An Appraisal of Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev’S Jesus Christ : His Life and Teaching , Vol

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An Appraisal of Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev’s Jesus Christ : His Life and Teaching , Vol. 1, The Beginning of the Gospel

John Fotopoulos

Journal of Orthodox Christian Studies, Volume 3, Number 1, 2020, pp. 89-98 (Review)

Published by Johns Hopkins University Press DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/joc.2020.0005

For additional information about this article https://muse.jhu.edu/article/757665

[ This content has been declared free to read by the pubisher during the COVID-19 pandemic. ] ESSAY REVIEW

An Appraisal of Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev’s Jesus Christ: His Life and Teaching, Vol. 1, The Beginning of the Gospel

JOHN FOTOPOULOS

his book is the first in a series of volumes in English translation of the Rus- sian language Начало Евангелия (Nachalo Evangeliia), written by Metro- politan Hilarion Alfeyev, chairman of the Department of External Relations Tof the Moscow Patriarchate. Alfeyev states that this series is not a conventional biography, while also claiming that the series has “a biographical character since its central theme is the human story of Christ” (xi, emphasis Alfeyev’s). Alfeyev explains that his aim is “to reproduce the living image of Jesus on the basis of the sources available and to present his teaching as it is reflected in the Gospels” (xii). He adds that it is important for him to “prove to the reader that Jesus was precisely the One whom the Church accepts him to be” (xiv), while also stating that he is “interested primarily in the human story of the Son of God, his earthly biography, which begins with his birth” (xv). Alfeyev pledges that his study of the Gospels will seek out above all “that which relates directly” to Jesus’s “person, character, biography, and teaching” (xiii). Alfeyev opens the present book with an eight-page foreword and then divides the volume into eight chapters. Chapters 1–2 (In Search of the “Historical Jesus”; The Sources) primarily address Alfeyev’s approach to the Gospels and his views on gospel composition. Chapters 3–8 (The Son of Man; The Son of God; The Prophet of Naza- reth of Galilee; Jesus and the Disciples; Jesus and His Opponents: The Beginning of the Conflict; Jesus: His Way of Life and Character Traits) survey aspects of Jesus’ life as understood by Alfeyev’s particular reading of the Gospels.

Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev, Jesus Christ: His Life and Teaching, vol. 1, The Beginning of the Gos- pel (Yonkers, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2018), 578 pp. ISBN: 978-0-88141-608-4.

Alfeyev states that his series of books is written primarily for: [a] “non-believ- ers, those who doubt and who are hesitant,” while also giving answers to “those who believe that Jesus never even existed”; [b] “those who admit that Jesus existed, but do not believe that he is God”; and [c] those who may identify as Christians “but relate to the Gospel narratives skeptically or view the Gospels through the prism of the criticism to which it [sic] was subjected in the works of Western specialists on the New Testament in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries” (xii–xiii). Although Alfeyev (a specialist on St. Symeon the New Theologian [AD 949– 1022]) does occasionally give a nod to historical-critical scholarship on the New Testament (47), he regularly rejects the methods and positions held by the majority of New Testament scholars. Alfeyev promises to stand “firmly on the soil of the Gospel text as the fundamental source of reliable information on Jesus” (49), but a significant weakness of the book is that Alfeyev generally approaches Jesus and the four Gospels using an uncritical hermeneutic that is prone to harmonizing and historicizing disparate gospel material. Consequently, many of the historical and exe- getical arguments that Alfeyev makes are unconvincing, while other such arguments exhibit imaginative conjecture rather than insightful New Testament interpretation. Given Alfeyev’s context in Russia, where the post-Soviet vestiges of atheism are still present, one might argue that Alfeyev’s intended readers and aims may be pastorally significant. But since Alfeyev’s context is unique to the Russian situation and does not correspond to any English-language audience, it is difficult to see how this translation serves as much more than an attempt to countermand the very methods and findings of contemporary New Testament scholarship. Alfeyev asserts the four Gospels’ “essential similarity” and argues that the Gos- pels’ contradictions actually support “the reality of the events described,” whereas if the Gospels were a “hoax” the four evangelists “would certainly have made sure to check their information with each other” (13). Indeed, Alfeyev claims that the Gospels’ “differences bear witness to the fact that there was no collusion between the evangelists” (13). Alfeyev supports his position by approvingly quoting Patriarch Kirill of Moscow who compares the four evangelists to several people who witness a road accident and thus have similarities and differences in the evidence that they report (13–14). However, such a four-witnesses-to-a-traffic-accident understanding of the Gospels’ composition promoted by Alfeyev does not stand up to close scru- tiny. Such an approach disregards the evangelists’ use of oral and written sources for the Gospels’ composition, the Gospels’ literary genres, and the evangelists’ composition of their Gospels in ways that address the needs of their particular church communities. Although Alfeyev does briefly raise the issue of the Gospels’ theological function as well as the issues of narrative and interpretation within the Gos- pels (14–20), his discussion is muddled and the entire volume does not sufficiently appreciate the narrative arrangement and presentation of material within each gospel (referred to by narrative critics as “the story as discoursed”). Rather, in general Alfeyev attempts to explain the great amount of agreement (including verbatim agreement) between the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) as resulting JOHN FOTOPOULOS / An APPR AISAL of Alfeyev’s Jesus Christ: His Life and Teaching 91 from eyewitness testimony and ensuing oral traditions, while also advocating for such an explanation as the source of material in the Gospel of John (19–20). A basic obstacle to such an explanation is that there are occurrences in the Gospels that no others are recorded as witnessing, such as when the veil of the Temple (inside Jeru- salem) was torn in two upon Jesus’ death (outside Jerusalem), or the details of Jesus’ prayer to the Father before his arrest while the disciples were asleep and thus could not have heard his words—details that the evangelists never narrate Jesus sharing with anyone. One particular occurrence in the Gospels that no others witnessed, Jesus’s forty-day period of temptation in the wilderness, and the devil’s subsequent dialogue with Jesus, is explained by Alfeyev by saying he is prompted “to perceive this story not as a historical account, but as a portrayal of a singular spiritual experience that Jesus had in the wilderness and which was a consequence of his extended fast” (300). Although Alfeyev does not understand this as a historical account, he does see the story as a historical tradition coming directly from Jesus himself “who related this experience to the disciples” (300). Even so, Alfeyev does not adequately consider the compositional implications of the verbatim agreement of Matthew and Luke’s temptation accounts, the significant differences between their accounts and Mark’s temptation account, versus the presentation of Jesus in John’s Gospel where there is no temptation in the wilderness and Jesus’s unity with God makes temptation irrelevant—if not unthinkable—for Jesus. Alfeyev does concede that there were no eyewitness disciples that could have “documented” the events recorded in the birth narratives of Matthew 1–2 and Luke 1–2 (19–20), but he goes on to “suggest that the source for the opening chapters of Luke’s Gospel is Jesus’s mother, Mary, while the information contained in the opening chapters of Matthew’s Gospel can be attributed to Joseph” (20). Such an explanation does not sufficiently take into account many of the irreconcilable details in Matthew’s and Luke’s birth narratives or the narrative function of each birth account within its respective gospel. To be fair, Alfeyev does state that the two birth narratives cannot be completely harmonized (235) and that the cause of differences in the narratives “is primarily how each of the evangelists understands the events” from a theological perspective (236). However, Alfeyev later asserts (259–65) that differences in the birth narratives “testify to the presence of two witnesses, upon whose evidence the two parallel stories are based” (264), i.e., Mary and Joseph. Alfeyev even goes so far as to claim that the “thoughts of Joseph (Mt. 1.20),” as well as Joseph’s dreams, testify “that the most credible source of information for Matthew is Joseph,” and that Joseph had given details of Jesus’ birth to Jesus’ brothers (such as James the brother of the Lord) who subsequently conveyed those details to Matthew (261). Alfeyev supports this conjecture by referring the reader to the apocryphal Protevangelium of James, containing traditions surrounding Jesus’s birth that Alfeyev posits “could in some parts go back to the brother of the Lord, and through him to Joseph” (262). Alfeyev states, “In spite of its openly apocryphal character, the work is valuable in that it is the first attempt at synchronizing the two divergent Gospel accounts of Jesus’s birth” (262). This statement is illuminating because it helps to further show Alfeyev’s 92 JOURNAL OF ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN STUDIES general approach to the four canonical Gospels that regularly seeks to harmonize differences between the Gospels rather than allowing the evangelists to tell the story of Jesus in their own way, with their own available traditions, with their own theological motifs, and in order to address the needs of their respective churches. Indeed, Alfeyev generally approaches the four Gospels as positivist history, i.e., that the Gos- pels depict what an objective person would have seen or heard had she or he been present during the events recorded. In order for Alfeyev’s general approach to seem viable he must regularly attempt to harmonize disparate material appearing in the four Gospels—a task that Alfeyev often conveys openly as his aim. In an effort to reinforce his harmonizing reading of the Gospels, Alfeyev completely rejects the Two Source hypothesis (61–65)—the most widely accepted scholarly theory regarding the composition of the Synoptic Gospels—also known as the Two Source theory, Two Document hypothesis, or today as the Four Source The- ory. This scholarly hypothesis contends that Mark is the first gospel that was written and that the authors of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke each independently used Mark’s Gospel as their primary source. The Two Source hypothesis also argues that Matthew and Luke each independently used a second written source which was a collection of Jesus’s sayings in Greek, referred to by scholars as Q (from the Ger- man word Quelle, “source”), thereby explaining the verbatim agreement in sayings of Jesus found only in those two Gospels. Scholars understand Q to have been a written source independently used by Matthew and Luke because Jesus’s sayings appear verbatim in Greek, whereas Jesus taught orally in Aramaic during his public ministry. New Testament scholars adhering to the Two Source hypothesis as it is understood today also generally hold that Matthew and Luke each additionally used traditions that were unique to their respective Gospels. Matthew’s unique material is referred to as special M (SpM) and Luke’s unique material is referred to as special L (SpL). The majority of New Testament scholars read the Synoptic Gospels from the perspective of the Two Source hypothesis and they do so because this theory of gospel composition, while not without any difficulties, solves more problems than it causes regarding the relationship between the Synoptics. Not only does Alfeyev reject the Two Source hypothesis, he refuses to accept that the Gospels were written “for the church communities to which the evangelists belonged” (73). Alfeyev repeatedly disparages such positions held by critical New Testament exegetes and refers to those positions as scholarly “myths” (64, 71–76), “fairy tales” (78), and “hypotheses that have become dogma” (77). However, in his rejection of the scholarly position that each gospel was written for its own respective church community, Alfeyev seems to be unaware that it was the church fathers who first understood each gospel as having been composed for its respective church while the fathers also affirmed that each gospel expresses truths having universal sig- nificance (as demonstrated by Margaret M. Mitchell, “Patristic Counter-Evidence to the Claim that the Gospels Were Written for All Christians” NTS 51 [2005]: 36–79). Moreover, a plethora of Greek gospel manuscripts contain gospel prologues that convey ancient traditions about the evangelists’ composition of the Gospels for particular church communities in particular historical contexts. JOHN FOTOPOULOS / An APPR AISAL of Alfeyev’s Jesus Christ: His Life and Teaching 93

Alfeyev’s denunciation of the Two Source hypothesis seeks support in the statistical analysis of Eta Linnemann (whose theory of gospel composition and statistical analysis has been strongly criticized by a number of New Testament scholars), while Alfeyev goes so far as to reject any kind of “literary interdependence between the three Synoptic Gospels” (64). In order to support his case, Alfeyev returns to and develops an argument that he uses earlier in his book. He states: “we can conduct a simple experiment: ask three people who do not know each other to describe an event which they witnessed—for example, a road accident—write down their stories, and then compare the three written texts. There will undoubtedly be many differences, as each will describe the event in his own way. However, there will be material that has much in common: a similar subject, identical terminology (‘road,’ ‘car,’ ‘driver,’ ‘crash,’ etc.) and similar word combinations” (65). Alfeyev’s ideas about eyewitness testimony attempt to gain further traction from his earlier discussion (cf. 13–20) by advocating oral traditions and word-for-word memorization (65–75) to explain the Synoptic Gospels’ verbatim agreement, common order of material, and common narrative chronology. The road accident example used by Alfeyev to explain his theory of gospel composition is unsatisfactory for many reasons, especially because two of the four evangelists identified in traditional attestations of gospel authorship, Mark and Luke, are not names identified with any of Jesus’s twelve disciples—although Alfeyev submits that Mark and Luke may have been members of the seventy disciples and thus could have been eyewitnesses to some of the events in their Gospels (56). Alfe- yev’s proposal about Mark and Luke possibly being members of the seventy disciples and thus providing at least some eyewitness testimony about Jesus is clearly contra- dicted by the evidence. The earliest extant statement about the composition of Mark’s Gospel is attributed to Papias, Bishop of Hierapolis. Papias states that Mark “had neither heard the Lord, nor had he followed him” (Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 3.39.15), whereas Luke explains in his prologue that he had not been an eyewitness to Jesus (Luke 1:1–4). Moreover, in first-century Galilee and Judea, Jesus’s teachings were spoken by him in Aramaic, but in the Gospels those teachings are conveyed in Greek and they frequently appear word-for-word in two or three of the Synoptic Gospels. Similarly, narrative accounts of Jesus’s travels and marvelous deeds are oftentimes conveyed verbatim by the Synoptic Gospels. It strains credulity for Alfeyev to assert that the significant amount of Jesus’s teachings shared by the Synoptics (frequently verbatim) is due to two or three eyewitnesses who could have memorized Jesus’s teachings in Aramaic and then independently translated them into Greek, often in the same way. It is even more dubious to assert that shared narratives in the three Synoptic Gospels (also frequently verbatim) are the result of three eyewitnesses who remem- bered events from the life of Jesus and then independently narrated them with identical wording. Finally, identical parenthetical material that appears in the Synoptics demonstrates some kind of literary interdependence between them (e.g., “let the reader understand,” Matt 24:15/Mark 13:14). Alfeyev’s attempt to explain the Synop- tic Gospels’ verbatim agreement, common order of material, and common narrative chronology by taking recourse to eyewitness accounts, oral traditions, and word- for-word memorization is generally unpersuasive. To be sure, most New Testament 94 JOURNAL OF ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN STUDIES scholars agree that there was an early period of oral teaching and preaching where many fundamental components of the Jesus tradition circulated among his early followers. However, studies of “oral literature” done in the social sciences demonstrate that there is usually a great deal of fluidity in the transmission of oral traditions and that oral traditions are rarely recalled verbatim without the use of written texts. Rather, it is the “gist” or the “story” that is important when oral traditions are conveyed (Albert B. Lord, The Singer of Tales, 2d ed. [Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univer- sity Press, 2000], 4–6, 26–30; Jocelyn Penny Small, Wax Tablets of the Mind: Cognitive Studies of Memory and Literacy in Classical Antiquity [New York: Routledge, 1997], 7, 192). Alfeyev does concede at one point that it is plausible that the evangelists used both oral and written traditions (80), but his theory of gospel composition clearly puts greatest emphasis on eyewitnesses and oral traditions as playing the predom- inant role in the writing of the Gospels. Because Alfeyev holds that eyewitnesses to Jesus’ public ministry are primarily responsible for the composition of the Gospels and because Alfeyev rejects any literary interdependence between the Gospels, he advocates dates for the Gospels’ composition that are considerably earlier than those held by the consensus of New Testament scholars. Alfeyev dates the Synoptic Gos- pels to the AD 50s or at latest AD 60s (83). For the Gospel of John, Alfeyev does give a qualified endorsement of Raymond E. Brown’s hypothesis positing three editions of that gospel. However, Alfeyev is not entirely clear regarding the date he proposes for the composition of John’s Gospel and seems to favor a date prior to AD 70 for the final version of that gospel (129–30)—a date that is twenty to thirty years earlier than Brown posits (The Gospel According to John I–XII, AB 29 (New York: Doubleday, 1966–1970], lxxxvi). Alfeyev’s oversimplified understanding of the development and circulation of Synoptic traditions as well as his rejection of any literary interdependence between the Synoptics makes unpersuasive the early dates that he offers for those gospels’ composition. Moreover, the well-traveled Paul in his undisputed letters composed from AD 50/51 through the early AD 60s conveys no awareness of any written gospel in existence during his lifetime. Alfeyev’s uncritical, harmonizing approach to the four Gospels that generally reads them as positivist history shows itself to be especially problematic in the way that Alfeyev understands the narratives of John the Baptist’s encounter with Jesus, Jesus’s temptation in the wilderness, and Jesus’s calling of the first disciples. In his discussion of those events, Alfeyev states unabashedly that his attempt “to harmonize” the Synoptic Gospels with the Gospel of John “is possible in only one way—if we suppose that the events on the banks of the Jordan that are described in the Gospel of John took place after Jesus had already returned from the wilderness. This means that Jesus did not go to Galilee immediately after leaving the wilderness, but returned first” to John the Baptist (313–14). Here Alfeyev is referring to John 1:19–42, and Alfeyev takes the position that this text describes a second visit of Jesus to John the Baptist—the first visit occurring at Jesus’s baptism and a second visit to John the Baptist occurring after Jesus’s temptation in the wilderness. It should be noted that Alfeyev also seems to articulate his own position imprecisely, stating that Jesus came JOHN FOTOPOULOS / An APPR AISAL of Alfeyev’s Jesus Christ: His Life and Teaching 95

“again to John after the temptation by the devil, and twice, at that,” and a bit further on the same page, “Jesus came to John after his baptism twice, at minimum. . . .” (315). If these statements are to be taken at face value, Alfeyev is saying that Jesus went to John the Baptist at least three times, i.e., one time at baptism and twice after Jesus’s baptism. Despite those statements, in his discussion Alfeyev delineates only two vis- its of Jesus to John the Baptist: one visit at Jesus’s baptism and then a second visit after Jesus’s temptation in the wilderness. However, the Synoptic Gospels convey that after his temptation in the wilderness, Jesus heard that John the Baptist had been arrested, and therefore Jesus went to Galilee to begin preaching—with no room in the Synoptics’ chronologies and nothing said about a second visit (or more) to John the Baptist. Indeed, neither the Synoptic Gospels nor the Gospel of John details more than one visit of Jesus to John the Baptist. Possibly more troubling is that Alfeyev presents John the Baptist’s words about Jesus which Alfeyev extends from John 3:27–36 (over/against many scholars who see the Baptist’s quotation as 3:27–30, whereas 3:31–36 more likely convey the evangelist’s commentary or the words of Jesus) as a literal rendering of John the Baptist’s historical understanding of Jesus. Alfeyev writes, “John here demonstrates not just familiarity with what Jesus did and taught. He almost exactly reproduces the main themes of Jesus’s teachings as they would be reflected in the subsequent chapters of the Gospel of John. . . . Finally—and most importantly—the Forerunner presents the teaching of the oneness of the Son with the Father. Here he is already speaking not as an Old Testament prophet, but as a New Testament theologian” (318). Alfeyev inter- prets John 3:27–36 as a transcript of words spoken by John the Baptist during his lifetime, but such an uncritical, historicizing approach to this text is not compelling because the Baptist lacks a clear understanding of Jesus in the Synoptics (see Mat- thew 11:2–6 and Luke 7:18–23—although Alfeyev explains those texts by arguing that the Baptist was either experiencing human weakness while in prison or it was really the Baptist’s disciples who were in doubt about Jesus [319–20]). Alfeyev’s interpretation of John 3:27–36 does not consider that in composing the Gospel of John, the evangelist utilized various traditions available to him by organizing, editing, and reshaping those traditions to convey his particular theological perspectives and in order to faithfully address the needs of his church—something that all the evangelists did in their own way. Simply stated, the evangelists did not attempt to write their gospels with straightforward, objective factuality. Alfeyev also attempts to harmonize Jesus’s calling of the first disciples in the Gospel of John (where they are depicted as followers of John the Baptist at Bethany, cf. John 1:35–42) versus the Synoptics (where they are depicted as fishermen in Galilee, cf. Mark 1:16–20; Matthew 4:18–22; Luke 5:1–11). Alfeyev asserts that Jesus called his first disciples when they were followers of John the Baptist (Gospel of John), but after Andrew, Peter, and John “spent some days with” Jesus, they “returned to Galilee to their usual occupations” of fishing (380). In this way, Alfeyev contends that the disciples’ call to follow Jesus when they were fishing in Galilee (Synoptic Gospels) was not the first time that those disciples had met Jesus (381). However, 96 JOURNAL OF ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN STUDIES

Raymond E. Brown notes that this kind of harmonization regarding the call of the disciples “goes considerably beyond the evidence of the Gospels themselves. In John, once the disciples are called, they remain Jesus’ disciples without the slightest suggestion of their returning to normal livelihood. Nor in the Synoptic account of the call in Galilee is there any indication that these men have seen Jesus before” (John, 77). It should be added that the Synoptics’ depiction of Jesus’s authoritative call of the disciples in their first encounter with him, and their obedient response to Jesus by immediately leaving their nets and boats to follow him, emphasizes the central theme of discipleship in the Synoptic tradition, a theme that is completely subverted by Alfeyev’s harmonization with the Gospel of John. Even within the Syn- optic Gospels, the accounts of the disciples’ call are slightly different (Mark 1:16–20 and Matthew 4:18–22 versus Luke 5:1–11, in which Andrew is not mentioned, and a story of the disciples’ miraculous catch of fish is added before Peter, James, and John follow Jesus). As a result of those differences, Alfeyev goes so far as to argue that the Synoptic accounts of the disciples’ call describe “two different episodes” (383). Ulti- mately, Alfeyev’s understanding of Mark 1:16–20 and Matthew 4:18–22 versus Luke 5:1–11 versus John 1:19–42 results in the incredible historicizing harmonization whereby Alfeyev asserts that the group of Peter, James, and John encountered and followed Jesus three separate times (384). There are a few additional items of concern to be noted in the book. Alfeyev is generally careful with the nomenclature that he uses in his treatment of Jesus’s opponents, devoting a full chapter to the subject toward the end of the volume (chap. 7, Jesus and His Opponents: The Beginning of the Conflict). Throughout the book, however, Alfeyev does occasionally make references to Jesus’s polemic or conflict “with the Jews” (e.g. 19, 30–31, 52, 195, 465, 520). Alfeyev states that this is a “conflict that arose” during Jesus’s “lifetime” and “did not end after his death” (52). Alfeyev even asserts that Jesus was “intentionally provoking the Jews” (30) and that “Jesus consistently and consciously entered into this conflict” (31). Although toward the end of the book, Alfeyev promises to analyze “the polemics between Jesus and the Jews” as “reflected on the pages of the Gospel of John” (465) in the fifth book of his series, the earlier references to “the Jews” in the present volume would have ben- efitted from different terminology or more nuanced translation in order to avoid any misunderstandings. It seems likely that the Greek term ᾿Ιουδαῖοι (Ioudaioi) is meant to stand behind Alfeyev’s references to “the Jews,” but on at least one occasion Alfeyev discusses a “dispute between Jesus and the Jews” (195) and then quotes Mat- thew 22:41–45 which actually mentions “the Pharisees.” To be sure, the Greek term ᾿Ιουδαῖοι (Ioudaioi) does appear frequently in the Gospel of John, but with a variety of meanings, referring to Jewish religious authorities, to Judean residents, or to Jews in a national sense (Urban C. Von Wahlde, “‘The Jews’ in the Gospel of John: Fifteen Years of Research [1983–1998],” ETL 76.1 [2000]: 30–55). Since Alfeyev claims that he is primarily interested in Jesus’s “earthly biography” (xv), it seems important for Alfeyev to have explained what he means by “the Jews” or to have used different terminology in those cases since it would be misleading for non-specialist readers JOHN FOTOPOULOS / An APPR AISAL of Alfeyev’s Jesus Christ: His Life and Teaching 97 to imagine an intentional conflict between the historical Jesus and “the Jews” in general—most obviously because the followers of Jesus during his public ministry were Jews. The final chapter of the book, chapter 8 (Jesus: His Way of Life and Charac- ter Traits) attempts to create a rudimentary sketch of things like Jesus’s appearance, diet, and character traits. Some of this chapter’s findings go considerably beyond the available historical evidence in that certain themes treated by Alfeyev are in large part historically unknowable for Jesus of Nazareth, beyond generalizations that could be said about almost any human being (e.g., that Jesus had a sense of humor or that Jesus felt emotion). In his discussion of the historical Jesus’s appearance, Alfeyev favorably appeals to the Shroud of Turin for evidence. Alfeyev identifies the Shroud of Turin with the “Image Not Made by Hands” (491–492)—an improbable identifi- cation since the earliest sources discussing the Image of Edessa refer to it as a cloth that obtained only an image of Jesus’s face during his lifetime, rather than it being a burial cloth that obtained an image of Jesus’s entire body after his death. Other topics in this chapter would have been more enlightening if they had engaged early Judaism and contemporary scholarship, such as Alfeyev’s discussion of Jesus’s celi- bacy, which could have benefited by considering the Jewish ascetic practices of the Qumran Essenes and the Therapeutae. The English-language scriptural quotations appearing throughout Alfeyev’s book are from the King James Version (with some adaptations)—a translation originally dating from 1611. The choice of this antiquated English translation of the Bible is highly questionable when so many excellent contemporary English translations of the Scriptures are available (and which also rely on a wider range of ancient manuscripts for their underlying biblical text). The use of the King James Version is even more puzzling considering Alfeyev’s book was originally published in Russian. Apart from the biblical texts, the book itself occasionally presents infelicities in its English translation of the Russian that could have been remedied with more careful copy- editing. Finally, the lack of indices for biblical passages and for subjects is a significant shortcoming of the volume. Overall, Alfeyev’s book promotes a contemporary harmonization of the Gospels in support of his understanding of Jesus’s life that takes readers a step backward by largely disregarding the best methods and insights of critical New Testament scholarship. Alfeyev claims to use a broad range of sources for his volume, including contemporary New Testament research, asserting that “it is necessary to select that which enables a better understanding of the text, while at the same time casting aside those hypotheses and conclusions that give rise to additional and unnecessary complications” (xii). However, the gospel texts themselves give rise to complications for careful readers. Those complications are not easily solved today by pursuing imaginative explanations for gospel differences, and thus fashioning a harmonized super- narrative out of the four Gospels, rather than allowing each gospel to tell the story of Jesus in its own unique way. Indeed, the church has presented us with four canonical gospels, rejecting a single, harmonized, hybrid gospel narrative. Consequently, the 98 JOURNAL OF ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN STUDIES present volume cannot be recommended to readers in North America interested in a serious historical-critical understanding of Jesus and the Gospels written by an Orthodox Christian scholar. Those seeking such a volume must look elsewhere.

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