EPIGRAPHS
1. N. Dahl, Jesus the Christ: The Historical Origins of Christological Doctrine (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991), p. 94.
2. R. L. Wilken, The Spirit of Early Christian Thought (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 2003), pp. xv, xiv, 46.
CHAPTERS 1–13 AND CONCLUSION
1. See the devastating and painstaking investigation in S. C. Calston, The Gospel Hoax: Morton Smith’s Invention of Secret Mark (Waco: Baylor Univ. Press, 2005).
2. It is, of course, true that there were overzealous scribes in the postapostolic era who sometimes corrected the earlier manuscripts in a direction that they perceived would be more “orthodox” in character, but this is a marginal phenomenon that hardly changes the essence of the NT stories and their claims. “Orthodoxy” was not the creation of third-through fifth-century scribes, much less of Constantine! It already existed in its nodal forms in the first century, as is perfectly clear from reading Paul’s letters—our earliest NT documents.
3. For a critique of the Jesus Seminar, see B. Witherington, The Jesus Quest (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1995). I am thinking, of course, of Robert Funk, who recently passed away.
4. I do a good deal of work with the graduate chapters of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, and it is interesting to see how overwhelmingly the people joining these fellowships are in the sciences, including the hard sciences. Could it be that the arts are less “liberal” (that is, open-minded) than they used to be?
5. See Fee’s review of Ehrman’s earlier work in the Critical Review of Books in Religion 8 (1993): 203–06.
6. See the introduction to my Letters and Homilies of the New Testament, vol. 1 (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2006).
7. See J. D. G. Dunn’s massive and magisterial study, Christianity in the Making, vol. 1, Jesus Remembered (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003).
8. The term “Torah” refers to the Old Testament in general or, more specifically, to the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible, attributed to Moses) or even more narrowly to the Law within those books.
9. The wealth almost certainly wasn’t her own, because in her society, women could not inherit or have money unless they were royalty or so rich they could find a way around the cultural norms and rules.
10. For Jesus’s view on what makes a person unclean, see Mark 7:15; on male/female conversation, see John 4:27.
11. On all these Lukan stories, see A. J. Levine and B. Witherington, The Gospel of Luke (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, forthcoming 2007).
12. See E. J. Epp, Junia: The First Woman Apostle (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005).
13. See, for example, 1 Cor. 9:1 and 15:7. On all this, see B. Witherington and D. Hyatt, Paul’s Letter to the Romans (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), pp. 387–90.
14. Compare B. Witherington, The Paul Quest (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1998), B. Witherington, Women in the Ministry of Jesus (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1984), and Women and the Genesis of Christianity (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1990).
15. I am indebted to the helpful study of my friend and colleague at St. Andrews, R. J. Bauckham, Gospel Women (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), pp. 109–202, which was the inspiration for this brief study. He comes to the same conclusion.
16. See B. Witherington, The Christology of Jesus (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990).
17. Notice that in the woes in Luke 10:13 both Bethsaida (just north of Migdal) and Chorazin (a bit further north of Migdal and east around the top of the lake) are anathematized, and we are told that miracles and other acts of Jesus happened in these little cities. If Jesus preached and healed in Bethsaida and in Chorazin, it is highly likely that he did in Migdal as well, since it is right on the same track that goes around the northern rim of the lake. Clearly there is much more we would like to know about Jesus’s activity in the little towns on the north shore of the Sea of Galilee. Whatever else one can say, it attracted the attention of some women.
18. There are additional problems with amalgamating Miriam with the woman of John 7:53–8:11. First, John 7:53–8:11 is not a Lukan story; second, it was not even originally a part of the Gospel of John but was added later in several places. It is a text looking for a home.
19. The more detailed study of this text should be consulted. See B. Witherington, “On the Road with Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Susanna, and Other Disciples: Luke 8:1–3,” first published in Zeitschrift für Neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 70, nos. 3–4 (1979): 242–48; now reprinted in A. J. Levine and others, eds., A Feminist Companion to Luke (Sheffield: Sheffield Univ. Press, 2002).
20. C. H. Dodd, The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1953).
21. There is absolutely nothing to the claim that rabbouni suggests an intimate or familial relationship between Jesus and Mary. It is the respectful Aramaic term a student would use of his teacher. Wives did sometimes call their husbands “master,” of course, but that is a different word from rabbi or rabbouni, which literally means “my great one.”
22. Compare Pagels’s The Gnostic Gospels (New York: Vintage Books, 1981) to her recent work Beyond Belief (New York: Random House, 2003).
23. This is rather different from even Luke’s “the Dominion is in your midst” (Luke 17:20–21—surely not an example of Jesus wishfully thinking the Dominion was already extant within his adversaries, the Pharisees).
24. See H. Shanks and B. Witherington, The Brother of Jesus (San Francisco: Harper, 2003), pp. 165–98, for later traditions about James being James the Just.
25. For example, Stephen Patterson and Marvin Meyer, apparently using Robert Miller’s translation of the Gospel of Thomas, included this gospel in the Gnostic Society Library volume.
26. K. Snodgrass, “The Gospel of Thomas: A Secondary Gospel,” Second Century 7 (1989–90): 19–38, and C. M. Tuckett, “Thomas and the Synoptics,” Novum Testamentum 30 (1988): 132–57.
27. See the discussion in B. Witherington, The Gospel Code (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2004), pp. 102–4; see also Craig A. Evans, “Thomas, Gospel of,” in Dictionary of the Later New Testament and Its Developments, ed. Ralph P. Martin and P. H. Davids (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1997), pp. 1175–77.
28. J. D. G. Dunn, The Evidence for Jesus (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1985), p. 98.
29. Especially interesting is the rhetoric of the compilers of the Gnostic Society Library, who say on their website in their introduction to Thomas:
There is a growing consensus among scholars that the Gospel of Thomas—discovered over a half century ago in the Egyptian desert—dates to the very beginnings of the Christian era and may well have taken first form before any of the four traditional canonical Gospels. During the first few decades after its discovery several voices representing established orthodox biases argued that the Gospel of Thomas (abbreviated, GTh) was a late-second or third century Gnostic forgery. Scholars currently involved in Thomas studies now largely reject that view, though such arguments will still be heard from orthodox apologists and are encountered in some of the earlier publications about Thomas. Today most students would agree that the Gospel of Thomas has opened a new perspective on the first voice of the Christian tradition.
It would be hard to describe how many things are wrong with this paragraph. Most scholars certainly do not think this gospel was compiled before all the canonical gospels, and even the Jesus Seminar thought that the Gospel of Thomas added only two or three authentic sayings of Jesus not found in the canonical gospels—sayings that do not really change the way we would view Jesus and his teachings. Furthermore, it is not merely “orthodox” biases that lead to the conclusion that Thomas is a second-or third-century document and probably Gnostic in origin (which is to say, arising after the beginning of the Gnostic movement in the middle of the second century). The character of the distinctive sayings of this gospel, when compared to documents like the Pistis Sophia from Nag Hammadi, suggest this conclusion—a conclusion that is also supported by various Jewish scholars, scholars of no Christian or Jewish faith, and the majority of Christian scholars.
30. Some of this material can be found in a slightly different form in Witherington, The Gospel Code.
31. See the detailed article by B. A. Pearson, “Nag Hammadi,” in Anchor Bible Dictionary, ed. D. N. Freedman (New York: Doubleday, 1992), vol. 4, pp. 984–93.
32. All the Nag Hammadi translations that follow come from the standard work The Nag Hammadi Library, ed. J. M. Robinson (San Francisco: Harper, 1980). This particular document was translated by W. W. Isenburg.
33. See the discussion by P. Perkins, “Mary, Gospel of,” in Anchor Bible Dictionary, ed. D. N. Freedman (New York: Doubleday, 1992), vol. 4, pp. 583–84.
34. See my Women in the Earliest Churches (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1988).
35. Pagels, Beyond Belief, p. 31.
36. F. Matthews-Green, “What Heresy?” Books and Culture (Nov.–Dec. 2003): 10.
37. See H. Clarke, The Gospel of Matthew and Its Readers (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 2003), pp. 205–7.
38. See the surveys of evidence in K. P. Donfried, “Peter,” in Anchor Bible Dictionary, ed. D. N. Freedman (New York: Doubleday, 1992), vol. 5, pp. 251–63, and the volume Donfried wrote with R. E. Brown and J. Reumann, entitled Peter in the New Testament (Minneapolis: Augsburg Press, 1973). See also R. Pesch, Simon-Petrus: Papste und Papsttum (Stuttgart: Kaiser Verlag, 1980), and the literature cited in all these sources. It is, however, quite astonishing to me that there is no article on Peter in InterVarsity’s Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels.
39. While Peter seems originally to have been from the little fishing village north of Capernaum known as Bethsaida, by the time Jesus catches up with him and visits in his home, he is in Capernaum.
40. C. Myers, Binding of the Strong Man (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1989), p. 132.
41. So, for example, Jerome, who says there must have been something divinely compelling in Jesus’s face; otherwise, these men would not have acted so irrationally as to follow a man they had never seen before. His very countenance must have seemed irresistible (Homily 83). If this were actually the case, it is hard to explain the widespread rejection of Jesus even by his own hometown folks. Cf. J. Marcus, Mark 1–8 (New York: Doubleday, 2002), p. 185, who stresses the overwhelming power of Jesus’s word: “All human reticence has been washed away because God has arrived on the scene in the person of Jesus, and it is his compelling voice that speaks through Jesus’ summons.”
42. Myers, Binding, p. 133.
43. See the discussion in Witherington, Christology of Jesus, pp. 129–31.
44. See the discussion in B. Witherington, John’s Wisdom (Louisville: Westminster/Knox, 1995), p. 70.
45. On the Matthean traditions about Peter, see B. Witherington, The Gospel of Matthew (Smyth and Helwys, 2006).
46. On the historicity of this passage, including the remarks to Peter by Jesus, see D. A. Hagner, Matthew 14–28 (Nashville: Nelson, 1995), pp. 465–66.
47. God is called “the living God” in various places in the OT; see Deut. 5:26; Ps. 42:2; 84:2. That label is used in intertestamental literature in pagan contexts to distinguish the real God from pagan gods; see 2 Macc. 7:33; 15:4; 3 Macc. 6:28.
48. See H. Clarke, Gospel of Matthew, pp. 138–41.
49. It would also follow, if the saying is eschatological, that it has nothing to do with John 20:23 either—a saying about the inner circle of disciples forgiving sins or refusing to do so—which in any case is not directed to Peter in particular.
50. See the commentary in Witherington and Hyatt, Paul’s Letter to the Romans.
51. S. Garrett, The Temptation of Jesus in Mark’s Gospel (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), p. 82.
52. De sera numinis vindicta 9.554b.
53. See my discussion in Jesus the Seer (Peabody: Hendrickson Press, 2000), pp. 1–100.
54. There was actually a watch of the night called “cockcrow”—between 12 and 3 A.M.
55. For more on the righteous sufferer, see Ps. 55:4–5; cf. Ps. 41:6–12; 42.5 LXX. Here psuche, which we translate as “spirit,” refers to the inner life of the person. The phrase “sorrowful unto death” is like our phrase “sick to death.” It means Jesus has reached the limit to which his sadness can go. Here surely there is an allusion to Ps. 42:6.
56. This conclusion is supported by the OT text to which Jesus here alludes—Isa. 31:3 and possibly Ps. 51:11–12.
57. Dan. 11:40, 45 LXX.
58. For a more detailed treatment of this story, see Witherington, John’s Wisdom, pp. 353–58.
59. See Witherington, John’s Wisdom, p. 405.
60. On Luke’s use of sources in Acts, see B. Witherington, The Acts of the Apostles (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), pp. 165–73.
61. See Witherington, Acts of the Apostles, pp. 81–82.
62. The term “Judaizers” refers to Jewish Christians who sought to “Judaize” Gentile Christians by requiring them to be circumcised and obey the entire Mosaic Law.
63. J. D. G. Dunn, The Acts of the Apostles (Harrisburg: Trinity Press, 1996), p. xiv.
64. Cf. 3:19; 10:43; 11:18; 17:30; 26:18–20.
65. A much more detailed exposition of all this can be found in Witherington, Acts of the Apostles, pp. 128–251.
66. See J. T. Squires, The Plan of God in Luke-Acts (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1993), pp. 68–71. 67. On Luke’s use of sources, see Witherington, Acts of the Apostles, pp. 165ff. and 344–45.
68. See Witherington, Acts of the Apostles, p. 347.
69. Midrash on Ps. 146:4.
70. Jub. 22:16; Joseph and Aseneth 7:1.
71. It is sometimes objected that if Jesus himself had made this point clear, as Mark 7 suggests he did, then Peter would not be having this mental struggle. This is forgetting that there were many things Jesus taught the disciples that they did not understand during his ministry. Indeed, many things he taught took years for his followers to understand and implement. Furthermore, the drift of what Jesus says is only perfectly clear in Mark 7 because of Mark’s own parenthetical comment that “thus he declared all foods clean.”
72. We should hear echoes here of Luke 2:10–14.
73. For more on God’s intervention, see 17:32; 22:22; 23:7; 26:24. For the other outpourings of the Spirit, see 2:1–4; 4:3; 8:17. In commenting on the Spirit’s activity among Cornelius’s family, Peter only remarks that they had received the Spirit “as also we did”; he does not say, “They spoke exactly as we did.”
74. On the dating of Galatians, see B. Witherington, Grace in Galatia (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998).
75. The Beloved Disciple could have been one of the elders at this meeting, if that is what “elder” means in 2 and 3 John (rather than simply meaning the generic “old man”). On this, see Part 4, below.
76. Notice that Gal. 2:11 says “when Peter came to Antioch.” From where? And what had he been doing before that? We cannot tell, but what this suggests is that he had not taken up residence in Antioch, but at the same time Paul knew of his pattern of living and fellowshipping with Gentiles until he came under pressure from the hard-liners in Jerusalem.
77. Cf. Matt. 11:30 to Sir. 51:26.
78. See Witherington, Acts of the Apostles, p. 454.
79. See B. Witherington, Letters and Homilies of the New Testament, vol. 1, the introduction (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, forthcoming 2006), and also especially T. L. Wilder, Pseudonymity, the New Testament, and Deception (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2004).
80. For example, in the second century Papias of Hierapolis states this view explicitly (see Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. 2.15.2, and also Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. 4.9.2; 4.16.5; 5.7.2).
81. Cf. 1 Pet. 4:13 to Col. 1:24.
82. There may in addition be an interesting connection between what is said in 1 Pet. 3.1–7 and 1 Tim. 2 in regard to women’s behavior and apparel. It is possible that these two letters were written in close proximity to each other in both time and space—both from Rome and both in the period A.D. 64–66. Perhaps there was contact between Peter and Paul near the end of their lives. We could also point to the stress on future eschatological salvation in 1–2 Timothy and in what Peter says in 1 Pet. 1:3–12.
83. See M. Reasoner, “Persecution,” in Dictionary of the Later New Testament and Its Developments, ed. R. P. Martin et al. (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1997), p. 908.
84. See J. R. Michaels, “1 Peter,” Dictionary of the Later New Testament, pp. 914–23, here p. 915.
85. See the detailed and convincing study of R. J. Bauckham, Jude, 2 Peter (Waco: Word, 1983).
86. B. Witherington, “A Petrine Source in 2 Peter,” Society of Biblical Literature Seminar Papers 1985, pp. 187–92.
87. Understandably, Origen tells us in his John commentary that there were serious doubts about 2 Peter being from Peter, whereas the attestation of 1 Peter was universally accepted (see Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. 6.25.8).
88. See the discussion in Witherington, John’s Wisdom, p. 356.
89. See his 1 Corinthians.
90. Cf. Acts of Peter 37–39; Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. 3.1.
91. See B. Witherington, New Testament History (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2001).
92. See Witherington, Acts of the Apostles, pp. 1–40.
93. See at length my discussion of the virginal conception in B. Witherington, “Birth of Jesus,” Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, ed. J. B. Green et al. (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1992), pp. 60–74.
94. In fact, this is precisely what it did suggest, as we see in the later debate between Origen and Celsus, where Celsus posits that the father was a Roman soldier, one Pantera.
95. On this story, see B. Witherington, The Gospel of Mark (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001).
96. Luke, in terms of the form of his work, presents himself as a Hellenistic historian in the mold of Polybius or Thucydides, and thus a serious historian. It is also quite clear that he presents himself as one whose subject matter is Jewish history, and more particularly the Jewish history that has to do with Jesus. There are some obvious similarities between what he is doing and what we find in Josephus’s Antiquities, but Luke is concerned about salvation history, not just the history of the Jewish people in general, and thus the story of the inbreaking eschatological or saving reign of God. The eschatological flavor goes beyond Josephus’s occasional interest in miracles.
97. On the date of Jesus’s birth, see Witherington, “Birth of Jesus,” pp. 66–68.
98. See the detailed discussion of J. Nolland, Luke 1–9:20 (Waco: Word, 1989), pp. 99–103, and the bibliography there. It needs to be said that if Luke’s veracity as a historian cannot be impugned on the basis of these verses, there are certainly no verses in the rest of the gospel that are more historically problematic and more debated than these.
99. The Greek here refers to not merely storing up ideas, but valuing and evaluating them, ruminating on them because their meaning is not immediately apparent. This is the opposite of the portrayal of someone who is hard-hearted and immediately rejects the message.
100. See the discussion in Witherington, Women in the Ministry of Jesus.
101. Nolland, Luke 1–9:20, p. 97.
102. See D. Bock, Luke: The NIV Application Commentary (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996), p. 92.
103. See, for example, M. Niddah 5:1; cf. 2:5 and 1:3–5. The final thing of great interest is the way Luke characterizes the Law. It is called both the Law of Moses and the Law of the Lord. It seems reasonably clear that Luke had a very high view of the inspiration and divine authority of the scriptures, even though he seems only to have been able to read them in Greek, using the Septuagint. The holy family is portrayed as fulfilling God’s will by acting according to the Law’s requirements.
104. R. E. Brown and K. P. Donfried, eds., Mary in the New Testament (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1978), pp. 161–62.
105. Apparently Passover was the most popular and well-attended festival, not least because it was the primary festival apart from Yom Kippur where an animal sacrifice would be required—which is to say, where a priest and a temple or altar would be almost a necessity (hence the trip to Jerusalem).
106. See J. B. Green, The Gospel of Luke (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), p. 153.
107. See M. D. Johnson, The Purpose of the Biblical Genealogies with Special Reference to the Setting of the Genealogies of Jesus (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1969).
108. See R. Brown, The Birth of the Messiah (London: Chapman, 1977), pp. 137–39.
109. Brown, Birth of the Messiah.
110. B. M. Metzger, Textual Commentary (New York: United Bible Societies, 1971), p. 7, is surely right that the reading gennasis, which has the narrower meaning of “birth” or “engendering,” is later. The earlier and better witnesses of various text types have genesis. See J. D. Kingsbury on the import of this reading in “The Birth Narrative of Matthew,” in The Gospel of Matthew, ed. D. E. Aune (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), pp. 154–65.
111. Kingsbury, “Birth Narrative,” pp. 156–57.
112. There is clear evidence from the papyri that sunerkomai means “to marry”—SEG 831. See New Documents Illustrating Early Christianity, vol. 3, ed. G. H. R. Horsley (Sidney: Macquarie University, 1982), p. 85.
113. On this entire matter, see Shanks and Witherington, The Brother of Jesus.
114. I. Broer, “Die Bedeutung der ‘Jungfrauengeburt’ im Mattausevangelium,” Bibel und Leben 12, no. 4 (1971): 248–60.
115. Attempts to redefine these words to mean “while” or “without” are clearly special pleading, as is the attempt to see these words as unrelated to what comes before them. A. H. McNeile puts it this way: “In the New Testament, a negative followed by heos ou (e.g. 17.9)…always implies that the negated action did, or will take place after the point in time indicated by the participle.” The issue here is not what heos means without ou or what the phrase means in very different sorts of contexts. When this phrase is preceded by an aorist indicative as it is here (“gave birth”) and follows the imperfect verb “he was not knowing,” it is hard to escape the conclusion that Joseph “knew” Mary in the biblical sense after Jesus was born.
116. See the discussion of the brothers and sisters of Jesus in Shanks and Witherington, The Brother of Jesus, pp. 93–109.
117. It is quite clear that the reason the church fathers denied the obvious grammatical sense of the text is that they saw sexual relations with a man as something less than holy, or even as defiling. See Cromatius, Tractate on Mat. 3.1; Chrysostom, Hom. Mat. 5.3; and other citations in The Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture 1 a, ed. M. Simonetti (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2001), pp. 19–20.
118. Clarke, Gospel of Matthew, p. 9.
119. On Jewish weddings of that era, see A. W. Argyle, “Wedding Customs at the Time of Jesus,” Expository Times 86 (1974–75): 214–15, and J. Jeremias, The Parables of Jesus (New York: Scribner, 1972).
120. See Witherington, John’s Wisdom, pp. 77–80.
121. Witherington, Women in the Ministry of Jesus, p. 84.
122. J. Ashton, Understanding the Fourth Gospel (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1993), pp. 269–70.
123. Anne Rice, Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt (New York: Knopf, 2005).
124. On all this, see Witherington, Women in the Ministry of Jesus, pp. 86–88.
125. Hooker, Mark, p. 115.
126. See B. Buby, “A Christology of Relationship in Mark,” BTB 10, no. 4 (1980): 149–54; and especially D. M. May, “Mark 3:20–35 from the Perspective of Shame/Honor,” BTB 17, no. 3 (1987): 83–87.
127. The contrast is made even more vivid in Matt. 12:49, where Jesus actually points to or places his hands upon his disciples and says they are his family.
128. Mark 6:1–6.
129. D. M. May, “Mark 3:20–35 from the Perspective of Shame/Honor,” p. 86.
130. See my discussion in Women in the Ministry of Jesus, pp. 89–92.
131. R. H. Gundry, Mark: A Commentary on His Apology for the Cross (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993), p. 291.
132. Metzger, Textual Commentary, pp. 88–89. Interestingly, the Palestinian Syriac simply has “the son of Mary.”
133. Given the later reverence for the holy family, it is not plausible that Christians would have invented this saying.
134. Myers, Binding, p. 212. See also Judg. 11:1–2.
135. See Painter, Mark’s Gospel, p. 97.
136. I deal at length with the historicity of this story in Women in the Ministry of Jesus, pp. 92–96.
137. See my discussion in Women in the Ministry of Jesus, p. 187, n. 103. The example of Rabbi Eleazar ben Shimeon standing and weeping near a crucified man can be cited.
138. On all this, see Witherington, Women in the Ministry of Jesus, pp. 96–97.
139. See Witherington, Acts of the Apostles, pp. 113–14.
140. The word that I have as “sign” can sometimes be translated “constellation,” but the action that follows makes it clear that we are talking about earthly activities involving beings, including human beings. The place where John sees these entities does not dictate their nature.
141. For pagan beliefs, see Cicero, De Nat. Deor. 2.15.39–40; Seneca, Benef. 4.23.4; 1 En. 80:7–8; for Jewish equating of stars with angels, see 1QM 10:11–12; 2 En. 4:1; 2 Bar. 51:10; Philo, Plant. 12–14; T. Sol. 2:2; 4:6; 5:4; 6:7; 7:6.
142. M. Reddish, Revelation (Macon: Smyth and Helwys, 2001), p. 235, is right that John is not interested in describing the origin of evil, but he is very interested in chronicling its demise. His eschatological focus is clear.
143. Reddish, Revelation, p. 233.
144. See E. Fiorenza, Revelation: Vision (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991), p. 80: “A coin of Pergamum, for instance, shows the goddess Roma with the divine emperor. In the cities of Asia Minor Roma, the queen of heaven, was worshiped as the mother of the gods. Her oldest temple stood in Smyrna. Her imperial child was celebrated as the world’s savior, incarnation of the sun-god, Apollo. John probably intends such an allusion to the imperial cult and the goddess Roma insofar as he pictures the woman clothed with the sun as the anti-image of Babylon, the symbol of world power of his day and its allies (chaps. 17–18).”
145. Furthermore, ignoring the birth requires that we interpret this text by a text that it likely has no relationship with: Rom. 1:3–4.
146. I have dealt at considerable length with the passage elsewhere. For the full discussion, see Witherington, Letters and Homilies of the New Testament, vol. 1.
147. It is true that wives sometimes dined with their husbands at such meals, but not usually, and no women are mentioned as present and dining at this particular meal.
148. A fuller form of this material can be found in Witherington, Revelation.
149. Cf. Rev. 2:2 to John 16:2; Rev. 20:6 to John 13:8; Rev. 22:15 to John 3:21; Rev. 22:17 to John 7:37.
150. See the discussion by S. E. Porter, “The Language of the Apocalypse in Recent Discussion,” New Testament Studies 35 (1989): 582–603. On whether John is being deliberately idiosyncratic in his use of the Greek, perhaps in order to make a protest against the dominant culture, see A. D. Callahan, “The Language of the Apocalypse,” Harvard Theological Review 88 (1995): 453–70.
151. Nor can this phenomenon be adequately explained by the numerous echoes and allusions to OT texts in Revelation.
152. See Eusebius, Hist. Eccles. 3.24.17; 3.25.2–3.
153. Exposition on the Second Epistle of John. See the discussion in J. Lieu, The Second and Third Epistles of John (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1986), pp. 5–7.
154. It should be noted that he is called “the other disciple” here, referring to the one other than Peter, and this is the same language used in 20:3. It is, however, relatively certain that this is a reference to the Beloved Disciple, because in John 20, as in John 21, he is portrayed as the spiritually insightful one.
155. For a fuller treatment of this subject, see Witherington, John’s Wisdom, pp. 198–366.
156. It is my view that this document was not written primarily for the Johannine community itself, who already knew very well who the Beloved Disciple was, but for that community to use in evangelism with outsiders—hence all the asides in this gospel, like this one about Mary.
157. See the helpful discussion in A. Culpepper, Anatomy of the Fourth Gospel (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983).
158. Possibly we have a clue in Mark 14:3 in the parallel account of Jesus being anointed by Mary of Bethany. There we are told that the anointing took place in the house of Simon the leper. Let’s suppose for a moment that this family had the contagious disease of leprosy and that it had killed both the father, Simon, and Lazarus. This would explain two other facts the story presents us with. First, none of these three persons (Mary, Martha, Lazarus) seems to be married. If someone was perpetually unclean due to such a disease, that person was exempt from the Jewish duty to marry and procreate. Second, these disciples did not travel with Jesus, but rather stayed at home.
159. Here as elsewhere in this gospel, the label “the Jews” refers to Jewish officials—in particular, those who are opposing Jesus. See John 10:31.
160. See R. E. Brown, The Gospel according to St. John, vol. 1 (Garden City: Doubleday, 1966), p. 424.
161. See particularly the accounts in Mark 14:3–9 (which is clearly the same as the one in Matthew 26:6–13) and Luke 7:36–50. I have dealt at length with the source and historical critical issues involved in Women in the Ministry of Jesus, pp. 53–55, 110–12.
162. See Witherington, Women in the Ministry of Jesus, p. 193.
163. See Witherington, John’s Wisdom, p. 208.
164. Beasley-Murray, John, p. 238.
165. See C. K. Barrett, The Gospel according to St. John (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1978), pp. 556–57. 166. See Witherington, John’s Wisdom, pp. 324–25.
167. Again suggesting that at least this disciple has a home nearby.
168. See M. Oberweis, “Das Papias-Zeugnis vom Tode des Johannes Zebedai,” Novum Testamentum 38 (1996): 277–95, but see the discussion in E. Schnabel, Early Christian Mission, vol. 1 (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2005), pp. 820–21.
169. See Witherington, Revelation, pp. 1–40.
170. R. E. Brown, The Epistles of John (New York: Doubleday, 1982), pp. 14–35.
171. As C. H. Dodd, Johannine Epistles (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1945), p. 10, points out, “we” is common in homilies of all periods as a rhetorical device to unite speaker with audience. It is important to note that Dodd (p. 15) also recognizes that we are dealing with an exordium in 1 John 1:1–4.
172. See J. Painter, 1, 2, and 3 John (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2002), p. 138. Notice how our author almost always uses the first-person singular when referring to himself as the writer of this document (cf. 2:1–26; 4:20; 5:13), but when he refers to the eyewitness testimony he always uses the first-person plural, as he does when referring to the Christian experience that he shares with the audience. Thus C. Kruse is right, in Letters of John (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), p. 61, that while this document is written by an individual, not a “school,” it embodies a testimony that many eyewitnesses (of which our author is one) shared.
173. Very unconvincing is the argument that the “we” in the first few verses refers to those who have only heard the eyewitnesses and are passing on the tradition from them. Were this the case, we would not have expected the verbs “seen,” “observed,” and “handled” here. Furthermore, from a rhetorical point of view, it is both inept and deceptive to claim to be one of the eyewitnesses who handled and saw, when in fact one isn’t such a person. This undermines the very function of this language, which serves to establish the authority and ethos of the speaker. But see Painter, 1, 2, and 3 John, pp. 130–31.
174. See Kruse, Letters of John, p. 52.
175. On “word of life” referring to a person here, see J. E. Weir, “The Identity of the Logos in the First Epistle of John,” ET 86 (1974–75): 118–20. 176. There is now a thorough and convincing refutation of the basis for Brown’s claim that the sensory language here is used to refer to the Johannine school rather than to an actual eyewitness: Kruse, Letters of John, pp. 53–56, refuting R. E. Brown, Johannine Epistles (New York: Doubleday, 1982), pp. 158–61. 177. A. Plummer, The Epistles of St. John (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1884), p. 15.
178. Smith, First, Second, and Third John, p. 37.
179. See B. Witherington, “The Waters of Birth: John 3.5 and 1 John 5.6–8,” New Testament Studies 35 (1989): 155–60.
180. See Witherington, John’s Wisdom, p. 357.
181. Some of this material has appeared in another form in Shanks and Witherington, The Brother of Jesus.
182. See J. F. Strange, “Galilee,” in The Dictionary of New Testament Background, ed. C. A. Evans and S. Porter (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2000), p. 394.
183. Jerusalem, Talmud Qam.6D.
184. I reject the more obscure view, based on later ascetical views and tendencies in the church, that 1 Cor. 9:5 refers to a sister-wife—that is, a sister who would travel with an apostle and look after him, serving in some ways as a wife surrogate.
185. See Gal. 1–2. On the bogus theory that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene, see Witherington, The Gospel Code.
186. F. F. Bruce, Peter, James, and John (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1979), p. 87.
187. See Matt. 27:57–61 and parallels.
188. See, for instance, the ongoing discussion on the Biblical Archaeology Review Web site.
189. This list dates to at least within twenty years of Jesus’s death, while there were still eyewitnesses alive, for Paul wrote 1 Cor. in the early 50s.
190. Cited in Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. 4.22.4; cf. 2.23.4; 3.20.1.
191. Though the ossuary has been embroiled in controversy for the last two years, the IAA report attempting to discredit the authenticity of the inscription on this ossuary has now itself been thoroughly discredited by a variety of Aramaic experts and scientists. Furthermore, those who originally authenticated the inscription such as Andre LeMaire and Edward Keall of the Toronto museum are standing by their findings. Clearly the IAA needs to release this ossuary for further testing. See the Web site of the Biblical Archaeology Review at bib-arch.org for updates.
192. The absence of the mention of the sisters probably suggests they were married by this time and thus were part of a different patriarchal family structure.
193. The vast majority of scholars are in agreement that Paul’s letters are chronologically the earliest NT documents, even though the gospels generally record earlier events than the events mentioned in Paul’s letters.
194. In Matt. 28:10 and John 20:17 Jesus is speaking about his disciples as “brothers,” not about members of his physical family, in all likelihood. This is made clear in John by the reference to God as “our” Father, indicating that Jesus is using the family language in a spiritual way in this text. Matt. 28:10 refers forward to Matt. 28:16, where it is said that the disciples went to Galilee, obeying the command in 28:10.
195. One of the more helpful recent treatments of James is J. Painter’s Just James (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1999).
196 This document seems to come from the late second century and from a Jewish Christian community that sees itself in continuity with James and the earliest Jewish Christians.
197. Asceticism is the practice of abstaining from certain things, chiefly food and drink but sometimes also sexual activity and even all contact with other human beings, in an effort to purify one’s life.
198. Lest we think James is the only one who had such tendencies among the earliest Jewish followers of Jesus, Paul tells us that in Rome there were Jewish Christians who did not eat meat and abstained from wine as well. See Romans 14:2, 21.
199. This term derives from the term perushim, which probably means the “separated ones.” The Pharisees were a particular sect of early Judaism who were noted for their concern with maintaining a clear sense of the boundary between Jewish and non-Jewish identity and practices. Because of that concern, they had an emphasis on circumcision, Sabbath-keeping, ritual purity, and the like.
200. This is an important text and not to be lightly dismissed. It shows that the later extremely ascetical portrait of James is likely to be an exaggeration.
201. The Qumran sect is the same as the Dead Sea sect, those who produced the Dead Sea Scrolls. They are also likely the same persons as those Josephus calls the Essenes. A significant number of them lived at the Dead Sea apparently and sought to prepare for God’s final intervention and judgment on the corruption in Israel.
202. C. A. Evans, “Comparing Judaisms: Qumranic, Rabbinic, and Jacobean Judaisms Compared,” in The Brother of Jesus, ed. Bruce Chilton and Jacob Neusner (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox), pp. 161–83, here p. 182.
203. Acts 12:2 and 12:17, when compared, make very clear that one should never make the mistake of identifying James son of Zebedee and James the brother of Jesus. On the historical reliability of this and other traditions in Acts, see Witherington, Acts of the Apostles.
204. One could ask, Does he mean the other brothers of Jesus, or the other Christians? It is probably the latter, though the former can’t be ruled out altogether.
205. Painter, Just James, p. 43.
206. Eusebius was a Christian writer who wrote around the turn of the fourth century.
207. See the discussion in Witherington, Grace in Galatia.
208. See the discussion in the appendix in Witherington, The Paul Quest.
209. Galatians appears to be chronologically the earliest NT document written (or one of the earliest documents). It is certainly the first to mention James, doing so in this significant way.
210. See the fine essay by R. J. Bauckham, “For What Offense Was James Put to Death?” in James the Just and Christian Origins, pp. 199–231.
211. Clement of Rome was a Christian leader in Rome in the late first century.
212. Cf. Ezek. 40–48; Jub. 1.17–28; 1 En. 90.28–29 11QTemple; Test. Ben. 9.2.
213. See R. J. Bauckham, “James and the Gentiles (Acts 15:13–21),” in History, Literature, and Society in the Book of Acts, ed. B. Witherington (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1996), pp. 154–84.
214. See Josephus, Ant. 18.328–29.
215. See the discussion in R. J. Bauckham, Jude and the Relatives of Jesus in the Early Church (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1990), pp. 71–72.
216. The vows of the Nazirite are discussed in Number 6. This text says that if someone wants to vow to be separate to the Lord in a special way they must abstain from wine and wine vinegar and grape juice and grapes or raisins. They must abstain from shaving the hair on their heads, and they must never go near a corpse. This vow is normally seen as a temporary one, for the same chapter specifies that when the vow is over they are to shave their head, and offer sacrifices.
217. On the theory of James being a Nazirite, see Bruce Chilton, “James in Relation to Peter, Paul, and the Remembrance of Jesus,” in The Brother of Jesus, pp. 138–59, here pp. 146–47.
218. Some material in this chapter appears in another form in Shanks and Witherington, The Brother of Jesus.
219. See the discussion in Witherington, Acts of the Apostles, pp. 539–44.
220. In general, Romans tried to allow conquered peoples to maintain their native religion, simply adding to that religion the Roman cults—particularly, during the Roman Empire, the imperial cult. Jews were a special case since they were monotheists and would not accept the worship of additional deities. Romans tended to be accepting of ancient religions that had a long pedigree but not new ones, especially new ones that came from the east. When the Christian movement began to emerge from the shadow of Judaism, it was no longer perceived as an ancient and licit religion. It was therefore subject to close scrutiny and potential prohibitions, and its practitioners were expected to venerate the emperor as well. This problem became acute from the time of Nero’s persecutions onward.
221. See Bauckham, “James and the Gentiles,” pp. 154–84.
222. I have examined all 112 instances of this term, which occurs only in Christian sources and in two other sources influenced by Christians. The term always carries the overtones of idol worship and refers literally to the pollution or stuff of idols. See Acts 15:20, which explains quite clearly that James is talking about food polluted by idols, something that was believed by some Jews to happen in temples when dining took place in the presence of idol statues. Paul in 1 Cor. 10:20–21 says that it is a matter of dining with demons if you eat in the presence of idols. Some Jews believed that while the pagan gods were not gods, they were nonetheless real spiritual beings—namely, demons—which could negatively affect a believer and his or her food.
223. See Witherington, Conflict and Community in Corinth (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), pp. 186–232.
224. Cf. 1 Cor. 16; 2 Cor. 8–9.
225. It appears that Paul may have viewed the collection in an eschatological light, as a fulfillment of the prophecies about Gentiles going up to Jerusalem and making offerings.
226. Cf. the discussions by L. T. Johnson, The Letter of James (New York: Doubleday, 1995), and R. P. Martin, James (Waco: Word, 1988).
227. Rhetoric was the ancient art of persuasion involving polished speech and carefully crafted discourse.
228. James grew up in Nazareth, which as a small village was unlikely to have had a school where persons were trained to be scribes. A scribe was the ancient version of a secretary, and like modern secretaries scribes were given a varying range of freedom to compose things for the one dictating the correspondence, depending on how much they were trusted.
229. See R. J. Bauckham, 2 Peter, Jude (Waco: Word, 1983).
230. It is interesting that this prescript to the letter of Jude bears a formal resemblance to the inscription on the James ossuary, in that Jude identifies himself in relationship to two different relatives, and the last clause is “brother of James,” just as the last clause on the ossuary is “brother of Jesus.” The other possible similarity is that in both the prescript in Jude and the ossuary the identifications are in relationship to persons one in someway is or was subordinate to.
231. The term “Diaspora” means literally “Dispersion,” and it refers to the Jews living in any and all countries outside the Holy Land.
232. This Greek term Christianoi literally means those who are adherents of or belong to Christ.
233. R. J. Bauckham, James (London: Routledge, 1999), p. 16.
234. There are two forms of this seminal sermon material, with the Matthean form being clearly more Jewish in flavor. The other is found in Luke 6:17–49. As examples of that Jewishness, Matthew speaks of the kingdom of heaven as opposed to Luke’s kingdom of God, and Matthew says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit” as opposed to Luke’s “Blessed are the poor.” See my Matthew commentary (Macon: Smyth and Helwys, 2006).
235. See my discussion of this list in Jesus the Sage (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994), pp. 240–42.
236. See L. T. Johnson, The Letter of James, pp. 146–56, for various theories on how Christian a book James actually is.
237. P. J. Hartin, James and the Q Sayings of Jesus (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1991), pp. 188–89.
238. As in the case of other NT documents, the audience is primarily hearers rather than readers; thus the text is written in a way appropriate for oral communication. For instance, wordplay (James. 1:1–2; 1:13; 3:17), alliteration (James 3:5), and other poetic devices are used to enhance the impact of the words on the audience.
239. The Wisdom of Solomon, like Sirach and the Wisdom of Jesus ben Sira, is an intertestamental Jewish text that focuses on giving sage advice.
240. The intertestamental period refers to the time between the writing of the latest composition found in the OT and the first composition found in the NT. The earliest NT documents are probably Paul’s letters, the first of which was composed aboutA.D. 49. It is more difficult to say when the latest OT book was written, but it was probably before the Maccabean era—which is to say, at least before the second centuryB.C. if not somewhat earlier.
241. Both 2 and 3 John are brief letters trying to solve internal community problems; 1 John is an exhortation trying to inculcate certain core ethical values, chiefly love, in order to help prevent the community from fragmenting, but also to help it discern and reject false teaching.
242. See Bauckham, James, p. 32.
243. By this I mean he was not for imposing Levitical Laws on all Jews, nor was he in favor of imposing the entire Mosaic Law on Gentile converts.
244. What Luther meant is that the epistle lacked substance; it lacked, in Luther’s view, the gospel message about Jesus.
245. The term “eschatological” comes from the Greek eschaton, which means “end things.” It is a reference to a belief that God’s final saving and judging activity was already transpiring during the first centuryA.D.
246. See the discussion in Witherington, Grace in Galatia, pp. 216–40.
247. Bauckham, James, p. 140.
248. Bauckham, James, pp. 133–34.
249. Cf. 5:12 to Matt. 5:34–37.
250. In this section I am following the helpful treatment of Bauckham, “James and Jesus,” pp. 100–137, here pp. 126–29.
251. Josephus, Ant. 20.199–203.
252. Josephus’s works were in large measure preserved by Christian copyists through the centuries after the NT era, for Jews often saw Josephus as an ambiguous figure who himself collaborated with Rome. There was indeed some Christian editing of his work, as is usually recognized, for instance, in the passage that speaks about Jesus: Ant. 18.63–64. This is not thought to be the case about this present passage, however.
253. This was rightly emphasized in the helpful lecture given by Professor S. Mason, an expert in the interpretation of Josephus, at the Ossuary Panel Discussion at the Society for Biblical Literature (SBL) meeting Nov. 23, 2002, in Toronto.
254. Professor L. Feldman pointed out at the above-mentioned SBL meeting that the term “so-called” does not have to have a polemical edge. It can simply mean “the one who was named or known as the Christ.”
255. Here the important essay by R. Bauckham, “For What Offense Was James Put to Death?” in James the Just and Christian Origins, pp. 199–231, must be consulted.
256. Nevertheless, there may be a historical memory behind the Christian account, for as Bauckham shows, it was the normal Jewish procedure in stoning to first push a person off of a high place and then stone him or her. (See Luke 4:29, where the practice was attempted on Jesus.) See Bauckham, “For What Offense,” pp. 202–4.
257. In James’s case, the ossuary is just long enough to contain the longest bone, as well as the smaller ones.
258. Since we have the example of Caiaphas being buried in an ossuary as well, and Caiaphas was a Sadducee, we cannot automatically assume that the person buried in the ossuary believed in bodily resurrection. It may merely suggest that he believed in some sort of viable form of afterlife. But in the case of James, it surely does comport with his belief in resurrection.
259. Greco-Roman inscriptions on sarcophagi could be quite extensive, in contrast to what we find on Jewish ossuaries, and they were often honorific, touting one’s accomplishments in life. The James inscription is honorific only in the sense that it mentions James’s more famous brother, which confers honor back on James.
260. The one parallel ossuary inscription mentions a brother who buries the deceased brother, which is clearly not the case here. But this other Jewish inscription mentions that the brother is named Hanin or Hanina. It may in fact prove to be a close parallel with the James ossuary, because it may be that this is a reference to another famous rabbi, Hanina ben Dosa, who helped Judaism survive the fall of Jerusalem. The jury is still out on this other inscription, but if it proves to be truly a reference to Hanina ben Dosa, then we would have something very interesting here—the only two Jewish ossuary inscriptions that mention brothers mention them because they were very famous Jewish teachers.
261. Eusebius is quoting Hegesippus in Hist. Eccl. 4.22.4.
262. As my doctoral student Laura Ice has suggested, this may have been because of the Jewish tradition about the priesthood being passed down within a family line. For example, one member or another of the family of Caiaphas was in power as high priest most of the first century, until the destruction of the Temple in A.D. 70. This conjecture becomes all the more plausible when we consider the fact that James was seen as one of the pillars of the new eschatological temple that God was building for his messianic people.
263. The so-called second Jewish revolt (really the third, if you count the Maccabean wars) was in the early second century A.D. and was led by or centered on Simon bar Kokhba. It was as ill-fated as the revolt in the 60s. Thereafter the Romans imposed severe restrictions in regard to Jews and especially their visitation to Jerusalem.
264. Bauckham, “For What Offense?” p. 228.
265. Sometimes in the hill country of Judea, with its more moderate climate and with the burial of someone in a cave, it could take a considerable period of time, even over a year, before only the bones of the deceased would remain.
266. We have examined the later Christian traditions about the burial of James in Jerusalem in Shanks and Witherington, The Brother of Jesus, pp. 177–97.
267. R. Bauckham, “Jude, Epistle of,” Anchor Bible Dictionary, ed. D. N. Freedman (New York: Doubleday, 1992), vol. 3, pp. 1098–1103, here p. 1101.
268. W. Brosend, James and Jude (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2004), p. 6.
269. On 2 Peter as a composite document drawing on a variety of sources and attributed to its most famous source, Peter, see Chapter 4.
270. See Bauckham, “The Letter of Jude: An Account of Research,” ANRW 2/25/5 (1988): 3791–3826.
271. See Bauckham, “Jude,” pp. 1099–1100.
272. See Brosend, James and Jude, pp. 183–87.
273. A different and much fuller form of some of the material found here can be found in Witherington, The Paul Quest.
274. For the Jewish discussion, see J. Klausner, From Jesus to Paul (London: Allen & Unwin, 1943); C. G. Montefiore, Judaism and St. Paul (London: Goshen, 1914); H. J. Schoeps, Paul: The Theology of the Apostle in the Light of Jewish Religious History (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1961); A. Segal, Paul the Convert (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1992); and more recently, D. Boyarin, A Radical Jew (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1997).
275. Phil. 3:4–6; 2 Cor. 11:22.
276. 1 Cor. 9:20–23.
277. See the discussion in Witherington, Grace in Galatia, pp. 25–35.
278. On this, see the introduction to Witherington, Grace in Galatia, pp. 8–13.
279. See rightly G. Lyons, Pauline Autobiography: Toward a New Understanding (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1985), pp. 150–58.
280. 2 Macc. 2:21; 8:1; 14:38; 4 Macc. 4:26.
281. Gal. 1:14; 2:15.
282. Gal. 4 and 6. See my discussion of Paul’s view of the Law in Grace in Galatia, pp. 341–55.
283. Cf. Gal. 3–4 and Rom. 9–11 to Heb. 11–12.
284. See J. Becker, Paul: Apostle to the Gentiles (Louisville: Westminster, 1993), p. 2.
285. See Segal, Paul the Convert, pp. 117–25.
286. 1 Cor. 15:9; Gal. 1:13, 23; Phil. 3:6.
287. See Gal. 6:12; 2 Cor. 11:24.
288. See N. T. Wright, “Paul, Arabia, and Elijah,” Journal of Biblical Literature 115 (1996): 683–92.
289. See T. Donaldson, “Zealot and Convert: The Origin of Paul’s Christ-Torah Antithesis,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 51 (1989): 655–82, whom I am following here.
290. Donaldson, “Zealot and Convert,” p. 656.
291. See A. J. Saldarini, Pharisee, Scribes and Sadducees in Palestinian Society (Wilmington: Glazier, 1988).
292. See M. Hengel and A. M. Schwemer, Paul: Between Damascus and Antioch (Louisville: Westminster/Knox, 1997), pp. 7–10. See D. Daube, “Rabbinic Methods of Interpretation and Hellenistic Rhetoric,” Hebrew Union College Annual 22 (1949): 239–62, for the influence on Hillel of Alexandrian rhetorical education.
293. Had Paul not seen a fundamental antithesis between what was appropriate now that Christ had come and what was appropriate during the reign of the Mosaic covenant, it is hard to understand why after his conversion he did not become like those referred to in Acts 21:20, zealous for the Law and believers in Christ, or like the Pharisaic Judaizers themselves (see Acts 15:5).
294. F. Craddock, Philippians (Atlanta: John Knox, 1985), p. 59.
295. Stendahl’s enormously influential though now dated essay on this matter can be found in his Paul among Jews and Gentiles (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1978).
296. Cf. Gal. 1:13, 23; 1 Cor. 15:9; see 1 Tim. 1:13.
297. See the discussion of D. A. Carson, “Pauline Inconsistency: Reflections on 1 Cor. 9:1–23,” Churchman 100 (1986): 6–45.
298. See the excursus in Witherington, Grace in Galatia, pp. 341–56. The literature on the subject is quite enormous, but some of the more helpful works are J. D. G. Dunn, ed., Paul and the Mosaic Law (Tubingen: Mohr, 1996), especially the detailed bibliography on pp. 335–41; F. Thielman, Paul and the Law (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1994); E.P. Sanders, Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1983); S. Westerholm, Israel’s Law and the Church’s Faith: Paul and His Recent Interpreters (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988). 299. Rom. 3:19; 7:1; 1 Cor. 14:21.
300. 1 Cor. 9:8–9.
301. On this point, see R. B. Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul (New Haven: Yale, 1989).
302. Gal. 3:23–4:7.
303. 2 Cor. 3:7–18.
304. See Gal. 2:11–14.
305. We can’t simply contrast Paul’s universalism with Judaism’s particularism. Paul also believes in a form of particularism, though it is a universalistic particularism, if we may coin an apparent oxymoron. That is, Paul believes that salvation is in principle available for all, but only by grace and through faith in the particular person Jesus Christ. I fail to see how this is different in principle from the particularism of arguing that all may be saved or be part of God’s people by submitting to the Mosaic Law. Even the Law has a place for Gentiles or goyim in the kingdom if they will but take up the yoke and keep the Law. Thus in the end this debate is not about universalism versus particularism, but between two forms of particularism that have the potential to include all but are at odds with one another.
306. Gal. 5:14; cf. Eph. 5:33.
307. Thielman, Paul and the Law, p. 140.
308. See the fuller discussion in Witherington, Grace in Galatia, pp. 341–55.
309. By definition a sect is an offshoot of or schism from a larger religious group that takes various elements of the mother religion into its own new community but often transforms those elements. There is generally no continuity of community between the parent group and the offshoot; the two have largely if not entirely different members. A cult, on the other hand, is by definition the founding of a new religious group, not a splitting off from an old one.
310. See my discussion in Paul’s Narrative Thought World (Louisville: Westminster, 1994).
311. See my exegesis of this text in Jesus, Paul, and the End of the World (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1990).
312. See, for example, 1 Cor. 9; 2 Cor. 11:7. See also E. A. Judge, “Paul’s Boasting in Relation to Contemporary Professional Practice,” ABR 16 (1968): 37–50, his “St. Paul and Classical Society,” JAC 15 (1972): 19–36, and his “The Social Identity of the First Christians,” JRH 11 (1980): 201–17.
313. Acts 21:39.
314. On all these matters the more detailed discussion in my Acts of the Apostles, pp. 679–84, should be considered.
315. See T. J. Leary, “Paul’s Improper Name,” New Testament Studies 38 (1992): 467–69, and on the subject in general C. J. Hemer, “The Name of Paul,” Tyndale Bulletin 36 (1986): 179–83.
316. Another form of this material has appeared in Witherington, The Paul Quest.
317. G. Lyons, Pauline Autobiography (Chico: Scholars Press, 1985), p. 171.
318. B. Malina and J. Neyrey, Portraits of Paul (Louisville: Westminster Press, 1996), p. 40.
319. See, for example, Malina and Neyrey, Portraits, p. 39, where these authors stress that Greco-Roman culture valued stability and the status quo and so “constancy of character. Hence ‘change’ of character was neither expected nor praiseworthy. Normally adult persons were portrayed as living out the manner of life that had always characterized them.” The virtuous Stoic philosopher was one who “surmises nothing, repents of nothing, is never wrong, and never changes his opinion” (Cicero, Pro Murena 61).
320. See the classic study by A. D. Nock, Conversion (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1933).
321. Gal. 1:19–20.
322. A. Segal, “The Cost of Proselytism and Conversion,” Society for Biblical Literature 1988 Seminar Papers, ed. D. J. Lull (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988), pp. 336–69, here p. 341.
323. That there was such a category of Gentile synagogue adherents is now demonstrable from the inscriptions. See the discussion in my Acts of the Apostles, pp. 341–44. 324. See rightly R. Kanter, Commitment and Community (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1972), pp. 61–74.
325. See Gal. 3:2–8; 1 Cor. 1:13–17.
326. See K. Stendahl, Paul among Jews and Gentiles.
327. 2 Cor. 3; see also Gal. 4.
328. See S. Kim, The Origin of Paul’s Gospel (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1981), and more recently his “The Mystery of Rom. 11:25–6,” a lecture given at the August 1996 Studiorum Novi Testamentum Societas meeting in Strasbourg, France.
329. For a fresh set of discussions of the ongoing impact of the Damascus road experience on Paul and his gospel, see R. N. Longenecker, ed., The Road from Damascus: The Impact of Paul’s Conversion on His Life, Thought, and Ministry (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997).
330. See G. D. Fee, God’s Empowering Presence (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1994).
331. See my discussion in Conflict and Community, pp. 459–65.
332. On the so-called hidden years, see M. Hengel and A. M. Schwemer, Paul between Damascus and Antioch: The Unknown Years (Louisville: Westminster, 1997).
333. See A. T. Lincoln, “Paul the Visionary,” New Testament Studies 25 (1979): 204–220.
334. Cf. Luke 23:43; Rev. 2:7.
335. This is another term that supports the position that Paul was not suggesting in this text that such experiences were rare for him.
336. For confirmation from Acts, see for example not only the account of his conversion in Acts 9, but also Acts 16:6–10; 23:11. For confirmation from Paul himself, see 1 Cor. 2:1, 10, 16; 4:1; 15:51.
337. See Gal. 4:11–15.
338. See J. W. McCant, “Paul’s Thorn of Rejected Apostleship,” New Testament Studies 34 (1988): 550–72.
339. See, for example, Acts 13:11; 14:10; 16:18; 19:11; 28:3–6.
340. See 1 Cor. 11 on the former, and see both 1 Cor. 14:39 and my discussion of all this in Conflict and Community, pp. 276–80.
341. See the discussion in Fee, God’s Empowering Presence, p. 583.
342. See the discussion in Fee, God’s Empowering Presence, p. 586, and J. D. G. Dunn, Romans 1–8 (Waco: Word, 1988), pp. 479–80.
343. See my discussion in Friendship and Finances in Philippi (Valley Forge: Trinity, 1994), pp. 71–72.
344. See my discussion in Paul’s Narrative Thought World (Louisville: Westminster, 1994), pp. 245–49.
345. See Witherington, Jesus, Paul and the End, pp. 184–90.
346. 1 Cor. 9:27.
347. Phil. 3:14.
348. See Witherington, Grace in Galatia, pp. 389–405.
349. Such as 1QS 4:5.
350. 2 Cor. 6:6; 1 Tim. 4:12; 6:11; 2 Tim. 2:22; 2 Pet. 1:5–7.
351. See the discussion in Dunn, The Epistle to the Galatians (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1993), p. 310, and Gal. 5:14.
352. See 2 Cor. 11:23–29.
353. 1 Cor. 11:1.
354. E. Castelli, Imitating Paul (Louisville: Westminster, 1991), makes the mistake of reading this appeal to imitation as a power move on Paul’s part, not recognizing the pedagogical context. See Witherington, Conflict and Community, pp. 144–46.
355. See Quintilian, Inst. Or. 10.2.1–28.
356. See 1 Cor. 2:16.
357. See Witherington, Conflict and Community, pp. 145–46.
358. Hengel, Paul: Between Damascus and Antioch, p. 16.
359. See R. Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament, 2 vols. (New York: Scribner, 1951, 1955).
360. See L. Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003).
361. My study of the church in Rome in the 50s (see Witherington and Hyatt, Letter to the Romans ) pointed out that the Gentile and Jewish Christians in Rome were meeting separately, and one of the functions of Paul’s message to the Romans was to try to get the Gentile Christian majority to do a better job of embracing the Jewish Christian minority. See especially Paul’s imperatives in Rom. 16.
362. P. Trebilco, The Early Christians in Ephesus from Paul to Ignatius (Tubingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 2004), p. 99.
363. Trebilco, Early Christians, p. 593.
364. Trebilco, Early Christians, p. 382.
365. See Trebilco, Early Christians, pp. 614–19.
366. See Witherington, The New Testament Story (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004).
367. F. Buechner, The Life of Jesus (San Francisco: Harper, 1989), pp. 9–14, excerpted.
368. For more on all of this, see Witherington, The Christology of Jesus, and Witherington, The Many Faces of the Christ (New York: Continuum, 2005).
APPENDIX: THE ROYAL LINE OF JESUS?
1. See the review of this find in Biblical Archeology Review 2005 (May/June): 36–41, 58.
2. See my lengthy discussion of their relationship in The Christology of Jesus, pp. 34–56.