Bible Books
014
The Most Important Thing Jesus Did
Dying, We Live: A New Enquiry into the Death of Christ in the New Testament
Kenneth Grayston
(New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990) 496 pp., $39.95
Early Christian literature nearly unanimously affirms that the most important thing Jesus ever did was to die. Of all the weighty theological questions the early Church confronted—the value of God’s law, the acceptability of uncircumcised gentiles in the Christian community, the relationship between the church and the synagogue, the delay of the Parousia (the Second Coming)—none was so compelling as the death of Jesus. If, as Christians claimed Jesus was God’s Messiah, it was necessary to explain not only why his career had been so unlike what traditional messianism had led Christians to except, but specifically why Jesus died the death of a criminal.
The 19th-century biblical scholar Martin Kähler called the Gospels “passion narratives with extended introductions.” The apostle Paul says of his own preaching that its content is nothing but “Christ crucified” (1 Corinthians 1:23, 2:2). The author of 1 Peter assures his readers that they have been called to righteous suffering “because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in his steps” (1 Peter 2:21). By the end of the first century, Ignatius of Antioch is so eager to pursue his own martyrdom as the way to imitate Christ that he begs the Roman church not to intercede with imperial authorities on his behalf.
As consumed as the first Christians were with Jesus’ death, they were far from unanimous in their interpretation of what that death accomplished. For some Jesus’ death was the ultimate martyrdom; for others it represented a cultic sacrifice atoning for human sin; for still others it represented God’s final triumph over the cosmic forces of evil. Kenneth Grayston’s comprehensive study of the theme in the New Testament, Dying, We Live, attempts to set that diversity of interpretation in historical and theological context.
In contrast to most discussions of the death of Jesus, which speak in terms of various atonement theories, Grayston asks of any New Testament statement of Christ’s death and resurrection “not what theory of atonement it supports but how it effects [sic] the community.” The most helpful way to evaluate the death of Jesus in the New Testament, Grayston suggests, is to ask what are the theological and sociological functions of the various affirmations made about it. He concludes that there are two consistent reasons New Testament writers provide for Jesus’ death: to shape the church’s ethical life and to influence its worship. He seeks, he says, “to counter the impression that [Jesus’] death belongs chiefly to a transaction with God carried out on our behalf, that it is primarily a feature of atonement theology concerned with the removal of guilt.” Consequently, Grayston relegates cultic language about Jesus’ death (for example, “handed over to death for our trespasses,” Romans 4:25) to the category of early (pre-Pauline) Christian tradition or interprets this cultic language in mythic terms that “transfer the saving power of Christ’s death from individual sinning to the social context of the human situation.” In the final analysis, Grayston writes, “the most instructive passages in the New Testament about the death of Christ are the six Pauline Epistles, the Gospel of Mark, and the First Epistle and Gospel of John” because they, unlike other New Testament writings, construe the significance of Jesus’ death in communal rather than personal terms, because they appeal to Jesus’ death for socially revolutionary rather than conservative purposes, and because they understand Jesus’ death primarily as the means of entrance into the Christian community rather than as the means of private reconciliation with God.
“It goes without saying,” Grayston writes in the introduction, “that references 015to death and resurrection must be taken together.” But because Paul and John so frequently speak of Jesus’ death without mentioning his resurrection, and because Luke so often speaks of Jesus’ resurrection without explicitly addressing his death, Grayston must assert the connection repeatedly. In fact, his theological conviction that cross and resurrection constitute “a double event, not separable events in sequence” is at the root of his study.
Despite Grayston’s many assertions that the objects of his inquiry are New Testament meanings attached to Jesus’ death, it is proclamations of the resurrection that seem to him to be more central to the New Testament and to Christian faith. The very title of the book gives away the importance of this presupposition—to speak of the “death of Christ” is to assert from the start that one speaks not of Jesus of Nazareth who was crucified but of the risen Lord—and the choice by Oxford University Press of Albrecht Dürer’s Resurrection for the dust jacket aptly reflects this.
Dying, We Live, clearly the product of a lifetime of careful and thoughtful exegesis, is strongest in the discreet exegetical discussions that constitute the bulk of the volume. Grayston is emeritus professor of New Testament at the University of Bristol, England, and one can appreciate the substance of a fruitful teaching career behind his detailed and lucid explanations of texts. Grayston is less successful, however, in drawing the individual exegetical pieces together. Is this book meant to be a New Testament introduction or a New Testament theology? Its comprehensive scope and thematic unity invite such questions, but it arrives at neither destination.
Grayston writes refreshingly well; his exegesis is clear and frequently compelling and his insistence that the subject must be addressed independently of theological debates about atonement is welcome. Although he professes to address preachers and theologians, he is most often in conversation with specialists in early Christianity and Judaism and employs all the technical historical and exegetical argumentation necessary to that conversation. Because it contributes close exegetical treatments of a number of significant passages, Dying, We Live surely will claim a part in the continuing conversation about the meaning of Jesus’ death.
015
‘He died and rose.’ Those words indicate a double event, not separate events in sequence. When one part is stressed and the other neglected, the faith of the Christian community becomes distorted. Neither part of the double event can be accepted without reservations. The resurrection is literally improbable but metaphorically attractive; the the crucifixion is certainly probable and in all senses unattractive. Hence, it was sometimes necessary to restrain Christians who made extravagant application of resurrection imagery to themselves and ignored the significance of crucifixion imagery. Indeed, it was sometimes necessary to find good reasons for allowing crucifixion imagery a continuing role within Christian self-definition.
Dying, We Live, by Kenneth Grayston
From Text to Tradition: A History of Second Temple and Rabbinic Judaism
Lawrence H. Schiffman
(Hoboken, NJ: Ktav, 1991) 299 pp., $39.50 (cloth), $16.95 (paper)
Demonstrating a rare talent for clear exposition, Professor Lawrence Schiffman tackles the course of religious change during a crucial period in the history of Judaism—the period from c. 538 B.C.E.a to c. 500 C.E. Schiffman, a leading authority on the religious history of the later Second Temple period, has published numerous detailed studies, in particular of the halakhah (Jewish religious law) found in the Dead Sea Scrolls. This book reflects both his willingness to discuss larger issues and his expertise in the study of the Qumran texts. It should be warmly welcomed as a useful, compact account of an interesting subject.
To encompass within one volume the whole story of Judaism during a particularly eventful and productive 1,000-year period is ambitious, and occasional asides in the book suggest that the author himself was sometimes rather overwhelmed by his own undertaking. Nonetheless, Schiffman succeeds in getting in a remarkable amount. A brief and good discussion of methodology and a sketch of the religious traditions inherited from the earlier biblical period by Jews at the start of the Second Temple era are followed by chapters on Judaism in particular periods-Persian (538–332 B.C.E.), Hellenistic (332–31 B.C.E.) and after the First Jewish Revolt against Rome in 66–70 C.E.; places—the Hellenistic Diaspora, Judea in the Second Commonwealth (152–63 B.C.E.); and texts—Apocrypha, Pseudepigrapha and the Dead Sea Scrolls, Mishnah and Talmud. The inclusion of a chapter on the Jewish-Christian schism in the first or second century, which appears rather different from the rest, is justified by the author on the grounds of the importance of early Christian history from the perspective of the later history of Western civilization. The penultimate chapter, summarizing “the life of Torah” as laid down by rabbinic halakhah, is one of the best in the volume.
The book contains no footnotes or references and only a brief bibliography for further reading. It seems to be aimed at first-year undergraduates and general readers. Indeed, its authoritative style gives it the air of the best kind of introductory lecture. It also has some of the less desirable characteristics of introductory courses, such as occasional vast but only semivalid generalizations, such as the suggestion (in defiance of two further centuries of persecution) that Roman recognition in the late first century that Christians constituted a group separate from Jews paved the way for the legitimization of Christianity as a licit religion. Nonetheless, the book serves a most useful purpose and should be widely read.
Two major aspects of Schiffman’s account strike me as particularly distinctive. First, his deliberate decision to treat only the history of ideas rather than of people leads, in all chapters apart from that on “the life of Torah,” to a rather insipid picture of religion as texts and theology rather than as cult and behavior; this seems to me potentially misleading when much change in Judaism may have resulted from popular practice rather than from legal theory. Second, Schiffman assumes that Judaism after the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in 70 C.E. was standardized and unified in a fashion quite different from the heterogeneity before that time. Hellenistic Judaism, according to his account, simply disappeared after 70 C.E. because it was “untenable” and lost out to Christianity. But this assumes that 016the only Judaisms in late antiquity were those attested in texts preserved in medieval manuscripts—a strange assumption for an expert on the Dead Sea Scrolls, who knows that much evidence about earlier Judaism was lost in the later tradition. Schiffman hardly alludes to the (Hellenistic) Judaism of late-Roman Asia Minor as it is revealed by the Sardis synagogue and by inscriptions from Aphrodisias and elsewhere. In such places, according to the standard scholarly interpretation of the evidence, Jews may still have been quite fully integrated into the surrounding Greek society and culture as late as the sixth century C.E. Schiffman’s book provides a much more linear progression to the “hegemony of the Babylonian Talmud” than other scholars would be inclined to posit. It is entirely possible that nonrabbinic varieties of Judaism may have flourished in the second to fifth centuries in places or among groups which the rabbis did not reach or care to discuss.
Early Manuscripts and Modern Translations of the New Testament
Philip W. Comfort
(Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House, 1990) 255 pp., 14 plates, $19.95
The title of this book might more appropriately read “Early Greek Manuscripts and Modern English Translations of the New Testament.” The early Greek manuscripts are New Testament papyri that have come to light from time to time during the 20th century and that have influenced the translators of the following six English versions of the New Testament: Revised Standard Version (1946), Today’s English Bible (1966), New English Bible (1970), New American Standard Version, (1971), New International Version (1978) and New Jerusalem Bible (1985).
In the first section of the book, Comfort describes how papyrus manuscripts were made and the kinds of transcriptional errors in New Testament manuscripts that scribes introduced into their work. Over the years, at various localities, the repeated copying and recopying of texts resulted in the slow development of types of textual streams, that is, characteristic texts of the New Testament. Two such text types that emerged by the fourth century were the Alexandrian, in northern Egypt, and what is commonly called the Western type of text. The latter is characterized by various kinds of elaboration in wording. For example, the Western text of the Acts of the Apostles is about eight percent longer than the Alexandrian type of text. A mixture of elements from these two types, with further modifications, resulted in the production of the Syrian, or Byzantine, type of text. By the seventh or eighth century, the wording of this last type had become widely accepted, still further, resulting in the type of Greek text found in the overwhelming majority of Greek manuscripts of the New Testament (this is known as the Textus Receptus, or “received text”). The translators of the King James English Bible (1611) depended on such later manuscripts, because none of the early copies were available at that time.
During the 20th century, nearly 100 Greek papyrus manuscripts containing parts of the New Testament have come to light. Of this number, 48 papyri date to the fourth century or earlier. It is these that interest the author, who provides a brief description of each (including date, content, place of publication, present location, textual character, significance and some bibliography).
In the main part of his book, Comfort examines how the translators of the six named versions (RSV, TEB, NEB, NASV, NIV, NJB) changed the New Testament text to reflect what was learned from these 48 fourth-century papyri. He compares these six versions to the American Standard Version of 1901, a translation that antedates the discovery of the papyri. In many instances the newly acquired early texts have changed scholars’ evaluation of previously known Greek variant readings. For example, in Revelation 15:6 (“out of the temple came the seven angels, with the seven plagues, robed in pure bright linen…”) some manuscripts read linon (linen) and others read lithon (stone). The translators of the American Standard Version, following what they judged to be the weightiest testimony available to them, preferred lithon and translated “robed in pure bright stone.” But the subsequent discovery of the third-century Chester Beatty papyrus of Revelation (p. 47), which reads linon in this verse, shifted the balance of manuscript evidence, so more recent translations of the verse read “robed in pure bright linen.”
Comfort summarizes and assesses the extent to which changes have been adopted as the result of new evidence that has come to light through early papyrus manuscripts. There are about 115 such changes, a substantial figure, but, as Comfort says, “not phenomenally high because the early manuscripts discovered this century have so often affirmed Codex Vaticanus [a fourth-century manuscript of the Greek New Testament, now in the Vatican] and Codex Sinaiticus [another fourth-century manuscript, now in the British Museum], the manuscripts which the ASV greatly reflects” (p. 213).
A wide variety of readers will appreciate the clear and thorough manner in which the author deals with a timely subject on which many have very fuzzy ideas.
017
Leviticus 1–16: A New Translation With Introduction and Commentary
Jacob Milgrom
Anchor Bible Series 3 (New York: Doubleday, 1991) 1163 pp., $42.00 (cloth)
Leviticus may seem an excessively dull book to many people, but, as Jacob Milgrom of the University of California at Berkeley explains in his impressive new commentary, its priestly theology has a fascination of its own. In contrast to the cultures that surrounded ancient Israel, which attributed impurity to demonic forces, the priestly theologian eliminates the demonic element from impurity. The only creatures who retain demonic power are humans who defy God and who, through impurity, can even drive him from his sanctuary. Israel thus must control impurity, which would otherwise attack God’s realm. The forces of life are unleashed by obedience to God’s commandments; disobedience loosens the powers of death. The impurity laws are thereby a reminder that Israel is to reject death and choose life.b
Scholars have long distinguished two principal sections in Leviticus, written at different times: chapters 1–16, the Priestly source of the Pentateuch, and chapters 17–26, known as the Holiness Code. The Priestly source is usually assigned to the fifth century B.C.E.c (that is, after the Exile of the Jews to Babylonia in 586 B.C.E.) and the Holiness Code somewhat earlier. Milgrom, while following this division, agrees with a number of Jewish scholars who place the Priestly source before the Exile; he also argues that the Holiness material is later than the Priestly source and is actually the editorial frame for the Priestly work. He does concede that a few final touches of the Priestly source are from the Exilic period, but the Priestly text, in his view, was written down before 750 B.C.E. (its sacrificial procedure probably had its origins in the Shiloh sanctuary), with the Holiness material following in the latter half of that century. Naturally, his dating of these sections has major implications for the understanding of pre-Exilic practice and worship. If Milgrom is correct, the elaborate system of sacrifices, festivals and purity laws in Leviticus would have been present centuries earlier than most scholars have thought.
Milgrom is aware of what he owes to a long line of commentators on Leviticus. He lists the medieval and modern ones and also acknowledges his debt to his students (to whom he dedicates the commentary). He supplies a long bibliography before launching into the translation, notes and comments that make up the bulk of the book (supplemented by a few special comments). Though it is the first of two volumes, it has its own index.
Any argument with Milgrom’s positions would have to enter into the same detail as he has, but here it can be predicted that his theories about the dating of the Priestly and Holiness sections and his characterization of the Holiness Code as a redaction of the Priestly section will spark a lively debate. His splendid commentary makes one eager for the second volume, in which he will deal with the Holiness section.
Deuteronomy 1–11: A New Translation With Introduction and Commentary
Moshe Weinfeld
Anchor Bible Series 5 (New York: Doubleday, 1991) 458pp., $34.00 (cloth)
The Book of Deuteronomy has played an enormous role in modern discussions of 058how the religion of Israel developed. From ancient times it was thought to be the book discovered in the Temple in King Josiah’s time (622 B.C.E.; see 2 Kings 22–23). This fixed chronological point allowed scholars to date the other three sources—called J, E and P—that they had isolated in the Pentateuch.
Moshe Weinfeld of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem maintains that Deuteronomy dates from the seventh century B.C.E. but thinks it is inappropriate to talk about a specific date for it, since the ancient notion of a book was different from ours. Ancient works—Deuteronomy is an example—grew over time. Following fairly standard ideas, Weinfeld says Deuteronomy’s teachings come from northern Israelite roots (there are several similarities with Hosea). Then, after the northern kingdom fell to the Assyrians in 722 B.C.E., refugees brought such traditions south. There these traditions were joined with developments that arose from the reforms of kings Hezekiah (729–686 B.C.E.) and Josiah (639–608 B.C.E.) in the seventh century. The theology of Deuteronomy subsequently inspired the historiography found in Joshua, Judges, 1 and 2 Samuel and 1 and 2 Kings, books known as the Deuteronomistic History. Only a few parts of Deuteronomy date to later than the seventh century (chapters 4 and 30 are examples). Weinfeld adds the unusual proposal that the process of destroying high places (a part of Hezekiah’s and Josiah’s reforms) led eventually to the rise of another form of local places of worship—the synagogue.
In his rich introduction, Weinfeld explains, among many other topics, the relationship between Deuteronomy and the Hittite and Assyrian state treaties (the covenant in Deuteronomy has some structural similarities to second-millennium Hittite treaties but closely resembles the seventh-century Assyrian vassal treaties or oaths of loyalty at the time of royal succession) and deals with the book’s views about sacrifices (God does not really need them) and social concerns. Deuteronomy’s teachings are quite different from those in the Priestly sections of the Pentateuch. “The author’s view,” observes Weinfeld, “seems to be that spiritual purification and repentance—consisting of confession and prayer—and not sacrificial offerings expiate sin.” Deuteronomy insists on limiting worship to one place, yet does not deal with sacral institutions. Rather, its emphasis is on the social aspects of legislation, 059as one can see in the motive for keeping the fourth commandment—to observe the Sabbath—so “You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt…” (Deuteronomy 5:15). It does not speak of God living in his house (the Temple); rather, his name dwells there. Furthermore, the gift of the Promised Land was conditional on obedience to the covenant.
Weinfeld provides a bibliography before the translation of and commentary on this pivotal biblical book. He has chosen to issue this volume of his commentary on the first 11 chapters because they serve as a preface (or several of them) to the law code (chapters 12–26) and other material (chapters 27–34) at the end of the book.
Weinfeld has been studying Deuteronomy for years (the bibliography includes five pages of his publications beginning in 1964). This authoritative guide stands to become the standard commentary on Deuteronomy.
Middle Judaism: Jewish Thought, 300 B.C.E. to 200 C.E.
Gabriele Boccaccini
(Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991) 289 pp., $24.95 (cloth)
Gabriele Boccaccini, who teaches Oriental studies at the University of Turin in Italy, calls on scholars to study biblical and other books in the context of their larger historical and literary environment, even if it means violating canonical boundaries. With that call in mind, he here tries to write the beginnings of a history of Jewish thought from 300 B.C.E. to 200 C.E.—a period that he prefers to designate Middle Judaism because those five centuries stand as a historical midway point between the Hebrew Scriptures and later religious movements such as rabbinic Judaism and Christianity. Boccaccini sees these later movements as having grown from specific predecessors within the multifaceted period of Middle Judaism.
In much of the book, Boccaccini provides examples of how to pursue his program of studying literature in context by examining several works from the period in tandem: Sirach, Ecclesiastes and Apocalyptic (texts that contain divine revelations about the end of time and/or secrets of the unseen realm); Daniel paired with Dream Visions of Enoch (1 Enoch 83–90); and the Letter of Aristeas juxtaposed with Greek educational theories. In the last part of the work, he studies Philo, James, Paul and Josephus—all viewed within their wider setting and with special emphasis on their differing views of God’s mercy and justice.
It is not clear, however, against whom Boccaccini is arguing. No one in critical scholarship would maintain that Daniel, for example, should be studied in isolation from extra-canonical apocalypses. Also, it is difficult to see the advantage of labeling the period in question “Middle Judaism” rather than, say, “Early Judaism,” since the latter need not imply that nothing came before it. Readers will find Middle Judaism’s value in Boccaccini’s treatment of the theological or philosophical ideas that arise in the texts under study, not in his claims to an original approach to those texts.
A Light Among the Gentiles: Jewish Missionary Activity in the Second Temple Period
Scot McKnight
(Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991) 205 pp., $12.95 (paper)
Judaism during the Second Temple Period has been described by some as a 060missionary religion because the increase in the number of Jews during this time far outstrips what could be expected from normal reproductive growth. Christians, in this view, simply inherited the powerful Jewish missionary impulse. Scot McKnight has evaluated the surviving evidence—in Jewish, Christian and other texts—to see whether the evidence supports such a claim. Somewhat surprisingly, he concludes that it does not.
His book pursues a fascinating if frustratingly elusive subject. McKnight is careful to make distinctions. He notes that there is indeed evidence for conversions to Judaism and that converts—called proselytes—were usually viewed favorably by Jews, though not everyone agreed about exactly what one had to do to convert. However, the fact of conversions (of whatever degree) does not, he argues, entail Jews actively seeking proselytes. According to McKnight, the more common Jewish view was that Israel was indeed a light among the gentiles to which the latter were welcome to come. But there is little evidence that Jews, like the early Christians, actively urged people to come to that light. Their good deeds and society were attractive, but they did not energetically recruit new members.
McKnight’s book is a cautious, disciplined weighing of the evidence from a wide range of texts and archaeological data. He succeeds in showing the weakness of the theory that Judaism was a missionary religion, but one comes away with the impression that he has given very little weight to such texts as Matthew 23:15 (where Jesus declares, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you traverse sea and land to make a single proselyte”) that do indeed suggest an active Jewish mission program.
Josephus and Judaean politics
Seth Schwartz
Columbia Studies in the Classical Tradition 18 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1990) 257 pp., $57.25
Seth Schwartz’s book on Josephus seeks to use that first-century C.E. historian’s works to illuminate Judean politics in the notoriously murky period of 70–94 C.E. Other scholars, notably Richard Laqueur in 1920, have argued that while Josephus ostensibly writes about the First Jewish Revolt against Rome during 66–74 C.E. in The Jewish War and even earlier Jewish history in Antiquities of the Jews, his writings can be mined for information on the post-revolt period. Historians following this approach have done so mainly to understand Josephus and his postwar circumstances.
Schwartz, however, turns the tables: He wants to use Josephus’ works to understand better the political situation in Judea during the last three decades of the first century, for which scholars normally rely on much later rabbinic literature. He believes that clues from Josephus’ works, composed in that period provide a much more secure historical framework than rabbinic literature offers; rabbinic literature offers; rabbinic literature, says Schwartz, can supplement Josephus.
Schwartz’s thesis is that Josephus’ apparent histories of earlier periods are really propaganda for various postwar groups seeking power in Judea. Specifically, war (written about 81 C.E.) promotes the surviving high priests and King Agrippa II, for it presents these parties as decidedly pro-Roman. By the time that Josephus first published Antiquities (93/94 C.E.), however, their hopes had faded and so Josephus threw his support behind the 061emerging “rabbinic” coalition at Yavneh. Schwartz deduces all of this from Antiquities’ attack on the later high priests, its ambivalence toward the family of Herod and its pronounced enthusiasm for accurate observance of the Jewish laws, which Schwartz sees as a distinctively Pharisaic/ rabbinic trait. Josephus’ alleged shift political allegiance between the late 70s and the mid-90s allows Schwartz to date the rise of the rabbinic movement under Gamaliel II to the mid-80s C.E.
This revised dissertation is engagingly written but its main thesis fails at every step. Schwartz does not fulfill his promise to show that Josephus is really portraying intramural politics after 70 C.E. (the year the Temple was destroyed by the Romans); rather, he assumes this conclusion throughout. Whenever Josephus speaks harshly of someone, Schwartz tends to link the criticism to some postwar group. Yet, his isolation of specific Jewish groups as the beneficiaries of Josephus’ “propaganda” seems arbitrary, since War presents everyone but the rebels (including the Essenes and common people) as pro-Roman, while Antiquities points out the moral shortcomings of virtually everyone, including many who had no obvious post-war heirs (Israelite kings and Hasmonean rulers). In short, Josephus’ own account of his aims—in War, to isolate the rebels; in Antiquities, to show the efficacy of Jewish laws—is far more persuasive than Schwartz’s reconstruction of his ulterior motives.
Nonetheless, Schwartz’s book offers many insights on subsidiary questions. It will be required reading for specialists and advanced students in the area. Its arguments presuppose the reader’s knowledge of the relevant primary and secondary literature.
The Most Important Thing Jesus Did
Dying, We Live: A New Enquiry into the Death of Christ in the New Testament
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Footnotes
The Five Scrolls has been published in three editions: The congregational edition (reviewed here) includes both the translation of the five books and prayers to accompany the reading of the books in the synagogue on the holidays when it is traditional to do so; the next version, without prayers, in a larger format than the congregationnal ($60), and the special limited edition in large format printed on rag paper with a hand-pulled Baskin etching, signed and numbered by the artist ($675). In all three versions, Baskin’s 37 watercolor illustrations are included.