Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews: A Jewish Life and the Emergence of Christianity
Paula Fredriksen (New York: Knopf, 1999) xxi + 327 pp., $26.00
Reading this book prompted a flashback. Ten years ago, the Jesus Seminar heard a paper entitled “John the Purifier,” which argued that ritual immersion was routine within first-century C.E. Judaism. Controversy over how to achieve ritual purity is also very well attested in first-century sources, both literary and archaeological. John the Baptist stepped into that controversy, the argument went; so did Jesus, initially as John’s disciple, and then without reference to the practice of immersion.
I am sure the paper (I must admit it was my own)1 was hard for my seminar colleagues to deal with, because it moved in the opposite direction from the then fashionable view (especially in the Jesus Seminar) that Jesus was more of a Hellenistic philosopher than a Jew concerned with ritual purity laws.
Now Paula Fredriksen of Boston University asserts: “Given the strong association of immersions with the Baptizer’s mission, we could equally well think of him as ‘John the Purifier.’”
Just so.
The past ten years have seen the publication of several field reports from excavations in the Galilee, as well as careful analyses of them, by Seán Freyne, Richard Horsley, Marianne Sawicki and James Strange. Scholars today must reckon with the results of their exacting research, which has established both the relative isolation of Galilee and Judea from one another and their continuing dedication to purity in the midst of Roman hegemony.
In Jesus of Nazareth, Fredriksen monitors a sea change in the study of Jesus and joins the tidal flow. She demonstrates that the glib portrayal of Jesus as one opposed to ritual as such is derived from among the latest, most apologetic strands in the Gospels. Jesus, Fredriksen writes, operated “in the religious world—and, hence, the purity laws—of late Second Temple Judaism.” Fredriksen correctly contends that John and Jesus did not set out to transcend the Jewish system of purity, as some have argued; they assumed that cleanness and sanctification were vital. Both these teachers questioned, not whether purity was important, but how it was to be achieved.
Where she advances beyond my position and that of Joan Taylor of the University of Waikato, New Zealand (both of which are cited), is in showing that the concern with sacrifice and purity was inherent in the religious life of antiquity as a whole, quite aside from Judaism. That is a fundamental observation, and one that has recently been obscured by the assumption that Jesus and his movement amounted to some sort of intellectual salon, a talking shop for the spiritualization of Judaism.
Fredriksen explicitly contradicts the views of New Testament scholars John Dominic Crossan (who sees Jesus as a Jewish “Cynic”) and Marcus Borg (who alleges that Jesus transcended concerns of purity).2 She is also well nigh dismissive of the views of N.T. Wright, whose interpretation of Jesus as promoting himself as a replacement for the Temple she finds “impossible in whole and in part.” Some of her argument has to do with the importance of sacrifice and purity within ancient religion generally, some with the complex question of how the Gospels and other sources reflect the gradual distinction of Christianity from Judaism well after the time of Jesus. But a great deal of weight is put on a basic fact that she thinks Crossan and Borg and Wright cannot explain: the crucifixion of Jesus by the Romans.
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Fredriksen presses this issue early on: “The more Jesus is imagined as a teacher whose message—be it the witty subversive aphorisms of the wandering Jewish Cynic [here she has Crossan in mind], the existential ethics of the pious Hasid [Borg is in view], or the antinationalist, anti-Temple proclamation of the Galilean visionary [Wright, to round out her trio]—essentially challenges Jewish religious authorities, the harder it is to explain Pilate’s role.” Her answer comes through crisply. Pilate ordered Jesus executed because Jesus behaved as a messianic pretender. Whatever Jesus thought of himself, the crowds in Jerusalem near Passover certainly took him to be the Messiah, and that was sufficient cause for Pilate to intervene.
Fredriksen has shown us afresh that there is no denying Jesus’ identity as a Jew. Moreover, his Judaism was not just some ethnic happenstance, but the focus of his commitments. That realization marks a shift in the contemporary debate about Jesus; it has been in process for some time, but Fredriksen’s careful, engaging review of the discussion shows us plainly that the corner has been turned, and that Jesus can no longer be marginalized from his own Judaism. The historicity of this rabbi has been recognized, and here we are shown that his history can only make sense to us when we locate his actions and teachings within his Jewish religious and cultural context.
But what exactly bridges this religio-cultural identity and Jesus’ crucifixion by the Romans? Fredriksen has Pilate react directly to messianic enthusiasm. But I wonder how closely the prefect in Jerusalem actually monitored (or even understood) such displays. Remember Gallio, the Roman functionary in Corinth who had no time for a fracas among Jews. When the Jews in Corinth attacked Paul and brought him to court, Gallio told them to settle the dispute among themselves and dismissed the case (Acts 18:12–17). The first-century C.E. Jewish historian Josephus reports that when Judean prefects did react violently, it was over pragmatic concerns such as the threat of insurrection. The Romans must have found Jesus politically threatening or Pilate never would have reacted the way he did. But it is difficult to link Jesus’ Judaism with his death unless, of course, Jesus somehow threatened the Romans while in the Temple, such as when he violently intervened in its sacrificial operation (Matthew 21:12–13; Mark 11:15–17; Luke 19:45–46; John 2:13–17).3 Regarding what happened in the Temple, Fredriksen offers no resolution. Instead, she finds that the traditional scholarly reading of the scene as a symbolic protest against 058commercialism “makes no historical sense.” I would have to agree with her. But hasn’t the world of academic convention proven it is tone deaf to the Judaism of Jesus and the earliest Christians? Why should we expect to find a critically defensible consensus on this point?
Perhaps it is time to leave the secondary sources to bury their dead, and to ask what the primary texts teach us about the events that generated them. Particularly, the Roman interest in the secure functioning of the Temple, documented by Philo and Josephus, needs to be brought into the picture. I realize I am pressing at the very agenda Fredriksen set out. She wants to work from within the consensus of scholarship, while I am happier to see it challenged by a fresh reading of our sources. Despite those differences, Fredriksen and I both see a discipline in transition, one that is moving toward recognition of Jesus’ Judaic identity. This at last will get us beyond the bland assertion that Jesus was a historical figure and will allow us to map just what sort of historical figure he was.
The Jewish Savior
Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews: A Jewish Life and the Emergence of Christianity
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Demus’s earlier publications on the churh of San Marco include a monograph on the mosiacs, Die Mosaiken von San Marco in Venedig, 1100–1300 (Baden, 1935) and The Church of San Marco in Venice: History, Architecture, Sculpture Dumbarton Oaks Studies, 6, (Washington, D.C., 1960).
2.
The project was initiated and sponsored by the Dumbarton Oaks Center for Byzantine Studies. Additional support was given the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
3.
See John G. Gager, Moses in Greco-Roman Paganism (Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon Press, 1972).
