Bible Books: Filling in the Gaps

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Bruce Chilton’s new book on Jesus starts off with a rather bold claim: “Rabbi Jesus offers the first comprehensive, critical biography of Jesus to date.” To those who make a hobby of reading Jesus biographies—to say nothing of those who read them professionally—this claim will seem rather surprising, to say the least. Chilton does, however, have a point: Most biographies of Jesus focus on the last few years of his life, just as the Gospels do. Chilton, rather, tries to tell the story of Jesus’ entire life. He describes Joseph and Mary’s courtship, the circumstances of Jesus’ birth, Jesus’ precocious behavior as a child, Jesus’ anguish after the death of his father Joseph, his years as a talmid (student) of John the Baptist, and so forth.

The Gospels, of course, say little about any of this. In order to fill in the gaps in the Gospels, Chilton draws on a wealth of sources, including information gleaned from archaeological excavations, as well traditions from the Babylonian Talmud and the church fathers (in some cases these sources are as late as the fifth century C.E.). The result is a biography of Jesus that is certainly “comprehensive,” but is it “critical”?

The authors of the biographies Chilton dismisses as not being comprehensive enough are likely to claim that Chilton’s is not critical enough, and this reviewer would tend to agree. But this is no work of fiction, nor is it simply theology. Much of the work is well-argued and well-substantiated scholarship. The problem is that some parts consist of inferences on inferences. It will be especially difficult for lay readers to evaluate this reconstruction of Jesus’ life because Chilton does not devote much time to describing his method, nor does he supply in his notes all the background necessary to evaluate his complex and creative claims.¹

The problem is perhaps most evident in Chilton’s first chapter, “A Mamzer from Nazareth.” Some readers will recognize mamzer as the Yiddish equivalent of “bastard,” but the term is actually Hebrew in origin and refers not simply to a child born out of wedlock, but specifically to the child born of an adulterous or incestuous union, as defined by the laws of Leviticus 18 and 20.² As the title of this chapter suggests, Chilton believes that Jesus was a mamzer (or something close to it) “on any theory of his birth.” This kind of overstatement is characteristic of Rabbi Jesus.

Actually, it takes a rather complex scenario for Jesus to be a mamzer. If Jesus is the product of a premarital encounter between Joseph and Mary (as Chilton thinks is likely), then Jesus would not actually have been a mamzer at all. According to rabbinic law, which Chilton takes as his primary source of information, as long as the union in question has potential legal validity then a child resulting from that couple’s premarital sex is not a mamzer. In other words, because Joseph and Mary later contracted a legally valid Jewish marriage, it is most unlikely that Jesus was believed to be a mamzer, unless (1) Joseph was not the father of Jesus, and (2) Mary had sex with another Jewish man after she was engaged to Joseph. Even if Mary had been raped by a Roman soldier (an accusation raised in the Talmud that Chilton rightly rejects)—Jesus would still not necessarily be considered a mamzer because many rabbinic authorities doubt that the son of a non-Jewish man can be a mamzer.

It is possible, I suppose, that Mary’s post-engagement, premarital promiscuity is a historical fact, as Chilton asserts, based on little evidence. It is also possible that those relatively late rabbinic and New Testament texts (e.g., John 8:41) alluding to claims of sexual impropriety in Mary’s past have simply no historical validity at all.

But an even greater problem concerns the inferences that Chilton draws from his inference that Jesus was a mamzer. Chilton reconstructs much of Jesus’ childhood based on the assumption that Jesus would have had a difficult time as a mamzer: He would 043have been ostracized by the elders, and excluded from the synagogue. According to Chilton, Jesus had to overcome these social difficulties in order to live his rich life as a prophet, a rabbi and a frequent visitor to the Temple.

It is not unreasonable to assume that there were some practical social ramifications of being a mamzer. But these are assumptions, not facts. We have no real evidence for the social ostracism of mamzers in first-century Jewish society. The only limitations that we know of have to do with marriageability: A mamzer can only marry certain other people, like converts or other mamzers. Perhaps we should understand Jesus as someone who faced and then overcame the social pressures placed on the mamzer, as Chilton suggests. It is equally possible, however, to suppose either that Jesus was not a mamzer, or that mamzers did not face such great difficulties. Chilton’s reading is possible, but it is certainly not the simplest reading of the evidence.

Though perhaps somewhat less provocative than mamzer, the term “rabbi” as used by Chilton is also problematic. The Gospels do of course record that Jesus’ disciples addressed their teacher as “rabbi,” which means, simply enough, “my teacher.” Putting aside questions pertaining to the date and reliability of these traditions, we still need to reckon with the fact—briefly noted by Chilton—that the institution of the rabbinate as known from rabbinic literature post-dates Jesus by more than a generation. In fact, with a relatively high degree of consistency, rabbinic literature avoids referring to figures who lived in Jesus’ day and earlier as rabbis. Chilton, however, ignores this convention, and thus he freely refers to the great sages known from rabbinic literature as simply “Hillel” and “Shammai” as Rabbi Hillel and Rabbi Shammai. In rabbinic literature, they are not known by this title.

Chilton doesn’t stop with the anachronism of making rabbis out of Hillel and Shammai. He even makes John the Baptist into one! According to Chilton, the term “rabbi” applies to “any Jewish teacher whose wisdom was valued.” Thus Rabbi Jesus begins his career as a talmid (student) learning the mishnah (teaching) of Rabbi John. But how much sense does it really make to call John the Baptist—who eats honey and locusts and lives off on his own in the desert—a rabbi? This usage is not simply anachronistic; it stretches the term so far that it’s left with little meaning at all. If John was a rabbi, then who wasn’t one?

Now, Chilton could in fact be correct to infer that the term “rabbi” was used more broadly in Jesus’ day than it is in 044later rabbinic literature. Yet Chilton goes even further, making the additional inference that rabbinic literature ought to be helpful in providing information on the religious lives of all these earlier “rabbis.” Thus, Jesus’ and John’s mystical experiences, for instance, are understood by Chilton in light of the distinctively rabbinic form of mysticism known for its focus on Ezekiel’s vision of the chariot. Similarly, Chilton tries to understand Jesus’ overturning the tables in the Jerusalem Temple in light of a debate between the Jewish sages Hillel and Shammai. Chilton not only wants to make everyone a rabbi, he then wants to use later rabbinic evidence—with its more limited understanding of what a rabbi is—as the model for understanding all these earlier “rabbis” too.

Despite these problems, this reader is pleased nonetheless to find another book that confidently makes use of rabbinic evidence to gain a fuller understanding of Jesus’ life. Chilton’s book will therefore find a place alongside the works of Geza Vermes, E.P. Sanders and Paula Fredriksen, to cite some of the recent works. Yet Chilton’s use of rabbinic material is so convoluted that I fear his misuse of rabbinic evidence will end up giving support to those who believe that rabbinic literature is of no use in the quest for the historical Jesus.

Chilton also deserves much credit for presenting a lively account of Jesus’ life, one that is enriched by his vivid descriptions of the realia of the land of Israel in the first century: We find out what people wore, what they ate and how they spoke to each other. Readers of Rabbi Jesus will indeed get a good picture of what life may well have been like.

If you are looking for a well-written, interesting and novel take on Jesus’ life—with ideas that you have not read elsewhere—then you should read Rabbi Jesus. If you do so, and follow that up with further reading, you are sure to come out knowing much more than you did before. Just be careful: If you come across something there that you haven’t read anywhere else, you may want to do some fact-checking, paying close attention to what is really known, and what Chilton infers to be fact.

Bruce Chilton’s new book on Jesus starts off with a rather bold claim: “Rabbi Jesus offers the first comprehensive, critical biography of Jesus to date.” To those who make a hobby of reading Jesus biographies—to say nothing of those who read them professionally—this claim will seem rather surprising, to say the least. Chilton does, however, have a point: Most biographies of Jesus focus on the last few years of his life, just as the Gospels do. Chilton, rather, tries to tell the story of Jesus’ entire life. He describes Joseph and Mary’s courtship, the circumstances of Jesus’ birth, Jesus’ […]