginning of Paul’s preaching to Gentiles), Luke is generally reliable.[232]
Hengel gives special attention to one of the decisive events in early Christian history: the expulsion of the Hellenists from the Jerusalem church.[233] He identifies the “Hellenists” of Acts 6:1 as Greek-speaking Jewish Christians of Jerusalem. He believes their point of view is expressed in the speech of Stephen: they were critical of the temple and they transformed the gospel into a universal message. Hengel believes the source of this message is to be found in Jesus himself.
Precisely through the activity of the early Greek-speaking community, more of the proclamation of Jesus is present in the synoptic gospels than basically anti-historical modern hyper-criticism is willing to concede. Twenty years after Stephen, the earliest Christian kerygma shone out in all its glory in Paul’s “mission theology.” We owe the real bridge between Jesus and Paul to those almost unknown Jewish-Christian “Hellenists” of the group around Stephen and the first Greek-speaking community in Jerusalem which they founded; this was the first to translate the Jesus tradition into Greek and at the same time prepared the way for Paul’s preaching of freedom by its criticism of the ritual law and the cult. Only this community can be called the “pre-Pauline Hellenistic community” in the full sense of the word.[234]
Hengel made a distinctive contribution to the study of the Fourth Gospel as well. His book on the “Johannine Question” presents his solution to the problem of the origin and authorship of the Fourth Gospel.[235] Hengel believes the ultimate source of the Gospel of John is the eyewitness tradition of John the Elder. This little-know figure, according to Hengel, was born in Jerusalem around 15 CE, a member of the priestly hierarchy; he had contact with Jesus, witnessed his death, and belonged to the early Jerusalem church; his language was Semitic and he understood the concept of pre-existence from the Jewish idea of Wisdom. Hengel thinks the Elder moved to Ephesus around 60, founded a school, and lived until about 100 CE. The Elder, according to Hengel, wrote the Gospel over a period of time, using Mark and Luke and his own reminiscences. The author, says Hengel, could not have been a Galilean fisherman. Hengel thinks the Gospel was published after the death of the Elder and edited by his followers. These editors, according to Hengel, identified the author as “the beloved disciple”; the Elder had considered John the son of Zebedee to be the ideal disciple. In time the “beloved disciple” was identified as the apostle and author of the Gospel, and by 200 he was hailed as “the theologian.” The Elder was much concerned with theology, a concern that sometimes changed his own recollections. Consequently Hengel cautions against the notion that the Fourth Gospel is an objective witness to the historical Jesus. He says that “in most parts the Gospel really is important and ingenious, ‘inspired’ christological ‘poetry’ and not real ‘history.’”[236] Hengel’s caution is more fully expressed in the expanded German edition: “Whoever still intends to adhere to the authorship of the Zebedean cannot thereby ‘save’ the historical reliability of the Fourth Gospel, which was the most disputed problem of the earlier generations of Johannine research; this question is—to a great extent—decided in the negative, which however does not exclude individual historically valuable traditions, on occasion, against Mark.[237]
Martin Hengel is one of the great NT scholars of the twentieth century. A master of all the skills of research and exegesis, and equipped with boundless energy for scholarly work, Hengel was above all an eminent historian. His argument that Judaism had been penetrated by Hellenistic influence has been praised by many NT scholars. The notion of a sharp distinction between Palestinian Judaism and Greco-Roman Hellenism has become problematic. To be sure, some critics have found Hengel’s claim that Palestine was permeated by Hellenism to be exaggerated, and some believe that distinctions between the Jews of the Holy Land and Jews of the Diaspora can still be detected.[238] Also exaggerated is Hengel’s claim that Hellenistic influence on early Christianity comes exclusively through Judaism. This claim appears to revert to the old Judaism/Hellenism dichotomy and seems to suppose that Christians living in the amalgamated culture of Greco-Roman cities like Corinth lived in a vacuum.
Actually, Hengel appears to be ambivalent about both Judaism and Hellenism. He insists that Judaism is the true background of Christianity, the fund of terminology, the intellectual framework for the development of Christian thought. Yet he argues that Christianity is distinct from the Judaism that, in reaction to Hellenism, had become nationalistic and unbending. With this emphasis Hengel appears to continue the old perspective: to interpret Judaism from the Christian point of view. “I have suggested here,” says John Collins, “that at some points Hengel has not entirely shed the negative view of Judaism which has been endemic in Christian biblical scholarship.”[239] Indeed, Hengel seems reluctant to acknowledge the presence of “anti-Judaism” in either the history of NT research or in the NT itself. However, he is not insensitive to the issue; he says: “We should be thankful if we as scholars know more today . . . than past generations, and thankful if our understanding of Judaism has changed in many respects owing to the terrible historical experiences in Germany in particular.”[240] In regard to Hellenism, Hengel focuses favorably on cultural matters such as the use of the Greek language and education, but his picture of Hellenism gives little attention to Greek-oriental syncretism, to the mysteries and cults so prominent in places like Ephesus and Philippi. This aspect of Hellenism seems to be abhorrent to Hengel as a paganism from which distinctive Christianity remained unsullied.
Hengel’s critique of skepticism and fanciful exegesis has considerable merit, even though he sometimes indulges in the latter himself (e.g., the notion that Paul witnessed the crucifixion; the reconstruction of the career of John the Elder). Some NT scholars approach the texts with a hypercriticism that exceeds the objectivity that solid historical method warrants. Conservative scholars have embraced Hengel’s support of more traditional solutions to critical problems, for example, his view that Acts was written by Luke, the travel companion of Paul. Similarly, the belief that almost every worthy feature of Christianity has its origin in the historical Jesus is a comfort to those disturbed by the excesses of form and tradition criticism. But, although the assignment of all creativity to the post-Easter church is mistaken, the majority of scholars are correct in recognizing the magnitude of the resurrection experience in molding the ongoing life and faith of the early Christians. Conservatives should take caution, too, about exaggerating Hengel’s orthodoxy. He explicitly condemns biblicism and fundamentalism. In particular, he recognizes Acts as a tendency document and finds it historically unreliable at more than one point. Similarly, Hengel rejects of the Fourth Gospel as a major source for the reconstruction of the historical Jesus. For all the variations in detail, Hengel is above all a champion of the historical-critical method.
In regard to the history of NT research, this chapter shows a prevailing problem in historical criticism: scholars using the method do not produce the same results. Experts who have devoted the major efforts of their careers to studying the Jewish material do not agree on what the sources mean; indeed, they sometimes come to conclusions that are diametrically opposed. This is due in part to the presuppositions with which the scholars approach the material, despite the claim of most of them that they function as “objective” historians. Personal perspectives, too, play a role, but surely we should agree that non-Christians ought to be able to understand Christian documents, and similarly that non-Jews ought be able to understand Jewish sources. Nevertheless, Hengel, for example, seems oblivious to the presence of anti-Judaism in the NT itself and among NT scholars, despite the evidence Davies and Sanders provide. Indeed, the views of Jeremias, Black, and Hengel imply a lingering of the older view of Judaism as a foil for Christianity.
Very important is the ongoing debate about Palestinian and Hellenistic or Diaspora Judaism. Although Hengel intends to erase the distinction, his actual practice suggests that it still remains. His oft-repeated theory that the thought of Paul and the other early Christians can be explained exclusively on the basis of Jewish backgrounds seems not only to revive the old distinction but also to assume a pejorative assessment of Hellenism—a sort of scholarly docetism. In regard to Paul, the question of his relation to Judaism remains in controversy. For Davies and Sanders he has much in common with rabbinic Judaism. Hengel sees the center of Paul’s theology as justification by faith, whereas Davies and Sanders believe that to be peripheral. There is dispute as to how Paul viewed the law. There is considerable agreement, however, with the recognition that Paul’s religious experience, his conversion, is crucial for his theological understanding. The ancient notion that Paul was the second founder of Christianity has claimed little support, although the evidence for continuity may be somewhat overdrawn, for example, by Hengel.
In regard to Jesus, the differences multiply. For Jeremias and Hengel, Jesus was conscious of his messianic role, as were his disciples; the exalted titles have their source in Jesus himself. Most of the scholars insist that Jesus must be understood in his Jewish context but differ as to what that means. Jeremias and Hengel, who eschew the criterion of dissimilarity, affirm a kind of dissimilarity of their own by advancing the superiority of Jesus to Judaism. There is considerable agreement about the importance of eschatology for understanding Jesus’ proclamation of the kingdom of God. As to the political implications of the kingdom, there is dispute: most of the scholars acknowledge some political understanding (or misunderstanding) as evidenced by the Roman responsibility for the crucifixion. Virtually all the scholars of Judaism acknowledge the significance of Jesus for delineating the issues. Most of the scholars recognize the Christian identification of Jesus as Messiah, and above all as a divine figure, to be the defining difference between Jews and Christians.
All in all, the study of Judaism has advanced in the twentieth century. Most important, a vast wealth of primary sources—notably the Dead Sea Scrolls—has become available. The debate about Judaism as context for NT research has flourished with significant contributions. The discussion will continue, of course, but an important principle has prevailed: Judaism will be studied in its own right.
787-3. The phrase “new perspective” on Paul was coined by James D. G. Dunn; see pp. 518–23 below. ↵
787-17. 6 vols. (Gütersloh: Mohn, 1973-2003). ↵
787-18. Jüdische Schriften aus hellenistic-römischer Zeit, 6 vols. (Gütersloh: Mohn, 1973-2003). ↵
787-27. Rediscovery of Bethesda, 38. ↵
787-30. Jerusalem in the Time of Jesus, 270. ↵
787-33. Eucharistic Words, 231. ↵
787-35. Parables, 22; for Jülicher and Dodd see HNTR 2: 158–59, and pp. 46–47 above. ↵
787-40. Sermon on the Mount, 6. ↵
787-43. Problem of the Historical Jesus, 11. ↵
787-53. Central Message, 66. ↵
787-57. New Testament Theology, 121. ↵
787-61. As an irreverent critic might say, “Anybody can put up with a bad weekend!” ↵
787-63. See pp. 87–175 above. ↵
787-69. “Development of Judaism,” 698. ↵
787-72. Apocalypsis Henochi Graece, PVTG 3 (Leiden: Brill, 1970). ↵
787-74. Black, The Scrolls and Christian Origins (New York: Scribner’s, 1961). ↵
787-76. Aramaic Approach, 16. ↵
787-79. Aramaic Approach, 185. ↵
787-82. Matthew Black, “Pharisees,” IDB 3: 781. ↵
787-83. Matthew Black, Romans, NCB (LondonGreenwood, SC: Attic, 1973), 47–48. ↵
787-90. Invitation to the New Testament, 381. ↵
787-94. Paul and Rabbinic Judaism, xvii. ↵
787-95. See pp. 284–93 below. ↵
787-96. Paul and Rabbinic Judaism, xxvii. ↵
787-97. Paul and Rabbinic Judaism, 1. ↵
787-104. See Hare, “Davies,” 353–54. ↵
787-106. Setting of the Sermon, 93. ↵
787-108. Setting of the Sermon, 189. ↵
787-110. Setting of the Sermon, 414. ↵
787-115. Gospel and the Land, 24. ↵
787-122. “Comparing Judaism,” 12. ↵
787-133. See HNTR 2: 424, 204–9, 243–51. ↵
787-134. See HNTR 2: 419–22. ↵
787-135. Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 59. ↵
787-138. Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 85. ↵
787-144. Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 474. ↵
787-147. See pp. 98, 108–11, 282 above. ↵
787-148. Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 518. ↵
787-151. E. P. Sanders, Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1983). ↵
787-154. E. P. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985). ↵
787-155. Jesus and Judaism, 1. ↵
787-162. See HNTR 2: 299–335. ↵
787-163. E. P. Sanders, The Historical Figure of Jesus (London: Penguin, 1993). ↵
787-167. See pp. 343–49 below. ↵
787-179. Hengel, “Eine junge theologische Disziplin,” 21. ↵
787-181. “Aufgaben der neutestamentlichen Wissenschaft,” NTS 40 (1944): 351. ↵
787-186. Judaism and Hellenism, 56. ↵
787-192. Jews, Greeks, and Barbarians, 52. ↵
787-201. Charismatic Leader, x. ↵
787-207. Charismatic Leader, 165. ↵
787-213. “Jesus, The Messiah of Israel,” 59. ↵
787-218. Pre-Christian Paul, 86. ↵
787-224. See “Paulus und die frühchristliche Apokalyptik,” in Paulus und Jakobus, 302–417. ↵
787-236. The Johannine Question, 131. ↵
787-237. Die johanneische Frage, 320. ↵
787-239. Collins, “Judaism as Praeparatio Evangelica,” 228. ↵