Jesus and the Judaism of His Time

Irving M. Zeitlin

• Publisher: Polity
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780745669274
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Jewish Theology

The main aim of this work is to understand Jesus as he saw himself, and to compare that self-understanding with the ways in which others have grasped the nature of his mission.

Part I

Judaism in the Time of Jesus

1

The Unifying Principles

Josephus, the famous Jewish historian, is one of our major sources of information for the Jewish traditions of the first century. He was born in Jerusalem in the first year of the reign of Caligula (AD 37/38). His father, Matthias, descended from a distinguished priestly family, ensured that Josephus would receive a careful religious education and a thorough knowledge of the Torah, or law. At the age of 16 he went through the schools of the Pharisees, Sadducees and Essenes, one after the other. Still searching for a deeper religious understanding he withdrew to the wilderness to join a hermit named Bannus. After spending three years with him, Josephus returned to Jerusalem and in his nineteenth year, joined the Pharisees.¹

Josephus states that when the Jewish war broke out against the Romans (AD 66), he had at first opposed it (Life 4). This is quite possible as the Jewish aristocracy in general took part in the war only under coercion. Once the initial blows had been struck, however, he joined the uprising and even became one of its leaders, acquiring the important post of commander in chief of Galilee (Life 7). His career as commander ended with the fall of the fortress Jotapata in AD 67 and his capture by the Romans (War 3:344). Led before Vespasian, Josephus predicted the Roman general’s ascent to the imperial throne, and was therefore treated from the beginning with consideration and respect. Two years later, in AD 69, Vespasian was in fact proclaimed emperor by the legions in Egypt and Judea, thus fulfilling Josephus’ prophecy. Vespasian remembered his special prisoner and granted him his freedom as a mark of gratitude (War 4:622). Following his proclamation as emperor, Vespasian, accompanied by Josephus, proceeded to Alexandria where he turned over his command of the war to Titus. Josephus then returned to Palestine in Titus’ entourage and was forced, under the Roman general’s orders and with considerable danger to his life, to call on the Jews to surrender. With the fall of Jerusalem to the Romans, Titus, in gratitude, urged Josephus to ‘take what he wanted’; Josephus merely appropriated some sacred books and pleaded for the freedom of his brother and other prisoners who were his friends. He was able to persuade the Roman commander to take down three men who had already been crucified, one of whom recovered (Life 75).

At the close of the war Josephus accompanied Titus to Rome where, benefiting from his favoured status, he carried on with his studies and writing. Vespasian provided him with a dwelling in a house in which he himself had once lived, granting him both Roman citizenship and an annual pension (Life 76). It was in these favourable circumstances that Josephus composed his voluminous works. The first of these, The Jewish War, is a history covering the period from Antiochus Epiphanus and the Maccabean uprising (175–164 BC) through the conquest of Jerusalem and the war’s aftermath, including the liquidation of the last remaining insurgents. Vespasian, Titus and other Romans who had participated in the war attested that Josephus had recounted the events correctly and faithfully. Agrippa II, the exiled Jewish king, agreed with their assessment.

The Jewish Antiquities, Josephus’ other famous work, reviews the history of the Jewish people from earliest times to the outbreak of the war with the Romans in AD 66. It is in this work that Josephus has a few words to say both about Jesus (Antiq. 18:63–4) and his brother James (Antiq. 20:200). This famous passage about Jesus, referred to as the Testimonium Flavianum, appears to have been tampered with by a later hand. It will be discussed in detail in chapter 10. In addition to The Jewish War and The Jewish Antiquities, Josephus composed The Life and Against Apion, a polemic defending the Jewish faith against pagan critics. The Life is not a full autobiography, as it deals almost exclusively with Josephus’ activities as a commanding officer in Galilee in AD 66/67.

When Josephus’ several works are compared, there are discrepancies to be found in his recounting of certain events. In The Jewish War, for example, Josephus represents himself as having been the military commander of Galilee from the outset; in The Life the young priest of 29 is sent together with two other priests on a mission to dissuade the insurgents and to endeavour to maintain the peace. Later in this work, however, Josephus does mention that he held supreme command. A distinguished Josephus scholar, H. St John Thackeray, has described Josephus as an egoist, a ‘self interested time-server and flatterer of his Roman patrons’; he was no Thucidides who recorded the ‘tragedy of his nation with strict and sober impartiality’.² Thackeray maintained that ‘Josephus was commissioned by the conquerors to write the official history of the war for propagandist purposes. It was a manifesto, intended as a warning to the East of the futility of further opposition and to allay the after-war thirst for revenge, which ultimately found vent in the fierce outbreaks [of Jewish revolt] under Trajan and

Hadrian.’³ For all of his criticisms, however, Thackeray acknowledges, in the end, that ‘the narrative of our author [i.e., The Jewish War] in its main outlines must be accepted as trustworthy’.⁴

Other Josephus’ specialists agree that

as a historian, Josephus aimed at accuracy … He knew the importance of evidence in support of a statement, as his list of [Roman] decrees shows (Antiq. 14:185 ff.)… He is the main authority for the Roman period of Jewish history up to AD 70, and a very creditable one. Without Josephus’ works, we should be very doubtful about the siege of Jerusalem, and our knowledge of the rise of the Herods would have to be pieced together from coins and incidental references … To appreciate the value of Josephus’ works, we have to imagine ourselves without them’.⁵

In Against Apion Josephus provides us with a full and systematic exposition of the nature of the Jewish faith in the first century. Thackeray has called this work a ‘fine apology’ for Judaism.⁶ But as F.J. Foakes Jackson has observed, ‘one reason why Josephus is of so much interest to us in this respect is because we have so little contemporary authority for the Judaism of the first century of the Christian era, the [other] Jewish writers on the subject mostly belonging to a later age’.⁷ In sum, although Josephus in Against Apion is explaining Judaism to pagans, there is no good reason to doubt the accuracy of his explanation. For it is confirmed, as we shall see, by two other major sources, the New Testament and the Mishnah. We need to remind ourselves that the New Testament is at least in part a Jewish book, in that large portions of it were written by Jewish writers who, despite their new Christian faith, present a picture of the central core of first century Judaism which is entirely compatible with that of Josephus. Besides Josephus and the New Testament, a third source needs to be taken into account, namely the Mishnah,⁸ composed c.AD 200. Although the Mishnah and the other parts of the Talmud were composed much later than the period under consideration, they do contain references to first century teachers, events, beliefs and practices. Used with care, therefore, this source can also be illuminating for our purposes.

From Against Apion we gain a rather clear picture of the Law, the temple, the sabbath and other central institutions of Judaism. Apion was a grammarian who wrote, among other things, an Egyptian history containing harsh invective against the Jews. Among all the pagan opponents of the Jews, this Apion stood out for the depth of his hatred and the lengths to which he went in fabricating falsehoods concerning the Jewish faith. He was therefore treated with a special bitterness and contempt by Josephus who refuted each of his false accusations. All in all, Josephus’ polemic gives us a good insight into the fundamentals of first century Judaism, a summary of which follows.

The Jews have always prided themselves on the education of their children; and they believe that the most essential task in life is to observe the laws and pious practices which they have inherited (Ag. Ap. I: 58–63). This has been true not only in Palestine but in the Diaspora as well. Apion himself attested to this by taking the Jews to task for not worshipping the same gods as the Alexandrians. He was surprised ‘at the allegiance to their original religious laws of a people who came to Alexandria from another country’ (II:65–7). In accusing the Jews of sedition for not erecting statues to the Roman emperors, Apion likewise confirmed that the Jews residing in Egypt made no images whatsoever. As for the Palestinian Jews, the calamities to which their Holy City was subjected are well known; yet when the successive conquerors occupied the temple, they found nothing but that which was prescribed by the Torah. Anyone who has ever seen our temple, wrote Josephus,

is aware of the general design of the building, and the inviolable barriers which preserved its sanctity. It had four surrounding courts, each with its statutory restrictions. The outer court was open to all, foreigners included; women during their impurity were alone refused admission. To the second court all Jews were admitted and, when uncontaminated by any defilement, their wives; to the third, male Jews, if clean and purified; to the fourth the priests robed in their priestly vestments. The sanctuary was entered only by the high priests, clad in the raiment peculiar to themselves. So careful is the provision for all the details of the service, that the priests’ entry is timed to certain hours. Their duty was to enter in the morning, when the temple was opened, and to offer the customary sacrifices, and again at midday, until the temple was closed … No vessel whatever might be carried into the temple [cf. Mark 11:16], the only objects in which were an altar, a table, a censer, and a lampstand, all mentioned in the Law [i.e., the Torah]. There was nothing more; no unmentionable mysteries took place, no repast was served within the building … there are four priestly tribes [cf. Exra 2:36; Neh. 7:39], each comprising upwards of five thousand members, [and] these officiate by rotation for a fixed period of days; when the term of one party ends, others come to offer the sacrifices in their place, and assembling at midday in the temple, take over from the outgoing ministers the keys of the building and all its vessels, duly numbered. Nothing of the nature of food or drink is brought within the temple; objects of this kind may not even be offered on the altar, save those which are prepared for the sacrifices. (Ag. Ap. II:103–9)

In tracing the Jewish law to Moses, Josephus observes that whereas some peoples had entrusted the supreme political power to monarchies, others to oligarchies and still others to the masses, Moses eschewed all these forms of polity and gave his construction the form of a ‘theocracy’,⁹ placing all sovereignty and authority in the hands of God. To God

he persuaded all to look, as the author of all blessings, both those which are common to all mankind, and those which they had won for themselves by prayer in the crises of their history. He [Moses] convinced them that no single action, no secret thought, could be hid from Him. He represented Him as one, uncreated [i.e., not born as were the Greek and other pagan gods] and immutable to all eternity; in beauty surpassing all mortal thought, made known to us by His power, although the nature of His real being passes knowledge. (Ag. Ap. II:164–7)

Josephus observes that the wisest of Greeks may have borrowed their conceptions of God from the principles laid down by Moses, a theory that had been propounded earlier by Aristobulus (second century BC) and adopted afterwards by Philo and later writers. Josephus cites Pythagoras, Anaxagoras, Plato, the Stoics and other philosophers, all of whom appear to have held similar views concerning the nature of God. Nevertheless, there is an important difference between even the wisest of the Greek philosophers and the principles imparted by Moses. Whereas the philosophers addressed themselves to the select few, ignoring the masses who retained their own notions, Moses,

by making practice square with precept, not only convinced his own contemporaries, but so firmly implanted this belief concerning God in their descendants to all future generations that it cannot be moved. The cause of his success was that the very nature of his legislation made it far more useful than any other; for he did not make religion a department of virtue, but the various virtues – I mean justice, temperance, fortitude, and mutual harmony in all things between the members of the community – departments of religion. Religion governs all our actions and occupations and speech; none of these things did our lawgiver leave unexamined or indeterminate. (Ag. Ap. II:169–71, italics added)

Furthermore, Moses so combined precept and practice that it was not only unprecendented in his own time, it had yet to be followed by the non-Jewish peoples of Josephus’ time. Moses had taken great care to ensure that there be practical training in morals for all, and that the letter of the law be followed in daily life.

Starting from the very beginning with the food of which we partake from infancy and the private life [or diet] of the home, he left nothing, however insignificant, to the discretion and caprice of the individual. What meats a man should abstain from, and what he may enjoy; with what persons he should associate; what period should be devoted respectively to strenuous labour and to rest – for all this our leader made the Law the standard and rule, that we might live under it as under a father and master, and be guilty of no sin through wilfulness or ignorance.

For ignorance he left no pretext. He appointed the Law to be the most excellent and necessary form of instruction, ordaining not that it should be heard once for all or twice or on several occasions, but that every week men should desert their other occupations and assemble to listen to the Law and to obtain a thorough and accurate knowledge of it… (Ag. Ap. II:173–5).¹⁰

The ‘Law’ in Josephus’ time included, at the very least, the Torah [Pentateuch], the Prophets and the Psalms and, most likely, other components of the Hebrew Scriptures as well. Josephus wants to underscore that in contrast to other cultures in which individuals hardly know their laws, often discovering them only after they have been transgressed, all Jews know their Law. They have internalized the Law because it has been systematically and unceasingly inculcated from early childhood. ‘Internalization of the Law’ is no exaggeration, for ‘should anyone of our nation be questioned about the laws, he would repeat them all more readily than his own name. The result, then, of our thorough grounding in the laws from the first dawn of intelligence is that we have them, as it were, engraven on our souls. A transgressor is a rarity; evasion of punishment by excuses an impossibility’ (Ag. Ap. II:178).

It is a fact, Josephus maintained, that the unity of religious belief in Judaism is a unique phenomenon. His point is not that there was no diversity in Judaism, for he himself had had first-hand experience with the religious ‘parties’ of his time. His point is rather that the diversity necessarily remained within the boundaries of the unified world-view of ethical monotheism. ‘Among us alone’, wrote Josephus,

will be heard no contradictory statements about God, such as are common among other nations, not only on the lips of ordinary individuals under the impulse of some passing mood, but even boldly propounded by philosophers; some putting forward crushing arguments against the very existence of God [sceptics such as Pyrrhon and his disciple Timon], others depriving Him of His providential care for mankind [e.g., the Epicureans]. Among us alone will be seen no difference in the conduct of our lives. With us all act alike, all profess the same doctrine about God, one which is in harmony with our Law and affirms that all things are under His eye. Even our women folk and dependents would tell you that piety must be the motive of all our occupations in life. (Ag. Ap. II:179–81)

In Judaism there is the fundamental conviction that the Law was instituted in accordance with the will of God. The theocratic constitution cannot be improved, Josephus avers, for ‘Could there be a finer or more equitable polity than one which sets God at the head of the universe, which assigns the administration of its highest affairs to the whole body of priests, and entrusts to the supreme high-priest the direction of the other priests?’ (Ag. Ap. II: 184).

The first and most fundamental principle of the theocracy is that the universe is in God’s hands and that ‘He is the beginning, the middle, and the end of all things’ (II:190). There is but one temple for the one God and all of one’s prayers are for the welfare of the entire community, not merely for ourselves; ‘for we are born for fellowship, and he who sets its claims above his private interests is especially acceptable to God’ (II: 193–7). As for the marriage laws of Judaism, the ‘Law recognizes no sexual connections, except the natural union of man and wife … The husband must have union with his wife alone; it is impious to assault the wife of another. For anyone guilty of this crime the penalty of death is inexorable, whether he violates a virgin betrothed to another or seduces a married woman’ (II:201). The Law enjoins that all the offspring should be brought up, and that they should learn to ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• PART I Judaism in the Time of Jesus
• PART II Jesus of Nazareth: Charismatic Religious Virtuoso
• PART III The Road to Golgotha
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index