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Jesus and Parallel Jewish and Greco-Roman Figures

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Jesus and Parallel Jewish and Greco-Roman Figures JESUS AND PARALLEL JEWISH AND GRECO-ROMAN FIGURES Craig S. Keener Examining gures compared with Jesus either in antiquity or today allows us to highlight both ways that Jesus t expectations of his culture and ways that he diverged from them. Clearly Jesus is intelligible as a real historical gure in a rst-century milieu. Each historical gure is distinctive in some respects; by noting analogies and diferences, we can better understand how Jesus ful lled or challenged his contemporaries’ expectations for him. Some proposed analogies (such as Jewish sign prophets) are useful for historical comparison; some others (such as rising deities) are too distant to prove very helpful for contemporary Jesus research. Because almost no one questions that Jesus was a sage with disciples, we will not expend space arguing that point. Because Hellenism inuenced Judaism even in Galilee, Hellenistic sages broaden our context for Jesus, but because he was Jewish and Galilean one must look more particularly at Jewish sources for Jesus. Most relevant to the point of this essay’s assignment are Jewish contexts for miracle workers, prophets, messiahs, and exalted gures.1 1. Miracle Workers and Prophets 1.1. Jesus as Healer and Exorcist All relevant ancient sources present Jesus or early followers as miracle- workers: “Q” (the hypothetical source behind Matthew and Luke), Mark, special material in Matthew and Luke, John, Acts, the epistles, and Reve- lation.2 Even unsympathetic rabbis and the pagan critic Celsus depict Jesus as a wonder-worker, albeit attributing his success to sorcery.3 In Ant. 18.63, 1 I have addressed much of this material in diferent form in my The Historical Jesus of the Gospels (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), chs. 17–19; and idem, Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts (2 vols.; Grand Rapids: Baker, 2011), chs. 1–3. 2 See also Gerd Theissen and Annette Merz, The Historical Jesus: A Comprehensive Guide (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998), 297–301. 3 Cf. e.g. b. Sanh. 107b; Edwin M. Yamauchi, “Magic or Miracle? Diseases, Demons and 86 craig s. keener Josephus calls Jesus a “wise man,” who also worked “startling deeds,” a term by which Josephus also depicts the miracles worked by the prophet Elisha (Ant. 9.182).4 This unanimity contrasts starkly with the silence about mira- cles involving respected prophetic gures like John the Baptist in all ancient sources. Most scholars today therefore recognize that Jesus’ contemporaries viewed him as a miracle-worker.5 How did Jesus compare with contempo- rary miracle workers? 1.2. Gentile Wonder-Workers Pagan miracle claims mostly fall into several classes: direct intervention by deities; cures at healing shrines; stories about a distant, mythical era; secre- tive magic; and most relevantly, occasional reports of the traveling sage- healer, though these do not ourish widely till the third century (perhaps partly a response to the growing Christian movement’s accounts). Even for the nal category, the most pervasive “parallel” with Jesus is that both kinds of accounts involve what we might term “supernatural” activity through human agents. Petitioners in all societies seek health, often through super- human means; anthropological studies regarding shamans illustrate that such gures appear in various cultures without any necessary connecting inuence. Exorcisms,” in David Wenham and Craig Blomberg, eds., The Miracles of Jesus (vol. 6 in Gospel Perspectives; She eld: JSOT Press, 1986), 89–183 (90–91); John Granger Cook, The Interpretation of the New Testament in Greco-Roman Paganism (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2002; Tübingen: Mohr, 2000), 36–39; during Jesus’ ministry, E.P. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985), 166. 4 For authenticity, see Geza Vermes, “The Jesus Notice of Josephus Re-Examined,” JJS 38 (1; 1987): 1–10; idem, Jesus the Jew: A Historian’s Reading of the Gospels (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1973), 79; see also John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus. Vol 2: Mentor, Message, and Miracles (New York: Doubleday, 1994), 621; Theissen and Merz, Historical Jesus, 74. 5 For summaries of this consensus, see Barry L. Blackburn, “The Miracles of Jesus,” in Bruce Chilton and Craig A. Evans, eds., Studying the Historical Jesus: Evaluations of the State of Current Research (NTTS 19; Leiden: Brill, 1994), 353–394, here 362; Eric Eve, The Jewish Context of Jesus’ Miracles (JSNTSup 231; London: She eld Academic Press, 2002), 16–17; for examples, see Otto Betz, What Do We Know About Jesus? (London: SCM, 1968), 58–60; Sanders, Jesus and Judaism, 11; Meier, Mentor, 678–772; Raymond E. Brown, The Death of the Messiah: From Gethsemane to Grave. A Commentary on the Passion Narratives in the Four Gospels (2 vols.; New York: Doubleday, 1994), 143–144; David Flusser, “Jesus, His Ancestry, and the Commandment of Love,” in James H. Charlesworth, ed., Jesus’ Jewishness: Exploring the Place of Jesus within Early Judaism (New York: American Interfaith Institute, Crossroad Publishing, 1991), 153–176 (154)..
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