BRUCE CHILTON, RABBI JESUS. AN INTIMATE BIOGRAPHY
Jacob Neusner Bard College
Bruce Chilton’s masterpiece of religious narrative marks a genuinely new and important step beyond the now-faltering historical-Jesus- movement. He has taken the path of narrative to reconstruct the interior life of Jesus in the context of the Jewish world that gave him birth. Here is an authentic biography, attained through an act of learned imagination: not only inference but an inferential narra- tive. Chilton has chosen narrative form, telling the story of Jesus start to nish, so as to follow the development of his thought and teachings. Professor, Bard College Chaplain, and Episcopal Priest, Chilton sets forth a life of Jesus not aimed at scandal and debunking but at understanding the religion, Christianity, through the person of its founder, Jesus Christ. He does not mince words on that point: “Jesus taught others to see as he saw, to share his vision of God, so that even after his death he appeared to his disciples as alive, a human presence, within the swirling energy of the Throne. That vision per- sists among those who hope that the pure of heart will indeed see God. ..” Here is an unapologetic Christianity, emerging from an academic scholar of the Bible and of ancient Judaism and Christianity— not an everyday event these days. The biography begins with the fact that, from an earthly per- spective, Jesus was of “ irregular origin” (Mary’s son, not Joseph’ s, as at Mark 6:3), and Chilton proceeds, “By examining the ancient Jewish commitment to the maintenance of family lineage ...we can explain the charge of illicit conception and discover one of the most profound in uences on Jesus’ personal development,” thus the chap- ter, “A Mamzer from Nazareth.” He follows with comparable accounts of “pilgrimage to Jerusalem,” “ the Talmid [disciple] of John,” “ the prodigal returns,” “ the spirit chaser,” “ the Hasid [pietist] in the holy city,” “ Capernaum’s prophet,” “ beyond the Pale,” “ three huts,” “ the sword of Rome,” “a cave of thugs,” “at the tomb of the dead,” ©Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2002 Review of Rabbinic Judaism 5.1 bruce chilton , RABBI JESUS. AN INTIMATE BIOGRAPHY 103
“king of the Jews,” “the Kabbalah of Cruci xion.” What does the story yield? A failure on the world stage in his own time, Rabbi Jesus also fell short of making a lasting mark within Judaism. Dead at thirty, he had not yet framed his mishnah, the formally crafted public teaching that a rabbi typically transmitted to his students by around the age of forty. Nonetheless, he generated a new religion. He never articulated a doc- trinal norm or confessional requirement, but the events of his life his public teaching, and his Kabbalah gave rise to distinctive, emotionally resonant rituals, such as baptism, prayer, anointing the sick, and the Eucharist. Chilton marks a new beginning in the telling of the life of Jesus. Christianity de nes itself by writing lives of Jesus Christ, and its his- tory can be told by recounting the legion of persons that have emerged in that one name. But how to tell the story? Until the end of the eighteenth century, the Gospels were harmonized into coher- ent accounts of a single life and viewpoint. Everything was true and required only construction into a single continuous account. Then came the opposite, nothing is true but demands critical inspection, item by item. The harmonies of the Gospels saw things whole, the critical lives found only bits and pieces. The theologians in historical guise who dominate in the academy show slight patience with such an a Yrmation as, “ He remains a measure of how much we dare to see and feel the divine in our lives.” Faithful Christians outside of the academy, Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox hear only echoes from time to time of academic debates on whether or not Jesus “really” did or said what he is sup- posed by the Gospels to have said or done. But at stake in lives of Jesus, such as the remarkable narrative Chilton sets forth in this landmark biography, is the shape of Christianity. Consider the Christian problem. If Judaism has the entire Torah, oral and written, for its focus, and Islam the Quran, God’s word in so many words, Christianity has Scripture and tradition mediated through the gure of one man, Jesus and how he is portrayed. History and biography then serve as media for theological re ection, and so it is in this eloquent and compelling account. Chilton stands at the end of the historical-Jesus movement of the past century and three quarters and at the inauguration of a narrative reading of Christianity in the person of its founder. The marriage of Enlightenment scepticism and Romantic historical