A Marginal Jew V. 1 ( Anchor Bible Reference Library)
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RETHINKING THE HISTORICAL JESUS A Marginal Jew \ O I II 't I I THE ROOTS Of THE |)K(IKI.KM AM) THE |»ERSON JOHN P. MEIER A MARGINAL JEW The Anchor Bible Reference Library is designed to be a third major component of the Anchor Bible group, which includes the Anchor Bible commentaries on the books of the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the Apocrypha, and the Anchor Bible Dictionary. While the An¬ chor Bible commentaries and the Anchor Bible Dictionary are structur¬ ally defined by their subject matter, the Anchor Bible Reference Library will serve as a supplement on the cutting edge of the most recent schol¬ arship. The new series will be open-ended; its scope and reach are noth¬ ing less than the biblical world in its totality, and its methods and tech¬ niques the most up-to-date available or devisable. Separate volumes will deal with one or more of the following topics relating to the Bible: anthropology, archaeology, ecology, economy, geography, history, lan¬ guages and literatures, philosophy, religion(s), theology. As with the Anchor Bible commentaries and the Anchor Bible Dic¬ tionary, the philosophy underlying the Anchor Bible Reference Library finds expression in the following: the approach is scholarly, the perspec¬ tive is balanced and fair-minded, the methods are scientific, and the goal is to inform and enlighten. Contributors are chosen on the basis of their scholarly skills and achievements, and they come from a variety of reli¬ gious backgrounds and communities. The books in the Anchor Bible Reference Library are intended for the broadest possible readership, ranging from world-class scholars, whose qualifications match those of the authors, to general readers, who may not have special training or skill in studying the Bible but are as enthusiastic as any dedicated pro¬ fessional in expanding their knowledge of the Bible and its world. David Noel Freedman GENERAL EDITOR THE ANCHOR BIBLE REFERENCE LIBRARY A MARGINAL JEW RETHINKING THE HISTORICAL JESUS Volume One: THE ROOTS OF THE PROBLEM AND THE PERSON John P. Meier A B R L Doubleday NEW YORK LONDON TORONTO SYDNEY AUCKLAND The Anchor Bible Reference Library PUBLISHED BY DOUBLEDAY a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. 1540 Broadway, New York, New York 10036 The Anchor Bible Reference Library, Doubleday, and the portrayal of an anchor with the letters ABRL are trademarks of Doubleday, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. Excerpts from The Gnostic Scriptures by Bentley Layton, copyright © 1987 by Bentley Layton, reprinted by permission of Doubleday, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. Book design by Patrice Fodero Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Meier, John P. A marginal Jew : rethinking the historical Jesus / John P. Meier. — 1st ed. p. cm. — (The Anchor Bible reference library) Includes bibliographical references and index. Contents: v. 1. Origins of the problem and the person ISBN 0-385-26425-9 (v. 1) : $25.00 1. Jesus Christ—Historicity. 2. Jesus Christ—Jewishness. I. Title. II. Series. BT303.2.M465 1991 232.9—dc20 91-10538 CIP Imprimatur — New York, June 25, 1991 — The Most Rev. Patrick J. Sheridan, V.G. Copyright © 1991 by John P. Meier All Rights Reserved Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 November 1991 Elizabeth O’Reilly Meier ksd' "D ‘rrrrwK Prov 31:10 Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 Part One Roots of the Problem Chapter 1 Basic Concepts: The Real Jesus and the Historical Jesus Chapter 2 Sources: The Canonical Books of the New Testament Chapter 3 Sources: Josephus 56 Chapter 4 Sources: Other Pagan and Jewish Writings 89 Chapter 5 Sources: The Agrapba and the Apocryphal Gospels viii CONTENTS Chapter 6 Criteria: How Do We Decide What Comes from Jesus? Chapter 7 Conclusion to Part One: Why Bother? 196 Part Two Roots of the Person Chapter 8 In the Beginning . The Origins of Jesus of Nazareth Chapter 9 In the Interim . Part I: Language, Education, and Socioeconomic Status 253 Chapter 10 In the Interim . Part II: Family, Marital Status, and Status as a Layman 316 Chapter 11 “In the Fifteenth Year” ... A Chronology of Jesus’ Life Map of Palestine in the time of Jesus 434 Map of The Galilee of Jesus’ Ministry 435 Chart of the Family of Herod the Great 436 Chart of the Regnal Years of the Roman Principes (Emperors) 437 List of Abbreviations 439 Index of Scripture Author Index Index of Subjects Acknowledgments Many people have helped me complete the first volume of this work; only a few can be mentioned here. Various colleagues at the Catholic University of America were kind enough to read portions of the manu¬ script; chief among them are Professors John P. Galvin, Francis T. Gignac, William P. Loewe, Frank J. Matera, and Carl J. Peter. I have also been blessed by the generous assistance of scholars at other institu¬ tions: Professors Myles M. Bourke of Fordham University, N.Y., Harold W. Attridge and John J. Collins of the University of Notre Dame, John P. Reumann of Lutheran Theological Seminary, and Raymond E. Brown, Professor Emeritus of Union Theological Seminary, N.Y. I wish to extend a special word of recognition to Professors Louis H. Feldman of Yeshiva University, N.Y., and Shaye J. D. Cohen of Jewish Theological Seminary, N.Y., for their wise counsel on my treatment of Josephus. No amount of thanks could repay my debt to Professor David Noel Freedman, the editor of the Anchor Bible series, for his invaluable suggestions and corrections along every step of my path. I also wish to thank the staff members of the libraries at the Catholic University of America, the Woodstock Theological Library at George¬ town University, the Berkeley Theological Union, the Dominican House of Studies, Washington, D.C., Union Theological Seminary, N.Y., St. Joseph’s Seminary, Yonkers, N.Y., and Harvard Divinity School. Finally, I owe a word of gratitude to Teresa D’Orsogna, Thomas Cahill, and Michael Iannazzi, my editors at Doubleday, for their pa- X ACKNOWLEDGMENTS tience and understanding, and to Professors Christopher T. Begg and Kathleen Weber for their help in proofreading and indexing. Portions of Chapters 1 and 7 appeared as “The Historical Jesus: Re¬ thinking Some Concepts,” TS 51 (1990) 3-24; portions of Chapter 3 ap¬ peared as “Jesus in Josephus: A Modest Proposal,” CBQ 52 (1990) 76-103. I am grateful to both journals for permission to use the material in this book. A MARGINAL JEW Introduction 1. THE NATURE AND ORIGIN OF THIS BOOK This book grapples with one of the greatest puzzles of modern religious scholarship, the historical Jesus. As I will explain at length in Chapter 1, by the “historical Jesus” I mean the Jesus whom we can recover, recap¬ ture, or reconstruct by using the scientific tools of modern historical research. Granted the fragmentary state of our sources and the often indirect nature of the arguments we must use, this “historical Jesus” will always remain a scientific construct, a theoretical abstraction that does not and cannot coincide with the full reality of Jesus of Nazareth as he actually lived and worked in Palestine during the 1st century of our era. Properly understood, such an approach seeks neither to prove any faith stance nor to attack it. My method follows a simple rule: it prescinds from what Christian faith or later Church teaching says about Jesus, without either affirming or denying such claims. To explain to my academic colleagues what I propose to do in this book, I often use the fantasy of the “unpapal conclave.” Suppose that a Catholic, a Protestant, a Jew, and an agnostic—all honest historians cog¬ nizant of lst-century religious movements—were locked up in the bow¬ els of the Harvard Divinity School library, put on a spartan diet, and not allowed to emerge until they had hammered out a consensus docu¬ ment on who Jesus of Nazareth was and what he intended in his own time and place. An essential requirement of this document would be that it be based on purely historical sources and arguments. The result¬ ing unreligious “formula of concord” would suffer from all the ills en¬ demic to ecumenical statements drawn up by committees. At times am¬ biguous language would be carefully chosen to paper over differences, at times points of divergence on which no agreement could be reached 2 INTRODUCTION would have to be openly admitted. Probably this white paper on Jesus would reflect fully the opinions of no one member of the famished con¬ clave. Certainly it would not contain affirmations that the Catholic or Protestant member would firmly hold by faith. The basic requirement that the consensus document be open to verification by any and all per¬ sons using the means of modern historical research would produce a narrow focus, a fragmentary vision, perhaps even distortions. Nevertheless, something would be gained. We would have a rough draft of what that will-o’-the-wisp, “all reasonable people,” could say about the historical Jesus. The document could serve as common ground, a starting point for dialogue between Christians and Jews, be¬ tween various Christian confessions, and between believers and nonbe¬ lievers, as well as an invitation to further research by both historians and theologians. Such a limited consensus statement, which does not claim to act as a substitute for the Christ of faith, is the modest goal of the present work. This book on the Jesus of history has a long history of its own. In 1984 I was asked by Professor Raymond E. Brown of Union Theological Seminary in New York to write an article on the Jesus of history for the new edition of the Jerome Biblical Commentary, which was published in 1990.1 It was perhaps symptomatic of the state of American Catholic biblical studies in the sixties that no extended treatment of the historical Jesus was included in the original edition of the Jerome Biblical Commen¬ tary, published in 1968.2 Hence I had to start from scratch; the ensuing research proved to be much more intriguing and engaging than I had first expected.