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CHRISTIANITY's EMERGENCE from JUDAISM: the PLUS and MINUS of JOSEPH KLAUSNER's COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS Thomas Athanasius Idinop

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CHRISTIANITY's EMERGENCE from JUDAISM: the PLUS and MINUS of JOSEPH KLAUSNER's COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS Thomas Athanasius Idinop CHAPTER NINE CHRISTIANITY’S EMERGENCE FROM JUDAISM: THE PLUS AND MINUS OF JOSEPH KLAUSNER’S COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS Thomas Athanasius Idinopulos I Joseph Klausner was a distinguished scholar who devoted much of his career to tracing the emergence of Christianity out of Judaism. His two books, Jesus of Nazareth (1925) and From Jesus to Paul (1946) are superb examples of comparing religions, showing both the pos- sibilities and perils in this endeavor. Klausner begins by quoting with approval Julius Wellhausen’s remark, “Jesus was not a Christian, he was a Jew.”1 The question now posed is how did this particular Jew inspire or otherwise cause the birth of Christianity, a religion that became different from Judaism? If we remember that the seed of the new is present in the old the answer is forthcoming. Under Klausner’s analysis Jesus followed in the footsteps of Israel’s prophets by preaching a gospel of repentance to hasten the arrival of the Kingdom of God. But he did so in unusual ways that allowed others after him, not the least of whom was a fellow-Jew named Saul of Tarsus (otherwise known as Paul) who would interpret his words in ways that made the emergence of Christianity from Judaism inevitable. Klausner shows how this process of emergence dramatizes the difference between a national religion, defined by ethnic homogeneity, and a religion which crosses national and ethnic boundaries. Klausner argues that from the time of his baptism under John, Jesus believed himself to be chosen by God to be the messianic agent of the Kingdom. Believing so, he preached the “Coming Kingdom” with authority and a sense of urgency, attracting crowds, gaining disciples. But his journey to Jerusalem at the time of the Passover resulted in a humiliating death. This was not supposed to happen 1 Klausner, Jesus of Nazareth, p. 95. 176 thomas athanasius idinopulos to Israel’s Messiah, agent of God’s redemption. Jesus was not the first Jew, nor the last to so proclaim himself Messiah; but a Messiah who died a criminal’s death on a cross was plainly unacceptable to every Jewish expectation about the person and conduct of God’s chosen agent of redemption. If Jesus died a shameful death in the eyes of first century Jews, then his preaching of the Coming Kingdom proved equally irregular and unacceptable. He preached the imminent day of redemption in the traditionally prophetic way of calling for repentance of sins and demanding moral reform of life. But he did so with an exaggerated sense of his own authority, seeming to identify himself and his pro- nouncements with God. The repeated use of the phrase, “Truly, I say unto you . .” (Matt 5:18; this form appears in Matthew at least twenty-five times) suggests that when Jesus spoke he spoke for himself, he spoke for God. In Klausner’s judgment this explains why it was not Jews but mainly Gentile pagans that could be persuaded to believe Jesus and God were one.2 According to Klausner’s analysis what resulted from Jesus’ call for repentance was an “extremist ethics” favoring the spiritual over the material, an ethics divorced from the realities of this world. Jesus’ parables and sayings suggest a moral idealism more suitable to the heavenly world than to the concrete world of history and ethnos, nation and state. For this reason what begins in Jesus’ preaching as a tradi- tional Jewish demand for obedience under the law (“I came not to destroy law but to fulfill it,” cf. Matthew 5:17, Luke 16:17) ends in a vision of the world for which the nation of Israel and the ordinary Jew of the first century would have trouble finding a place. Jesus seems not unaware of the radical character of his preaching. He contrasts his message as “new wine” that cannot be put in old wine skins. There is a distinct emphasis on the new in his preaching of the Kingdom in parables (Matthew 13:44–52). Not surprisingly Jesus’ preaching offended the Pharisees, who turned against him not for any particular act (declaring man lord of the Sabbath; allowing washing and anointing during a period of fast) but for his consistent and outspoken disparagement of the ceremonial- ritual requirement in contrast to the ultimate value the moral law.3 2 Klausner, Jesus of Nazareth, p. 379. 3 Klausner, Jesus of Nazareth, p. 372..
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