Books in Brief

004

Jeremiah: An Archaeological Companion

Philip J. King

(Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993) 230 pp., $27.00

“Of the making of books there is no end,” said Ecclesiastes (12:12), a dictum illustrated by many works written on the Book of Jeremiah. This prophetic book and the prophet we meet within it are difficult for us moderns, as well as for past generations, to understand. Consequently, scholars continue to write commentaries. Having wrestled with the problems in the Hebrew text of Jeremiah, I am particularly pleased that Philip J. King did not write another commentary. What he has written is aptly named: a companion to the text of the prophet.

This book provides exactly what a reader of Jeremiah needs: illumination. King’s work is not intended to untie all the knotty problems in the text of Jeremiah, but it does help one to understand a wide range of related historical, geographical, cultural and religious issues. Jeremiah, for example, refers to Edom several times (9:26, 25:21, 27:3, 40:11, 49:7, 17, 20, 22), and King provides archaeological evidence from several sites in the Negev that situate Edomites on the southern boundaries of Judah in the decades preceding Nebuchadnezzar’s conquest of Judah (pp. 53–63). He also helps to illuminate references to the “queen of heaven” found in Jeremiah 7:16–18 and elsewhere. It turns out that the family activity of preparing and baking cakes as offerings to this female deity is directly connected with the worship of Ishtar, the Mesopotamian mother goddess—a clear case of the dominant culture influencing the religious thought and practice of provincial people.

The volume is a mine of useful information drawn from archaeological discoveries and of insights on the life and times of the prophet. It begins with a sketch of Jeremiah the prophet and his book. This is followed by a chapter on the historical background, covering the Syro-Palestinian powers in the era of the prophet and extending eastward to Assyria and Babylon and southwestward to Egypt. A chapter on the geographical setting of Jeremiah’s oracles against the nations (Jeremiah 46–51) nicely combines archaeological data with historical information from Biblical and extra-Biblical sources to give the reader an informed awareness of the historical reality of these nations. Subsequent chapters focus on Edom and Judah.

Archaeology in the Negev and in Jordan in recent years has enriched our knowledge of these areas and of the political changes that occurred in the time of Jeremiah. After reading King, one better understands the Edomites’ insidious infiltration into southern Judah. The Edomites took advantage of the weakening of the Judahite kingdom, caused by the Babylonian invasion that destroyed Jerusalem in 586 B.C.

The last five chapters of the book integrate references from Jeremiah with a wealth of information on inscriptions and literacy, worship and architecture, funerary customs and mourning, and agriculture and crafts. As an example of how archaeology illuminates the Biblical record, the chapter on inscriptions alerts the reader to the existence of nearly 400 seal inscriptions dating primarily to the Iron Age II period, 1000 to 586 B.C. (Jeremiah fits in at the end of Iron II). Although well known by archaeologists and Biblical scholars, these seal impressions, or bullae, are largely unknown by the general public. Some of these bullae refer to people mentioned in Jeremiah, including Gemariah son of Shaphan (the scribe of King Jehoiakim) and Jeremiah’s scribe, Baruch.^a.

With King’s book in hand, the interested Bible reader really has more than a companion to the Book of Jeremiah. It is a companion for all the pre-exilic prophets, and much of the information provided in the last five chapters can illuminate cultural references throughout the Bible. Written in a lucid style, this is also a user-friendly book. In the introductory section, King provides charts on chronology, archaeological periods and the books of the Bible. King also uses illustrations effectively, placing them adjacent to related text references. Chapter endnotes, a selected bibliography and two useful indexes follow the body of the book.

In reading Jeremiah: An Archaeological Companion, we also experience Philip King. King’s balanced presentation of evidence and his gentle turn of phrase are exactly what we who know and appreciate the author would expect. He epitomizes the gentleman and scholar.

006

The Religion of Jesus the Jew

Geza Vermes

(London: SCM Press, 1993) 244 pp., £12.50

The life of Jesus is an attractive enigma. It is attractive because Jesus is certainly one of the most influential men in history; Christians believe him to be the most important person of all time. Yet because we can be sure of few details about him, his life is an enigma.

The enigma is not caused by lack of information. We have more information about Jesus than about many ancient personages. The problem is the accuracy and sources of the information. It all comes from the pens of people whose lives were unalterably changed by his mission and who had come to believe in him as the savior of the world. Modern intellectuals maintain that information based on such sources is subject to major distortions and can be entirely discounted. This has led to a difficult problem in historiography.

Many scholars have attempted to answer the challenge by pointing out that the issue of the sources is not unique in historiography and that it merely demands very stringent critical methods. According to the most popular method, often called “the criterion of dissimilarity,” one can be sure only of facts about Jesus’ life that are not in the interests of the church to tell us. This leaves us with little information: that Jesus was baptized by John, that he was crucified, that the inscription on the cross was “King of the Jews,” and a few more startling anomalies. Many scholars will wish to stop there because this places the life of Jesus beyond manipulation by contemporary apologists for one Christian doctrine or another. Surely this method leaves too little to write a biography.

But it is worthwhile to ask whether the criterion of dissimilarity—and other formulations that restrict our information about Jesus 008to what is almost surely authentic—have not already done their duty by demonstrating that Jesus must have existed and must have undergone the ultimate penalty, if not in the way that the passion narrative describes it. Controversy will always exist about whether scholarship can legitimately go any further. It is, of course, extremely dangerous to do so because every attempt to discuss the life of Jesus means making a number of important guesses about which traditions in the gospel ought to be given our primary attention. Although we can criticize The Religion of Jesus the Jew for going beyond what can be known with certainty about Jesus, that does not make it wrong. The criticism merely says that Geza Vermes, a major New Testament scholar, has been daring, and it means that his ideas make heavy demands on us as readers.

This volume is the last of a trilogy that began in 1973 with the publication of Jesus the Jew, followed in 1983 by Jesus and the World of Judaism. Both previous books have enjoyed wide success, yet only with this one does the enterprise come to its logical conclusion, an attempt to define the religion of Jesus and hence to specify his message.

Considering the difficulty of the task and the speculation necessary to complete it, the book emerges as a major intellectual achievement. Vermes begins from the notion that there was nothing in the teaching of Jesus that was sufficient to cause his death on the cross. Instead, the most likely cause of that miscarriage of justice was the combination of fear of insurrection in those tense times, the crowds that surrounded Jesus and Jesus’ symbolic overturning of the moneylenders’ tables in the Temple. By definition, Vermes deals with materials that could not pass the criterion of dissimilarity—material about which one cannot be sure but that one might like to explore.

Vermes’s basic assumptions are that Jesus was a good Jew throughout his life and that all his teachings ought to be seen within the world of acceptable legal opinion in Judaism. He establishes this hypothesis by noting the great surprise that exists everywhere in early Christian tradition when the symbolic and ritual tenets of Judaism are transgressed: In Acts 10, for example, Peter is astonished when he receives the apocalyptic vision to kill and eat, a clear conflict with the kosher laws. This means that Jesus did not flout the laws. Furthermore, the early Christians repeatedly make Jesus conform to their prophetic notions of the uniqueness of his message.

Vermes does a great deal to reestablish the more correct notion that the Torah of Judaism is not merely a group of special ceremonial laws and rituals, but a system that was meant from its inception to represent all ethical behavior for the children of Israel. Jesus appears to have respected that authority implicitly. Nevertheless, there was room for enormous variations in opinion. Vermes believes that Jesus made a series of special interpretations designed to point out the implications of the coming kingdom, but that these interpretations fall within the legitimate spectrum of opinion in first-century Jewish life. A great many were ordinary Jewish wisdom and became attributed to Jesus because of respect both for the teacher and for his teaching. But Vermes maintains that a fair portrait of Jesus should contain many of these special interpretations, even if we cannot exactly tell which ones. Furthermore, we can often tell what is likely to have been added to the core by tradition. The result is a Jesus that fits into the legal discussion of first-century Judaism to an extent largely unappreciated by other scholars.

At the same time, Jesus’ parables and teachings are not primarily about scriptural passages—as are those of the rabbis—but about the nature of the coming kingdom. This weds Jesus to the Jewish religious life of the first century and also distinguishes him in subtle ways from the Pharisees, Sadducees and Dead Sea Scroll sectarians, although he is capable of using exegetical techniques that resemble each one. Jesus preaches the kingdom, but he does not specify either a heavily messianic message or a message dominated by arcane apocalyptic symbolism and angels. Jesus’ message is, in somewhat summary fashion, teshuvah (repentance) and emunah (faith), both placed in the context of his basic preaching of the coming eschatological end.

Vermes rehabilitates the portrait of Jesus offered by Matthew, without going so far as to suggest a chronological Matthean priority. In the end, Vermes’s portrait of Jesus is one that constantly works towards differentiating strongly between the faith of Jesus, which he takes as the earliest level of the New Testament, and the faith in Jesus, which he sees as distinctly later. It is a Torah-true Jesus, who does not offer a major critique of the law, a portrait that may challenge many sympathetic and thinking Christians. Vermes’s portrayal of Jesus is one that would be antagonistic to the radically antinomian Jesus of later, gentile Christianity.

Vermes’s portrait of Jesus differs somewhat from the other great scholarly portraits of recent decades. But the differences do not seem any greater than those that probably separated the various views held by Jesus’ sympathetic contemporaries. To be sure, the story goes beyond what we can know without doubt. When we discuss the life of Jesus, we are constantly dealing with traditions that could be, but need not be, authentic. Thus, we must not think that the enterprise can ever be final or authoritative.

Uncovering the Past: A History of Archaeology

William H. Stiebing, Jr.

(Buffalo, N.Y: Prometheus Books, 1993) 315 pp., $24.95

William Stiebing is well known for two previous books about early history, Ancient Astronauts, Cosmic Collisions and Other Popular Theories about Man’s Past and Out of the Desert? Archaeology and the Exodus/Conquest Narratives.^b His new book concerns the history of archaeology from its beginnings to the present.

Stiebing divides his history into four periods. Archaeology’s “Heroic Age,” from about 1450 to 1925, covers the early two periods. The first, to about 1860, can be described as exploration, antiquarianism, and early excavations. In the next period (1860–1925) archaeology came of age by becoming more scientific. The final two periods are denominated “Modern Archaeology.” In the third period (1925–1960) archaeology became systematized and organized. The final period (1960–present) introduced the New Archaeology and the latest methods and equipment.

Stiebing provides an appendix of major archaeological events and discoveries, a list of recommended readings for each chapter, and a general index. Many good quality illustrations and several computer-generated maps are also included.

Since the book encompasses the entire history of archaeology, the Near East occupies only part of it, but this allows the reader to compare different aspects of the field. For those interested in a broad survey of archaeology, this is a very helpful book.

Jeremiah: An Archaeological Companion

Philip J. King

(Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993) 230 pp., $27.00