Jesus Reclaimed: Jewish Perspectives on the Nazarene 9781782385806

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Jesus Reclaimed

Jesus Reclaimed Jewish Perspectives on the Nazarene Walter Homolka Translated by Ingrid Shafer

berghahn NEW YORK • OXFORD www.berghahnbooks.com

First published in 2015 by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com Revised and enlarged English-language edition © 2015, 2021 Walter Homolka First paperback edition published in 2021 German-language edition © 2009–2011 Hentrich & Hentrich Gbr Jesus von Nazareth im Spiegel jüdischer Forschung All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Homolka, Walter, author.    [Jesus von Nazareth. English]    Jesus reclaimed : Jewish perspectives on the Nazarene / Walter Homolka ; translated by Ingrid Shafer.    pages cm    Includes bibliographical references and index.   ISBN 978-1-78238-579-0 (hardback : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-78238-580-6 (ebook)   1. Jesus Christ—Jewishness. 2. Judaism—Relations—Christianity. 3. Christianity and other religions—Judaism. 4. Jesus Christ— History of doctrines—Early church, 30–600. I. Title.    BM620.H66 201513    232.9’06—dc23 2014029071 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-1-78238-579-0 hardback ISBN: 978-1-80073-210-0 paperback ISBN: 978-1-78238-580-6 ebook

For Otto Kaiser, teacher and friend

I know a good Hamburg Christian who can never reconcile himself to the fact that our Lord and Saviour was by birth a Jew. A deep dissatisfaction seizes him when he must admit to himself that the man who, as the pattern of perfection, deserves the highest honor, was still of kin to those snuffling, long-nosed fellows who go running about the streets selling old clothes, whom he so utterly despises, and who are even more desperately detestable when they like himself apply themselves to the wholesale business of spices and dye-stuffs, and encroach upon his interests. —Heinrich Heine Shakespeare’s Maidens and Women

Contents

Foreword

xi

Leonard Swidler

Translator’s Preface

xv

Ingrid Shafer

Preface

xix

Introduction. When a Jew Looks at the Sources: The Jesus of History

1

The Sources 1 The Early Years 2 Public Appearance 3 Jesus’s Message 5 Arrest and Trial 7 Death 9

Chapter 1. Jesus and His Impact on Jewish Antiquity and the Middle Ages

13

Jesus in the Mishnah and Talmud 15 The Toledot Yeshu 17 Rabbinic Polemics against Jesus 19 Christian Talmud Criticism and Censorship 22

Chapter 2. The Historical Jesus: A Jewish and a Christian Quest Jesus and the Jewish Enlightenment

29

29

x • Contents

The Christian Quest of the Historical Jesus: A Departure from Dogma 31 The Jewish Quest as Repatriating Jesus to Judaism 46 Judaism Out of Place: The Berlin AntiSemitism Debate and Max Liebermann’s “Jesus” 49 Leo Baeck and Adolf von Harnack: Controversy and Clashes between the Jewish and Christian Quests 56 The Jewish Quest from Joseph Klausner to Ernst Ludwig Ehrlich 68

Chapter 3. Jesus the Jew and Joseph Ratzinger’s Christ: A Theological U-Turn Jesus Was a Jew: A Cultural Coincidence? 101 The “Rabbi Jesus”: For Christians Only Important as Christ? 105 “Reading the Whole Bible in the Light of Christ”: Joseph Ratzinger’s Hermeneutics 106 Christian Faith and “Historical Reason”

101

107

Conclusion

111

Bibliography

117

Index

135

Foreword Leonard Swidler

Rabbi Walter Homolka carefully lays out the contributions Jewish scholars have been making to the ever-fuller historical understanding of the most influential Jew—or perhaps the most influential human being—ever, Jesus of Nazareth. It is built on solid scholarship but written in terms that make it accessible to the educated layperson. Now in the early twenty-first century, we are still learning more about Jesus of Nazareth as a result of the “third quest of the historical Jesus.” The first quest was launched during the eighteenth-century Enlightenment by scholars like Hermann Reimarus and gained momentum in the nineteenth century with the development of “scientific history” under scholars such as Leopold von Ranke. The quest ground to a halt early in the twentieth century with the declaration by Albert Schweitzer and Rudolf Bultmann that it was impossible. All we had to go on were several faith statements about Jesus and, therefore, it was impossible to discern the human face of Jesus beneath all the projections. The second quest was started by Bultmann’s prize student, Ernst Käsemann, with his inaugural address at the University of Göttingen in 1954—he later became professor at my alma mater, the University of Tübingen. He argued that despite the “faith statement” nature of the Gospels, we can attain a historical picture of the real Jesus by using tools such as (1) dissimilarity (if a statement was

xii • Foreword

contrary to the aims of early Judaism or the early Christians, it likely came from Jesus), (2) multiple attestation (if a statement is found in more than one source), and (3) coherence (if a statement cohered with already accepted Jesus statements), to which was later added (4) linguistic suitability (if a statement made sense in Jesus’ Aramaic). How did these criteria work? Let me give just one example. The New Testament writings are full of negative statements about women by persons other than Jesus—for example, “Women should keep silence in the church” (1 Cor 14:33); “I suffer no woman to have authority over a man” (1 Tm 2:11); “Wives, be subject to your husbands” (1 Pt 3:1). Moreover, Jesus’s younger Jewish contemporary Josephus wrote, “The woman, says the Law, is in all things inferior to the man.”1 In contrast, in all four of the Gospels, nowhere does Jesus say or do anything negative regarding women; on the contrary, he says and does many, many positive things. Conclusion: those “feminist” remarks and actions attributed in the Gospels to Jesus could not stem from the frequently misogynist Jewish or Christian sources, but had to go back to Jesus himself.2 As helpful as the “principle of dissimilarity” was, at the same time it tended to alienate Jesus from his natural Jewish context—which did not make any sense. Hence, starting in the late 1970s, researchers focused on the broader background of the New Testament, and most especially its Jewish background. This approach drew the interest of many excellent scholars, including many of the most respected contemporary biblical scholars, resulting in what has been named the “third quest of the historical Jesus”: In the ‘third quest,’ which first emerged predominantly in the English-speaking world, a sociological interest replaced a theological interest, and the concern to find Jesus a place in Judaism re-

Foreword • xiii

placed the demarcation of Jesus from Judaism; an openness to non-canonical (sometimes heretical) sources also replaced the preference for canonical sources.3 Jewish scholars were on this “third quest for the historical Jesus” long before we Christian scholars took up the quest. At one point we Christians finally realized that it is absolutely essential to view Jesus as Rabbi Yeshua Ha-Notzri, Rabbi Jesus of Nazareth, and to recognize all his relatives (Mary, Joseph, James, and so on) and first followers as fellow Jews if we are ever going to understand who the “founder” of Christianity was and what he was all about.4 Hence, it is with deep gratitude that I welcome this latest book in a glorious tradition of Jewish scholarship that is of immense help to its sibling, Christian scholarship. But it is much more than that. It is a handy handbook, a veritable vade mecum on the growing deeper historical understanding of Jesus among Jewish scholars and thus an important source for Christian and Islamic scholars alike.

Notes 1. Josephus, Against Apion, II, 201, cited in Leonard Swidler, Women in Judaism: The Status of Women in Formative Judaism (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1976), 2. 2. See Leonard Swidler, Biblical Affirmations of Woman (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1988); Leonard Swidler, Jesus Was a Feminist (Lanham, MD: Sheed & Ward, 2007). 3. Gerd Theissen, Annette Merz. The Historical Jesus (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996), 10. 4. I too, belatedly, joined the pioneer Christian scholars in this “third quest”: Leonard Swidler, Yeshua: A Model for Moderns (Kansas City: Sheed & Ward, 1988; 2nd expanded ed., 1993).

Translator’s Preface Ingrid Shafer

While reading Walter Homolka’s 2009 German book Jesus of Nazareth, I became convinced that it deserved to be broadly distributed beyond a German-speaking public, both academic and lay. I was especially fascinated by the second part of the title: im Spiegel jüdischer Forschung (in the Mirror of Jewish Scholarship). The title happened to coincide with one of my lifelong personal and academic passions—my conviction that all of us perceive what we consider reality through what I have called “hermeneutical lenses,” spectacles or mirrors that determine what we “see” and what we consider “the truth.” I spent forty-one years teaching interdisciplinary global history of ideas at a liberal arts college, and I never quite ceased being amazed at the extent to which my students, often unwilling captives in required courses, were threatened by having their preconscious assumptions challenged, especially concerning their religious or ideological convictions. Simply saying, “Jesus was a Jew” or “Jesus was not a Christian” raised a chorus of objections. Yet, this was precisely what I had hoped to communicate to others ever since I was in my late teens in the 1950s. I was born in Innsbruck, Austria, one month before Hitler marched into Poland, and have been haunted by images of the Shoah ever since I was old enough to read magazines and question adults. Eventually, I began to seek a rational explanation for what seemed the uncon-

xvi • Translator’s Preface

scious, knee-jerk anti-Jewish prejudices of so many “good people” I knew—teachers, classmates, even my father. No one, for example, seemed to question what to me appeared an absurd and hate-fomenting local story of the Judenstein (Jewstone), the shrine of the Blessed Andrew of Rinn [Anderl], the final resting place of a small boy whose throat, the teacher told us during a class outing, had been slit centuries before by a group of Jewish merchants. In the chapel, we saw the gray boulder on which the toddler had reportedly been slaughtered. We marveled at the imprint of the tiny body miraculously left behind, a silent witness to a crime so heinous it softened the very stone. We were encouraged to ponder the pictures on the chapel walls of the heinous act being committed, to kneel for prayer in the pews, and to imagine the child’s agony and his mother’s despair when she discovered her son’s exsanguinated corpse hanging from a birch tree. In the months and years following that class outing, in the recesses of my mind, doubts began to stir. Initially, I had been sickened by the teacher’s story and the gruesome pictures of the murder. Eventually, the entire tradition, especially the miraculously imprinted stone, began to make no sense and seemed fabricated in order to terrify Christian children, malign Jews, and attract pilgrim business. This suspicion was reinforced by a fine priest, Professor Anton Egger, my religion teacher at the Realgymnasium [Secondary School], who was clearly unimpressed by the cult and who told me years later that he had doubted the legitimacy of the devotion all along. Especially when I discovered that a folk drama version of the Anderl murder by a Norbertine canon, Gottfried Schöpf, was still regularly performed, I began to connect the ways Jews of the past were depicted in pious tales with the ways ordinary Christians continued to view their Jewish contemporaries. Between 1985 and 1994, due to the efforts of Bishop Reinhold Stecher, the blood libel story was officially de-

Translator’s Preface • xvii

bunked, little Anderl was debeatified and the shrine was turned into a memorial to the victims of anti-Semitism, with the following inscription, here cited in translation, on a plaque: “This stone reminds us of a dark deed of blood as well as, by its very name, of the many sins Christians have committed against Jews. In the future it shall serve as a sign of our reconciliation with the people who have borne us the savior.” However, this did not neutralize the extent to which the shrine attracted pilgrims and, with its graphic depictions of the murder, the extent to which it helped shape the ways countless visitors, especially children in their most formative years, viewed Jews, even after World War II, as it had for centuries before. The power of image to shape one’s understanding of reality and especially one’s preconscious, intuitive assumptions cannot be overemphasized, and it affects people of all traditions as it grinds the hermeneutical lenses and shapes the mirrors through and in which we view/ create the “other”—whether the “other” is Jew, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Confucian, atheist, Republican, Democrat, conservative, liberal, and so forth ad infinitum. As long as they are not presented as the “one and only” privileged truth, these differing perspectives can serve as valuable steps toward a balanced, multifaceted, dynamically evolving understanding of whatever one seeks to comprehend. By absolutizing any one position, truth is reduced to dogma, which is, concerning the quest for the historical Jesus, precisely the position taken by Joseph Ratzinger when he insists that seeking to know Jesus cannot be legitimate unless it is done through the lens of the kerygmatic Christ of faith, which is clearly impossible for any non-Christian (and even some who consider themselves Christians). In this book, Homolka convincingly engages Ratzinger and makes a case for the importance of understanding how Jesus has been viewed in close to two millennia of Jewish tradition.

xviii  •  Translator’s Preface

As an Austrian Catholic, I had countless opportunities to view and experience Christian attitudes toward Jews, simply by carefully looking at stained-glass windows and frescoes in churches (such as the Stations of the Cross) or listening to New Testament passages and homilies, especially around Easter. Even before I came to the United States in 1960, I was appalled at the way Passion plays continued to incite anti-Jewish sentiments. US versions seemed no less biased than their European counterparts, without necessarily going to the extremes of Mel Gibson’s Anna Katharina Emmerick–inspired The Passion of the Christ (2004). Hence, when I was offered the opportunity to translate the Oberammergau 2000 and 2010 textbooks and work with Jewish-Christian advisory groups collaborating with directors and producers in an attempt to show Yeshua accurately in the context of his milieu, I was happy to do so.1 But I still wished there were scholarly books, accessible to the educated general public, apart from Géza Vermes’ works (such as The Religion of Jesus the Jew from 1993), which deal with Jesus from a Jewish perspective. For me, Walter Homolka’s book fills that void, and I am delighted to have been given the opportunity to introduce it to the world of English speakers.

Notes This book was one of the last projects of Ingrid Shafer (1939– 2014) who died 5 March 2014 at the age of 74.   1. James Shapiro, Oberammergau: The Troubling Story of the World’s Most Famous Passion Play (New York: Random House, 2000), 29ff.

Preface

When Reza Aslan published his academic study on the life of Jesus, he pursued his passionate interest in the person of Jesus as a historical figure. In Zealot, Aslan paints a picture of a zealous revolutionary from ignorant and poor Galilee, a man whose aim was not so much a heavenly kingdom as a Palestine liberated from Roman occupation. Did Jesus understand the concept of a God who became human? According to Aslan: no. Aslan’s Jesus is fully and completely Jewish, animated by the messianic thought that King David’s Israel must be resurrected as a state under God’s authority. Readers’ reactions were extremely divided. As it turns out, however, many were more troubled by the author rather than the content itself.1 Reza Aslan is Muslim. Aslan’s book belongs to a genre that goes back to Hermann Samuel Reimarus in the eighteenth century. Research on the life of Jesus has experienced three major waves since that time. Aslan is probably the first Muslim author in this field, although he has always insisted that he writes from an impartial scholarly perspective. The question whether he—a Muslim—has the right to do so is not new either; similar questions have been asked over the past two centuries as Jewish scholars became increasingly interested in the topic. But why might Jews be interested in Jesus? At first glance, one could surmise that research on Jesus through Jewish eyes does not exactly promise success. In the words of the British rabbi Jonathan Magonet, “The question of who Jesus was or might have been is actually of interest to very few Jews. Or to

xx • Preface

be even more precise, among most Jews he has no significance whatsoever.”2 This book attempts to do justice to Jesus of Nazareth in his Jewish setting and to depict the Jewish perception of Jesus throughout the centuries. It goes without saying that an unbiased view of Jesus by Jews is a difficult task. His historical impact represents a dramatic threat not only to Judaism as a whole, but also existentially to each individual Jew. Centuries of persecution, oppression, forced migration, and exclusion in the name of Jesus imprinted themselves deeply into the memory of a people whose fate in the “Christian West” has been anything but easy. This realization, however, also raises the question of whether Jewish scholars can engage in a meaningful discussion of Jesus as a person considering their concern with Christianity as a rival religion. This book would not have been possible without my twenty-five years of academic engagement with Christianity from a Jewish perspective. My special thanks go to the faculty members who respectfully welcomed me and served as my intellectual inspiration between 1983 and 1986 while I was a Jewish guest student at the School of Protestant Theology at the University of Munich and the Munich School of Philosophy of the Jesuits in Germany. My dissertation, supervised by Christoph Schwöbel at King’s College London,3 drew on knowledge and experience from that time. Those insights proved valuable during the years of my practical rabbinate; which too were shaped by the manifold interest many Christian communities have in Judaism. These experiences were further augmented in the committee for Jewish-Christian dialogue hosted by the Central Committee of German Catholics. In addition, I supplement these diverse experiences with the insight that knowledge gained from Judeo-Christian dialogue must be mediated for each generation anew. I am very grateful that I had the

Preface • xxi

opportunity to personally encounter outstanding Jewish philosophers of religion such as Schalom Ben-Chorin, Ernst Ludwig Ehrlich, and Pinchas Lapide. It is imperative for me to continuously recall the findings of previous generations of Jewish thinkers in order to preserve the ways Jews and Christians understand one another. This volume is an attempt to carry out this commission. I am particularly grateful for Leonard Swidler’s initiative to translate the German original into English. I am honored to have received his reverence for my work and, thanks to him, a thoroughly revised and much enhanced English version is now available. All of this would not have been possible without Ingrid Shafer’s immense effort in taking it upon herself to translate the original book. Translation is always creation and so I would like to express my deep gratitude for her collaboration. I also wish to give special thanks to Hartmut Bomhoff whose extensive assistance helped this work achieve its present form. Thanks also to Marie-Luise Schmidt who revised the book for the English edition. And of course many thanks to the copy editors who combed through the final versions: Debra Corman, Caitlin Mahon, and David Heywood-Jones, as well as Caroline Diepeveen for creating the index. Finally, we must give thanks to the National Gallery of London for giving us the rights to use one of Gerrit van Honthorst’s (1592–1656) most famous paintings for the cover: Christ before the High Priest. Honthorst painted it in Rome around 1617; the work shows the powerful influence of Caravaggio. The scene is focused on the burning candle in the center of the composition and the arm and raised finger of the High Priest beside it. The book on the table in front of the High Priest contains the proscriptions of Mosaic Law. The painting is concentrated in theme: the relationship of Jesus the Jew and his message within his Jewish context. Rabbi Walter Homolka, PhD, DHL

xxii  •  Preface

Notes   1. See John Williams. “The Life of Jesus: Reza Aslan Talks about Zealot.” New York Times, 2 August 2013. http:// artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/02/the-life-of-jesusreza-aslan-talks-about-zealot/. Accessed 24 July 2014.   2. Jonathan Magonet, Talking to the Other: Jewish Interfaith Dialogue with Christians and Muslims (London: I. B. Tauris, 2003), 125.   3. Walter Homolka, Jewish Identity in Modern Times: Leo Baeck and German Protestantism (Providence, RI: Berghahn Books, 1995).

Introduction

When a Jew Looks at the Sources The Jesus of History

The Sources The early Christian Gospels are considered the most important sources for the life of the historical Jesus.1 The Passion is of course the best documented episode. The earliest of the three Synoptic Gospels, the Gospel of Mark, dates to around 70 CE and is based on earlier sources. The source with the highest degree of authenticity is the socalled Q source where we can read Jesus’s words. John’s Gospel—the latest of the four Gospels, dated around the end of the first century—has limited historical value because of its post-Easter faith perspective. The non-Christian testimonials (Flavius Josephus, Suetonius, Tacitus) offer us little on Jesus’s biography.2 According to Johann Maier, the first but rather insignificant Jewish reference to Jesus is in the so-called Testimony Flavianum in Josephus Jewish Antiquities XVIII, pp. 63f. (cf. XX, pp. 199–203, the martyrdom of James), the wording of which was probably edited much later by Christians.3 According to Josephus: Now about this time arose an occasion for new disturbances a certain Jesus, a wizard of a man, if indeed he may be called a man who was the most

2 • Jesus Reclaimed

monstrous of all men, whom his disciples call a son of God, as having done wonders such as no man hath ever done… He was in fact a teacher of astonishing tricks to such men as accept the abnormal with delight… And when, on the indictment of the principal men among us, Pilate had sentenced him to the cross, still those who before had admired him did not cease to rave.4

The Early Years There can be little learned from the Gospels about Jesus’s youth. He came from Nazareth in Lower Galilee and, according to Matthew 1:18,5 he was the first child of Mary (Miriam), born before the end of the reign of Herod the Great in 4 BCE (Mt 2:1) (presumably a few years earlier). His name, “Jesus,” is the Greek translation of the Hebrew “Yeshua” (God helps). The Evangelist Mark writes of at least six children: James, Joses, Judas, Simon, and the sisters of Jesus, who remain nameless (Mk 6:3). Two fictional lists of ancestors (Mt 1–17 and Lk 3:23–38) make Jesus of Nazareth the descendant of Abraham and King David, but like the topic of the virgin birth, they are not intended as historical statements, instead carrying theological significance. It remains questionable whether Bethlehem near Jerusalem is in fact the birthplace of Jesus or was just associated with him because of God’s promise to King David. The hypothesis that Jesus was born in the Galilean Bethlehem (Beit Lehem Ha’glilit) near Nazareth rather than in front of the gates of Jerusalem was argued as early as 1922 by Joseph Klausner (1874–1958).6 He pointed out that the Galilean Bethlehem can be found in the Talmud and in Midrashic literature and excavations prove that it was a significant settlement at the time of Jesus; there is no such

Introduction • 3

evidence from the Herodian period for a Bethlehem in Judea. The sentence “After eight days had passed, it was time to circumcise the child; and he was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb” (Lk 2:21) makes it clear that the family lived as Jews among Jews. As the firstborn son of a Jewish family, Jesus was redeemed in the Temple; later, Jesus learned his father’s trade (Mk 6:3; Mt 13:55). Joseph was a craftsman (Greek τέκτων, often misleadingly translated as “carpenter”), probably involving working with wood, clay, or stones. According to Luke 2:42–48, at the age of twelve, Jesus impressed the scribes in the Jerusalem Temple with his knowledge of the Torah, which points to the possibility that he attended school, but might also be a fictional insertion to identify him as an outstanding teacher of the Torah. Although Jesus’s mother tongue was Galilean Western Aramaic he must also have mastered Hebrew as according to Luke 4:16–17 Jesus read from the Torah before interpreting the text. His frequent question to his listeners “Have you never [/not] read … ?” (e.g., Mk 2:25, 12:10, 12:26; Mt 12:5, 19:4) implies reading competence.

Public Appearance Based on the only clearly indicated date in the Gospels, the appearance of John the Baptist, it is most reasonable, according to biblical scholar Anton Vögtle, to assume a public ministry of around two years, an assumption that is consistent with a probable date of death during Passover 30 CE.7 According to Luke 3:1 and 3:23, Jesus was about thirty years old when he began his public ministry: “In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea.” In the twenties of the first century CE, Jesus belonged temporarily to the circle around John the Baptist, who emerged as an ascetic

4 • Jesus Reclaimed

prophet in Perea, a Transjordanian region near the Dead Sea, and who called for repentance in light of the imminent coming of the Lord and the Last Judgment. “Here John offered the forgiveness of sins in ritual form—independently of the possibilities of the temple in providing atonement. This was a vote of no confidence in the central religious institution of Judaism, which had become ineffective.”8 According to Luke 1:5, John was the son of the priest Zechariah, of the priestly class Abijah, and Elizabeth, from the family of Aaron. Jesus’s baptism in the Jordan River complies with the standard practice of the tevilah, the traditional full-body immersion for ritual purification. The meeting with John marked a decisive turning point. Jesus returned to Galilee to follow his own calling and in the spring of 28 or 29 CE he began his work as an independent charismatic itinerant preacher. He resided at Capernaum on the northeast end of Lake Gennesaret [Sea of Galilee] where his sphere of influence included the Jewish area north and east of the lake. At the time Galilee was considered an unruly region. The local Jewish population was isolated from the religious center in Judea and was threatened by pagan influence. Capernaum was right on the border between the territories of Herod Antipas and Philippus. Jesus apparently found little support in Capernaum itself. From there, he moved on to the surrounding area with his first companions, Shimon, Andrew, Levi, and Mary Magdalene. He ordered his disciples to abandon parents, children, and the usual daily activities and to follow him: “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple” (Lk 14:26). The Evangelist John writes of three years in which Jesus appeared in public, while the three Synoptic Evangelists mention only one year and also only one journey to Jerusalem. His specific itineraries cannot be definitively re-

Introduction  •  5

constructed. Indeed, many locations listed in the Gospels were later additions and reflected the spread of Christianity at the time of their editorial revisions.

Jesus’s Message Based on the historical evidence and the scriptural sources available, one may very well ask just how can we summarize Jesus’s teachings succinctly. Theissen attempts just this when he argues: At the centre of Jesus’s message stood Jewish belief in God: for Jesus, God was a tremendous ethical energy which would soon change the world to bring deliverance to the poor, the weak and the sick. However, it could become the “hell-fire” of judgment for all those who did not allow themselves to be grasped by it. Everyone had a choice. Everyone had a chance, particularly those who by religious standards were failures and losers. Jesus sought fellowship with them.9 Jesus’s style of preaching and argumentation was essentially rabbinic; his parables10 (Hebrew: meshalim) followed biblical figurative language and the imagery was taken from the everyday lives of farmers and fishermen: the sower, the mustard seed, the fisher of men, the “calming” of the storm. His first disciples called him “Rabbi” (e.g., Mk 9:5, 11:21, 14:45; Jn 1:38, 1:49, 3:2, 4:31) or “Rabbouni” (Jn 20:16). This Aramaic title means “my master” and corresponded to the Greek διδασκαλς, or “teacher.” It expressed respect and accorded Jesus the same rank as the Pharisaic scribes (Mt 13:52, 23:2, 23:7). According to Mark 6:1–6, Jesus’s teachings were rejected in his home­ town and he was said never to have returned there. But ac-

6 • Jesus Reclaimed

cording to Luke 8:2–3, Mark 1:31, and Mark 15:40, women from around Jesus’s home supported him and his disciples. According to Mark 15:41, they remained with him to his death. Like Hillel (30 BCE–9 CE), Jesus accorded the commandment “love thy neighbor” the same importance as fear of God and consequently placed them above all other Torah commandments (Mk 12:28–34). Based on a Christian lack of knowledge or misunderstanding of Judaism at Jesus’s time, many believed, for a long time, Jesus represented an interpretation of halakha which could not be derived from Judaism. However, acknowledging the pluralist nature of Judaism at that time, this passage is now read as an inner Jewish interpretation of the Torah. For Joseph Klausner, the Gospels describe Jesus as an observant Jew: As much as the Synoptic Gospels are filled with hostility toward the Pharisees, they cannot avoid describing Jesus as a Pharisaic Jew in his attitude toward the law. Accordingly, he demands that sacrifices be offered at various occasions (Mk 1:44; Mt 5:23–24), he also does not object to fasting and prayer, if it is done without arrogance (Mt 6:5–7, 6:16, 6:18). He himself follows all ceremonial laws, wears tassels (Mk 6:56 and parallels), pays the half shekel for the temple, makes the pilgrimages to Jerusalem for Passover, says the blessing over wine and bread, etc. He warns his students against contact with Gentiles and the Samaritans; he answers the request to heal a pagan child in a spirit of ultra-nationalism.11 The “beatitudes” attributed to the Q source (Lk 6:20– 22; Mt 5:3–11) assure the poor, the mourners, the powerless, and the persecuted that for them the kingdom is already present and certain for their future as a just turn

Introduction • 7

to compensate them for their suffering. They were the first and most important recipients of the words of Jesus. According to Luke 4:18–21, his “inaugural sermon” consisted only of the sentence “Today, this Scripture [Is 61:1–3] has been fulfilled in your hearing.” Thus, the biblical promise of a “Jubilee year” of forgiveness of debt and redistribution of land (Lv 25) was actualized for the contemporary poor. According to sociohistorical studies, the rural Jewish population suffered from exploitation, tax levies for Rome and the Temple, constant Roman military presence, debt slavery, hunger, epidemics, and social uprooting.12 Jesus’s relief for the poor, healing, and the coincidence of prayer and almsgiving were similar to that of the later charismatic miracle worker Hanina ben Dosa (ca. 40–75 CE), a representative of Galilean Hasidim.13 This is another reason why contemporary scholars of religion, unlike their predecessors, place Jesus of Nazareth entirely within the Judaism of his time and emphasize the similarity of his message to the teachings of the Pharisees.14

Arrest and Trial Even if we combine all four Gospels, they still only really talk about Jesus’s final years. The sequence of his entry into Jerusalem, the cleansing of the Temple, arrest, interrogation in the house of the High Priest, delivery to Pilate, interrogation by the Romans, scourging, mockery, his execution by Roman soldiers, and his burial are fairly consistent in many details across all the Synoptic Gospels. The question of who was originally responsible for his arrest, however, is more controversial. For example, David Flusser questions whether the High Council meeting which supposedly condemned Jesus to death ever occurred.15 Jesus and his disciples spent the night at the foot of the Mount of Olives in Gethsemane, a rest area for Pass-

8 • Jesus Reclaimed

over pilgrims. On the night following the final meal shared by Jesus and his disciples, Judas Iscariot reportedly led a crowd armed with “swords and clubs” (Mk 14:43) or a “detachment of soldiers” (Jn 18:3) to arrest them. Paul Winter, therefore, assumed that Jesus was arrested and sentenced not by the Jewish High Council, the Sanhedrin, but by the Romans, accompanied by the armed Jews of the Temple Guard. In this scenario, the occupiers sought to suppress the potential political-revolutionary tendencies that existed among Jesus’s followers or could have been stirred up by his message and deeds.16 Historians holding both positions assume that both the Romans and the Sadducee ruling class were interested in Jesus’s arrest. The “Temple conflict” threatened both the Jewish elites’ position of power as well as signifying unpredictable consequences for the autonomy of the Jewish community as a whole. In short, it could have caused long-term political instability.17 According to this interpretation, Caiaphas’s statement, recorded in John 11:50, that “it is better for you to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed” is plausible. Two contemporary Jewish legal experts have examined Jesus’s trial.18 Haim Cohn (1911–2002), Supreme Court judge of the state of Israel and legal historian, examined the trial extensively and provided a detailed picture of the most likely events surrounding the Crucifixion.19 His book was published in 1968 in Hebrew and in 1980 in English. Justice Cohn presents a search for forensic and historical analysis to create a legal, political, and religious context for the events as they might really have happened. Cohn’s readers are encouraged to give their own verdict on whether we can actually speak of Jewish responsibility for the death of Jesus. The Hessian attorney general Fritz Bauer (1903–1968) is best known for his legal processing of a number of Nazi

Introduction • 9

war crimes. His essay “The Trial of Jesus” (1965)20 is essentially a plea for a more humane legal system. He writes, “Pilate’s verdict reflects the human shortcomings of all judgment, the misunderstanding and misinterpretation of the actual events, the excessive demands on the judge by public opinion and its pressure on his verdict.”21 Bauer reminds us that from the religious Christian point of view, the “trial of Jesus culminating in the Crucifixion represented God’s judgment and will; it was part of the Almighty’s plan for the world; without it there would be no Christianity.”22

Death All four Gospels are unanimous that the execution sanctioned by Pontius Pilate as governor of Judea (26–36 CE) took place the day before the Sabbath, thus on a Friday. This was the main Passover holy day for the Synoptics as it followed the Seder and so, according to the Jewish calendar, it must have been the fifteenth of Nisan. In the Gospel of John, however, it was just before Passover— the fourteenth of Nisan. This dating, which attests to the strong narrative and fictional character of this late Gospel, has theological significance: Jesus would have died at the time of the slaughter of the Passover lamb. According to Mark 15:27, Jesus was crucified along with two bandits on the hill of Golgotha (place of the skull) outside Jerusalem’s walls and, according to Luke 23:35–37, it was accompanied by the scorn and derision of those present. The pre-Markian Passion narrative provides no additional details and only indicates that Jesus was “crucified at the third hour” and “died at the ninth hour.” Calendric and astronomical calculations suggest 30 CE as the most likely year of death.23

10 • Jesus Reclaimed

Notes 1. For a more thorough analysis, see Gerd Theissen and Annette Merz, The Historical Jesus: A Comprehensive Guide (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress Press, 1998), 17– 124; Peter J. Tomson, “If This Be from Heaven …”: Jesus and the New Testament Authors in Their Relationship to Judaism (Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001). 2. Cf. Wolfgang Stegemann, Jesus und seine Zeit (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2009); Jürgen Roloff, “Jesus von Nazareth,” in Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, ed. Hans Dieter Betz, 4th ed. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001), vol. 4, col. 463f. 3. Johann Maier, Judentum von A bis Z: Glauben, Geschichte, Kultur (Freiburg: Herder, 2001), 231. 4. Josephus, Jewish Antiquities: Books XVIII–XIX, tr. Louis H. Feldman (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965), 48. 5. Unless otherwise specified all biblical references are from The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha, edited by Bruce M. Metzger and Roland Murphy, copyright 1991. 6. Joseph Klausner, Jesus of Nazareth: His Life, Times and Teachings trans. Herbert Danby (New York: Bloch, 1989; Hebrew ed., 1922), 231f. 7. Anton Vögtle, “Jesus Christus nach den geschichtlichen Quellen,” in Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, ed. Josef Höfer and Karl Rahner, 2nd ed. (Freiburg: Herder, 1986), vol. 5, col. 922ff. 8. Theissen and Merz, Historical Jesus, 569. 9. Ibid., 570. 10. Gary G. Porton, “The Parable in the Hebrew Bible and Rabbinic Literature,” in The Historical Jesus in Context, ed. Amy-Jill Levine, Dale C. Allison Jr., and John Dominic Crossan (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006), 206–221.

Introduction • 11

11. Joseph Klausner, “Jesus von Nazareth,” in Encyclopaedia Judaica (Berlin: Eschkol, 1932), vol. 9, col. 69f. See also Herbert W. Basser, “Gospel and Talmud,” in Levine, Allison, and Crossan, Historical Jesus in Context, 285– 295; Bruce Chilton, “Targum, Jesus, and the Gospels,” in Levine, Allison, and Crossan, Historical Jesus in Context, 238–255. 12. David L. Balch and John E. Stambaugh, The New Testament in Its Social Environment (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1986), 102. 13. Bernd Kollmann, “Paulus als Wundertäter,” in Paulinische Christologie, ed. Udo Schnelle and Thomas Söding (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000), 95f. 14. Theissen and Merz, Historical Jesus, 571. See also Schalom Ben-Chorin, “Judentum und Jesusbild,” in Neues Lexikon des Judentums, ed. Julius H. Schoeps (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2000), 400–402. 15. David Flusser, The Sage from Galilee: Rediscovering Jesus’ Genius (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2007), 138–142. 16. Paul Winter, On the Trial of Jesus, ed. T. A. Burkill and Géza Vermes, 2nd ed. (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1974), 44–48, 136ff. 17. Theissen and Merz, Historical Jesus, 468, 571. 18. See also David R. Catchpole, The Trial of Jesus: A Study in the Gospels and Jewish Historiography from 1777 to the Present Day (Leiden: Brill, 1971). 19. Haim Cohn, The Trial and Death of Jesus (New York: Ktav, 1980). 20. Fritz Bauer, “Der Prozeß Jesu,” in Fritz Bauer: Die Humanität der Rechtsordnung; Ausgewählte Schriften, ed. Joachim Perels and Irmtrud Wojak (Frankfurt: Campus, 1998), 411–426. 21. Ibid., 424. 22. Ibid., 411. 23. Theissen and Merz, Historical Jesus, 572; Roloff, “Jesus von Nazareth,” vol. 4, col. 466.

Chapter 1

Jesus and His Impact on Jewish Antiquity and the Middle Ages

Rabbinical Judaism’s victory after the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE, ushered in a kind of normative Judaism whereby attitudes that did not comply with fundamental beliefs of the newly established standard were dismissed as heretical by the rabbinic elite. The term for antirabbinic Jews and heretics was min (plural: minim). In the early Talmudic literature, in addition to “species” (kind) and “anomaly” (variant), min meant “gender” and “sexuality.” At the time, this insult was not explicitly aimed at Jewish Christians, that is, Christians; Mishnah Sanhedrin 10:1 contains an entire list of heretics who will have no part in the “World to Come.” The twelfth benediction of the Eighteen Benedictions, the Ha’minim Birkat, which was accepted as the nineteenth benediction in Yavneh in the presence of Rabban Gamliel II (ca. 90–130 CE), is therefore not specifically aimed at the early Christians. As a petition for the annihilation of apostates, it may date back to the rule of Alexander Jannaeus (103/104–76 BCE), who had persecuted the Pharisees. The reference to Jewish Christians is rather indirect: as they could not respond to this blessing with “Amen,” they could be expelled from the

14 • Jesus Reclaimed

synagogue.1 Over time, however, it was made clear that Christians were no longer to be considered heretics. Rabbi Menachem Ha-Meiri of Perpignan (1249–1316) explained that the Christians were not idolaters, but represented a doctrine of high ethical standard. It is assumed that the first confrontation with the Jewish Christian Jesus image occurred in the Greek Jewish Diaspora. Regarding the rabbinic traditions in the early Tannaitic period (70– 240 CE; the Tannaim were Jewish teachers of the law), Johann Maier acknowledges no such indications and points out that Christianity only emerged as a serious challenge under Constantine the Great in former Palestine; namely as the successor to Rome’s power. After the conversion of the Roman Empire and the tightening of anti-Jewish laws, the rabbis transferred the negative images of Esau and Edom onto Christianity and continued to expect the fulfillment of God’s response to Rebekah, “The one [nation] shall be stronger than the other” (Gn 25:23), or even the vision of Obadiah (1:21), “Those who have been saved shall go up to Mount Zion to rule Mount Esau; and the kingdom shall be the Lord’s.” The typology of “Edom” and “Esau,” “church” and “Rome,” was still widely used in the Middle Ages. According to Daniel Krochmalnik, we can point to Rashi (1040–1105) and his comment on Obadiah as an example of this tradition. In Rashi, at Obadiah 1:21, we read: “‘And the leaders of Israel are going up to Mount Zion as victors in order to pass judgment, to punish Esau for what he had done to Israel, the mountain of Esau, and the kingdom will be the Eternal One’s, to teach you that his kingdom will be complete only when he will have punished Esau’s wickedness [In the Aramaic translation, ‘the mountain of Esau’ is ‘the large city of Esau,’ which— according to the Rashi commentary—can be equaled to Rome].’ This kind of encrypted Jewish polemic was not unknown to the ecclesiastical authorities at the time.”2

Jesus and His Impact on Jewish Antiquity • 15

Jesus in the Mishnah and Talmud There are some short rabbinic texts which refer to Jesus’s descent, teaching, and impact.3 He is called “the son of Pantera” (Chul 2:22, 2:24), is said to have been hanged on the evening of Passover as a magician and imposter (bSanh 43a), and is mentioned by his followers, who are said to heal the sick in his name (Chul 2:22f.; cited in bShab 116a–b). Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus supposedly heard some scholarly reference associated with the name of Jesus in Sepphoris (Chul 2:24). According to the Jewish tradition, Jesus of Nazareth was also subsequently identified with other figures, such as an Egyptian magician called Ben Stada who, it was claimed, was executed early in the second century CE. According to Maier, the name “Pantera(s)” was a common name for soldiers and makes Jesus into a kind of counterstory to that of the illegitimate son of a Roman legionnaire. Around 180 CE, the Greek philosopher and skeptic Celso presented a view4 (passed on to us by Origen) in which he refers to a Jew who claimed the mother of Jesus committed adultery and bore an illegitimate child. And so, at last, the claim that Jesus was a legitimate descendant of the house of David had been called into question. Schalom Ben-Chorin put it succinctly: “These relatively late, often spiteful anomalies have no historical value, but already form the precipitate of the controversy between Jewish Christians and normative Judaism.”5 A derogatory description of the Passion of Jesus can also be found in the Talmud. The Babylonian Talmud (bSanh 43a) describes the execution: “[On the eve of the Sabbath and] on the eve of Passover Jesus of Nazareth was hanged. And a herald went out forty days earlier and announced: Jesus of Nazareth is led out to be stoned, be-

16 • Jesus Reclaimed

cause he practiced sorcery, stirred up Israel, and seduced [hiddiakh] them [to idolatry].” The age and authenticity of this memo are controversial. Joseph Klausner considers it to be original and dates it to around 200 CE.6 Johann Maier, however, argues that it could not have originated before 220 CE. For him, references to the execution of Jesus for proselytizing for a foreign cult shows how the charges aimed at Jesus are probably based on cases against others.7 In contrast to Maier, Peter Schäfer does not consider the rabbinic texts which refer to Jesus secondary and postConstantinian constructs. While Maier only accepts a few texts as legitimately based on Jesus of Nazareth, for Schäfer, the texts provide evidence of “devastating” rabbinic criticism of contemporary Christianity and its founders. For example, he points to the discrepancy between these passages and the Gospels: “According to the New Testament Jesus was crucified (obviously following Roman law), whereas according to the Talmud he was stoned and subsequently hanged (following rabbinic law).”8 If the Talmud subsumes the proceedings against Jesus into Judaism, it thereby accepts the Christian accusation and confirms it with the intention to limit it. For Schäfer, this represents an early counter-Gospel based on thorough familiarity with the New Testament prior to the medieval Toledot Yeshu. Schäfer emphasizes the difference between the Babylonian and the Palestinian (Jerusalem) Talmud. While the former is characterized by vigorous polemic, this is largely absent from the latter. Schäfer explains this discrepancy by drawing our attention to the fact that the rabbis of Babylonia, in the anti-Christian Sassanid Empire, were encouraged to polemicize, while criticism in the regions where the Palestinian Talmud originated was only possible in encrypted form. Jewish counterhistory, according to Schäfer, served self-justification: “And at precisely the time when Christianity rose from modest beginnings to

Jesus and His Impact on Jewish Antiquity • 17

its first triumphs, the Talmud (or rather the two Talmudim) would become the defining document of those who refused to accept the new covenant, who so obstinately insisted on the fact that nothing had changed and that the old covenant was still valid.”9

The Toledot Yeshu There is a coherent narrative about Jesus and the origins of Christianity in the form of the Toledot Yeshu, which is available in Aramaic, Hebrew, Yiddish, and Jewish Arabic. That this “life of Jesus” exists in numerous, widely divergent versions is an expression of the defensiveness of Jews who had lived in the Diaspora under the repression of Christian rule since late antiquity. It interprets the Gospel reports about the life of Jesus in a pronouncedly anti-Christian way and consequently reviles the central beliefs of the followers of the one who they believed was the true Messiah, conceived of God in the Virgin Mary. Maier terms this “story of Jesus,” infused with all the satirical and polemical style of an entertaining novel, a kind of underground literature: The core is based on an Aramaic version from the eighth/ninth century, probably along with the Western Diaspora traditions. Popular versions developed during the Middle Ages which, during the modern period, circulated as secret reading in German Jewish works. Joseph’s fiancée Mary is deceived or seduced by a Roman soldier named Pandera and so conceives Jesus, who works miracles by using spells he learned from John the Baptist or by making use of the tetragrammaton stolen from the Temple. This demagogue declares himself the Messiah and Son of God, he is defeated by

18  •  Jesus Reclaimed

Judas and is then handed over to the wise representatives of righteousness. The disciples steal his body and claim he had risen from the dead.10 This folk literature, with all its malice, is evidence of the suffering of the Jews in the Middle Ages. Schalom BenChorin cites the words of the Jewish historian Heinrich Graetz in relation to this: “The Christians shed our blood, we merely shed ink.”11 For the various versions of the Toledot, which is also known under the name Maasse Talui (ha’talui means “the hanged”), the Berlin Encyclopaedia Judaica of 1932 lists the following characteristic features: 1. Jesus is begotten and conceived in sin. 2. He forces himself into the synagogue and preaches as a disrespectful student in the presence of his teachers. 3. Through cunning, he acquires the name of God by writing it down on parchment and concealing it in a wound in his hip. 4. He gathers disciples around him, is summoned before the queen (anachronistically: Helena), and convinces her, and later the people, with miracles. 5. Judas, called to expose Jesus, is also granted possession of God’s name and vanquishes Jesus. Both rise into the air by the power of God’s name. 6. Jesus returns to Jerusalem a second time to acquire God’s name again; he is betrayed and captured. 7. He asks all the trees that none of them serve as his gallows; he forgets the cabbage stalk and is hanged. 8. A gardener, Judah, steals Jesus’s body and secretly buries it in a different place. In his article in the Encyclopaedia Judaica, Jehoshua Gutt­ mann12 draws attention to the fact that different representations can be found in the Genizah fragments: Jesus rises

Jesus and His Impact on Jewish Antiquity • 19

into the air prior to the Crucifixion by the power of God’s name; the gardener Judah tries to follow him, whereupon Jesus conceals himself in the cave of the prophet Elijah which he immediately closes by the power of God’s name. The Toledot Yeshu was often cited and attacked, and used for anti-Jewish agitation from the time of the church fathers up until Martin Luther. With the assistance of a Jewish convert to Christianity, the Viennese theologian Thomas Ebendorfer (1388–1464) created a Latin translation of the Toledot Yeshu and attached to it under the title Falsitates Judeorum an anti-Christian invective poem in Hebrew with interlinear glosses and commentary as well as an unfinished anti-Jewish treatise. This translation was used for anti-Jewish propaganda purposes at a time when Jews were almost completely expelled from the Holy Roman Empire and confirms the earliest Christian reception of the entire Toledot Yeshu in medieval Ashkenaz. Ebendorfer’s transmission is also one of the oldest records of a Jewish life of Jesus at all.13 A detailed analysis of the individual motives in the Toledot Yeshu was argued in 1902 by Samuel Krauss.14 His argument instigated a new scholarly discussion of Judas Iscariot as a Jewish figure at the time.15 Some years later there was a related discussion pertaining to a Jewish Persian Toledot Yeshu manuscript.16

Rabbinic Polemics against Jesus While the Toledot Yeshu as a parody of the life of Jesus was folk literature, in Spain and southern France Jewish polemicists began to refute Christian and Christological positions at a more scholarly level. Rabbi Shem Tov ben Isaac ibn Shaprut (1350–unknown), who participated in the 1379 disputation in Pamplona, was the first to translate the Gospel of Matthew and parts of the other three Gospels into Hebrew. It was Joseph Kimchi (1105–1170),

20 • Jesus Reclaimed

however, who wrote one of the first anti-Christian polemics: Sefer Ha’Berit (Book of the Covenant), printed in Constantinople in 1710. The book is a dialogue between a “faithful” (ma’amin) and a “heretic” (min) and attacks Christological interpretations of the Bible. Additional topics include original sin, the incarnation, and the moral standards of Jews and Christians concerning the issue of usury. As an apologetic work, Sefer Ha’Berit is a response to anti-Jewish Christian antagonism.17 It states, “If, as you say, God was made flesh, did Jesus then have the soul of God? If this is the case, why then did he cry out that God had forsaken him? However, if he had a human soul, and you assert that the deity was present within him after his death, then for Jesus was true what applies to all of humankind.”18 Kimchi not only had a huge influence on Nachmanides (1194–1270), but he also inspired his son, David Kimchi (1160–1236), who became one of the greatest scripture commentators of his time. Kimchi wrote: “Jesus himself said that he had not come to destroy the Torah, but to preserve it.”19 Among the Jewish polemics which countered Christian interpretation of the Hebrew Bible or questioned Christian doctrine in a rational manner were the following: • Kalimmat Ha’Gojim (The Shame of the Gentiles) by Profiat Duran (Isaac ben Moses = Ephodi) (Perpignan, 1379) • Bitul Ikkarei Ha’Nozerim Dat (The Repeal of Dogmas of the Faith of Christians) by Hasdai Crescas (1340– 1410/1411) • Sefer Nizzachon (Book of Refutation) from the Rhineland (thirteenth or fourteenth century) • Hizzuk Emunah (Strengthening of the Faith) by Isaac ben Abraham of Troki (1593)

Jesus and His Impact on Jewish Antiquity • 21

Gershom Scholem (1897–1982) mentions Profiat Duran, who believed Jesus and his disciples were not only great magicians, but actual Kabbalists who were subject to a false interpretation: “The doctrine of the trinity, which they erroneously attributed to the deity, arose among them as a result of their missteps in his science [the Kabbalah] which established the primordial light, the radiant light and the transparent light.”20 Thus, “Profiat Duran regarded Jesus as a ‘naive (or perfect) saint,’ his disciples as misguided.”21 The Sefer Nizzahon Yashan [Latin: Nizzahon Vetus; Old Book of Polemic] is a collection of Jewish reactions to Christian polemic and was probably produced toward the end of the thirteenth or early in the fourteenth century. The anonymous Ashkenazi author cites Christian testimonials followed by Jewish responses. David Berger, who edited and translated this work into English, described its organization as almost encyclopedic. It was also a useful aid for Jews who engaged in disputations with Christians. The author refutes the Gospels with considerable competence both in theology and Latin.22 Sefer Nizzahon Yashan can also be linked to notions of vengeance and redemption, for example, when it describes the coming of the Messiah. Israel Yuval describes how medieval Jews made use of the liturgical language of the other side in order to internally confirm their own position as well as externally and proactively proclaiming it: “This [that is, the ultimate] end consists in the utter destruction of all nations, with their heavenly princes and gods. … The Holy One, blessed be He, will destroy all the other nations; Israel alone [will remain].”23 He connects the Te Deum with the Aleinu: Christian prayer praises Jesus as “King of Glory” (rex gloriae) and announces his incarnation, whereby the body of the Holy Virgin was not desecrated; on the other

22 • Jesus Reclaimed

hand, an addendum to the Aleinu from twelfth-century French Jewish prayer books contains sharp denunciations of Jesus and Mary.24

Christian Talmud Criticism and Censorship On the ecclesiastical side, the Middle Ages gave rise to intense Christian polemic. With the emergence of the mendicant orders in the thirteenth century, new methods of evangelizing Jews developed. The methods of argumentation were tested in public disputations and were dominated by the view that it was possible to demonstrate the veritas christiana by appealing to the traditional rabbinic texts. Differing concepts of the Messiah and the Jewish image of Jesus were brought up in this context. Ora Limor emphasizes that the argument was no longer limited to the Bible, but now also included the Talmud. However, what irritated Christians about the Talmud were not the halakhic elements but the aggadic material. Christian critics discovered heresies there, offenses against the holiness of God, and alleged slurs at Christianity. They interpreted the Talmud as an incorrect interpretation of the Bible and thus as the root of Jewish heresy par excellence.25 Around 1200, the church began to censor Hebrew manuscripts in general. Jewish literature was thereby equated with the writings of so-called heretics. After 1230, Christian preachers, such as the Franciscan Berthold of Regensburg (1210–1272) and the lyric poet Conrad of Würzburg (1220/1230–1287; still known as “Master Konrad,” in literary history) identified Jews as heretics: if Jews adhered to the Talmud, they are all doomed to hell. The charge of blasphemy eventually led to a campaign against rabbinic literature itself. In 1239, the baptized Jew Nicholas Donin (dates unknown) filed charges against the Talmud, and Pope Gregory IX (1167–1241) ordered the kings of England,

Jesus and His Impact on Jewish Antiquity • 23

France, Portugal, and Castile to confiscate all copies of the Talmud and excommunicate any clerics who continued to retain Hebrew literature. Louis IX of France (1214–1270) was the only sovereign to endorse this appeal. To clarify the allegations, he also initiated a public disputation in Paris in 1240 in which Rabbi Yehiel ben Joseph argued, among other things, that the Talmudic polemic refers to a Jesus who had studied with Joshua ben Perahyah but was not “Rabbi Jesus of Nazareth, who certainly did not reject the Torah.”26 The argumentation of the rabbis could not prevent the public burning of twenty-four wagonloads of Talmudim (over ten thousand Talmud volumes) on 29 September 1242 in Paris. This Talmud burning is considered one of the greatest crimes against culture of the Christian Middle Ages. Rabbi Meir ben Baruch of Rothenburg (ca. 1215–1293) was a witness who then wrote the lament “Sha’ali Serufah Ba’Esh … Inquire, oh thou who art burned by fire, about the welfare of those who mourn for thee.”27 This elegy has since been integrated into the Ashkenazi liturgy every year on the day of mourning the destruction of the Temple, Tisha B’Av. In 1244, Pope Innocent IV (1195–1254) confirmed that God, Jesus, and Mary were blasphemed in the Talmud, that the oral teaching adulterates biblical law which already refers to Jesus, and that it trains Jews to reject the true teaching of the church. In response to the Jewish argument that the Talmud was indispensable for Jews to understand the Hebrew Bible, the pope established an expert commission of forty Christian scholars (including Albert the Great, 1200–1280), who once again condemned the Talmud. In addition to the Paris Disputation (1240), other famous medieval disputations include Barcelona (1263) and Tortosa (1413/1414). Of particular interest concerning the Jewish image of Jesus is the attitude of the biblical commentator Nachmanides (1194–1270) in Barcelona. He

24 • Jesus Reclaimed

writes, “As a result, we agreed first to consider the issue of the Messiah, if he has already come, as the Christians believe, or whether he would come in the future, as the Jews believe. After that we wanted to discuss whether the Messiah was truly God or fully human, produced by a man and a woman. Thereupon we wanted to discuss whether the Jews held fast to the true law, or whether the Christians practiced it.”28 Censorship continued as a result of these disputations, along with the confiscation and burning of the Talmud by popes, French kings, and the Inquisition. This all-encompassing rejection of the Talmud and the associated incrimination finally led to a kind of self-censorship of the offensive passages within the Jewish community (usually remarks concerning the Roman Empire and Greco-Roman paganism and passages on the conversion to Christianity or regarding the Samaritans). The oldest printed Talmud (Venice, 1523) contains nothing about Jesus. In the Basel edition of the Talmud (1578–1580), all passages from the Babylonian Talmud in which Jesus was mentioned or with which Christianity could be associated were deleted. These deleted passages were later cited in special collections.29 Uncensored Talmud editions were not published in Europe until the early twentieth century, and even then only in critical scholarly works. Protestant theologians also had difficulties with the Talmud in the early modern era. For Johann Jacob Rabe (1710–1798), who translated the Mishnah into German around 1760, the long suffering of the Jews was punishment for their rejection of God’s Son and the secularization and “blackout” of the divine commandments of the Bible through “Pharisaic Judaism.”30

Notes 1. Leo Trepp, Der jüdische Gottesdienst: Gestalt und Entwicklung (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1992), 200.

Jesus and His Impact on Jewish Antiquity • 25

2. Cited according to Daniel Krochmalnik, “Parschandata: Raschi und seine Zeit,” Jüdisches Leben in Bayern: Mitteilungsblatt des Landesverbandes der israelitischen Kultusgemeinden in Bayern, April 2005: 43. 3. See S. David Sperling, “Jewish Perspectives on Jesus,” in Jesus Then & Now: Images of Jesus in History and Christology, ed. Marvin Meyer and Charles Hughes (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 2001), 251–259. 4. Henry Chadwick, ed., Origenes: Contra Celsum (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953). 5. Schalom Ben-Chorin, Theologia Judaica: Gesammelte Aufsätze, ed. Verena Lenzen (Tübingen: Mohr, 1992), 2:265. 6. Joseph Klausner, Jesus of Nazareth: His Life, Times and Teaching (New York: Bloch, 1989), 27f. 7. Johann Maier, Jesus von Nazareth in der talmudischen Überlieferung, 2nd ed. (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1992), 268. 8. Peter Schäfer, Jesus in the Talmud (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007), 71. 9. Ibid., 2. 10. Johann Maier, Judentum von A bis Z: Glauben, Geschichte, Kultur (Freiburg: Herder, 2001), 232. 11. Ben-Chorin, Theologia Judaica, 2:229. 12. Jehoschua Guttmann, “Jesus von Nazareth, Toldot Jeschu,” in Encyclopaedia Judaica (Berlin: Eschkol, 1932), vol. 9, col. 78f. 13. Brigitta Callsen, Fritz Peter Knapp, Manuela Nisner, and Martin Przybilski, Das jüdische Leben Jesu, Toldot Jeschu: Die älteste lateinische Übersetzung in den Falsitates Judeorum von Thomas Ebendorfer (Munich: Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, 2003). 14. Samuel Krauss, Das Leben Jesu nach jüdischen Quellen (Berlin: S. Calvary, 1902). 15. Samuel Krauss, “Neuere Ansichten über ‘Toldoth Jeschu,’” Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums 76, no. 6 (1932): 586–603; Bernhard Hel-

26 • Jesus Reclaimed

16.

17. 18.

19. 20. 21.

22.

23.

24. 25.

26.

27.

ler, “Über das Alter der jüdischen Judas-Sage und des Toldot Jeschu,” Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums 78, no. 3 (1934): 198–210. Cf. Walter J. Fischel, “Eine jüdisch-persische ‘Toldoth Jeschu’: Handschrift,” Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums 78, no. 3 (1934): 343–350. Kurt Schubert, Jüdische Geschichte, Beck’sche Reihe 2018 (Munich: Beck, 1995), 75. Joseph Kimchi, Sefer Ha’Berit (Constantinople, 1750), 27, cited in Pinchas Lapide, Ist das nicht Josephs Sohn? Jesus im heutigen Judentum (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus Gerd Mohn, 1987), 100. Cited in Lapide, Ist das nicht Josephs Sohn?, 101. Cf. Gershom Scholem, Origins of the Kabbalah (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1987), 354. Profiat Duran, Kelimat ha-Goyim [The Shame of the Gentiles], cited in Pinchas Lapide, Hebrew in the Church: The Foundations of Jewish-Christian Dialogue (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1984), 40. David Berger, The Jewish-Christian Debate in the High Middle Ages: A Critical Edition of the Nizahon Vetus (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1979), 36. Cited in Israel Yuval, Two Nations in Your Womb: Perception of Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 93. Cf. ibid., 201. Ora Limor, “Religionsgespräche: jüdisch-christlich,” in Theologische Realenzyklopädie, ed. Gerhard Müller et al. (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2006), 28: 649f. Cf. Lapide, Ist das nicht Josephs Sohn?, 93; see also Reuven Margolies, ed., Vikuah R. Yehiel mi-Pariz (Lwow, 1928), 15–17. Cf. the critical edition of Daniel Goldschmidt, ed., Seder ha-Qinot le-Tish’ah be’Av (Jerusalem: Mosad ha-Rav Kook, 1972), 135–137.

Jesus and His Impact on Jewish Antiquity • 27

28. Cf. Hans-Georg von Mutius, Die christlich-jüdische Zwangsdisputation zu Barcelona, Judentum und Umwelt 5 (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1982), 28. 29. See also “Jesus,” in Encyclopaedia Judaica (Jerusalem: Keter, 1978), vol. 10, col. 14. 30. Andreas Kilcher, “Gesetz und Auslegung: Die Mischna, das Elementarbuch der jüdischen Diaspora im Verlag der Weltreligionen,” Neue Zürcher Zeitung, no. 186 (12 August 2008): 51.

Chapter 2

The Historical Jesus A Jewish and a Christian Quest

Jesus and the Jewish Enlightenment The first real rapprochement between Jews and Christians came in the early modern period. The dawn of the Enlightenment was the dawn of new methodologies and questioning across religious and ethnic divides. Rabbi Jacob Emden’s (1697–1776) research was an early Jewish beacon of the changing times. He wrote about how Jesus’s message was not in fact directed to the Jewish people, but exclusively to the surrounding peoples in order to inspire them to follow the Noahide Laws. He wrote: Unlike the Karaites and the Sabbatians, Christians and Muslims belong to a community that exists for the sake of heaven and which will remain at the end. They have evolved out of Judaism and accept the foundations of our divine religion in order to make God known among the nations, to proclaim that there is one Lord of heaven and earth, divine providence, reward and punishment, who grants the gift of prophecy through the prophets and gives rules and regulations according to which we are supposed to live. … Therefore their community will last, and because their efforts are fo-

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cused on heaven they will not be deprived of their reward.1 There were two other Jewish voices who had already discussed Jesus before Jacob Emden: the Lithuanian Karaite Isaac ben Abraham of Troki (1533–1594) and the Venetian rabbi Leon de Modena (1571–1648). In response to Catholic missionary activity, the scholar Isaac of Troki authored a two-volume manuscript titled Hizzuk Emunah in 1593 (Affirmation of the Faith), which also contained early criticism of the Gospels. The work was completed by a student and includes fifty chapters in defense of the Jewish faith and another fifty chapters on contradictions and errors in the New Testament. Isaac of Troki criticized the fact that the author of the Gospels accused the Jews of Jesus’s death even though Jesus himself had wished to fulfill his God’s will by dying. He also noted that the Gospels offer no clear evidence for the Trinity, the virgin birth, and the supposed divinity of the Son of Man. The Gentile Christian dogmas of the Trinity, original sin, and redemption were also concerns of Leon de Modena who, in Magen wa-Hereb (Sword and Trowel), described Jesus as a liberal Pharisee who considered himself one of the ones chosen by God; a Torah teacher superior to the prophets but not a divine being who had fallen into disrepute among other Pharisees because of his disregard for halakhic rules, such as the washing of the hands.2 These writings, which had been largely ignored by Christians, were rediscovered to scholarship in the nineteenth century thanks to Abraham Geiger’s Issak Troki: Ein Apologet des Judenthums am Ende des 16. Jahrhunderts (An Apologist for Judaism at the End of the Sixteenth Century, Breslau, 1853). Three years later, in 1856, Geiger published Leon da Modena: Rabbiner zu Venedig und seine Stellung zur Kabbalah, zum Thalmud und zum Christentume (Rabbi to Venice and His Position on the

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Kabbalah, the Talmud, and Christianity) in Breslau (today Wrocław), where he called Modena a precursor to the Jewish quest of the historical Jesus.3 The pioneer of the Jewish Enlightenment, the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn (1729–1786), turned decidedly against the Toledot Yeshu and wrote, “Jesus of Nazareth himself observed not only the law of Moses but also the ordinances of the rabbis; and whatever seems to contradict this in the speeches and acts ascribed to him appears to do so only at first glance. Closely examined, everything is in complete agreement not only with Scripture, but also with the tradition.”4 In the wake of the Enlightenment and Jewish emancipation, the apologetic and polemical position could be overcome in favor of constructive discussion. The French physician Joseph Salvador (1796–1873) presented the first Jewish Jesus monograph in 1838.5 As part of the emerging field of Jewish studies, Isaak Markus Jost (1793–1860) opened with his appreciative classification of Jesus as a Volkslehrer (a teacher of the people) in his Allgemeine Geschichte des Israelitischen Volkes (General History of the Israelites), a path which was taken in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries primarily by liberal Jewish thinkers.6

The Christian Quest of the Historical Jesus: A Departure from Dogma There was epochal change in religious Christian scholarship during the modern period when the question of the historical Jesus and his environment came under much closer scrutiny.7 In her collection of Gospel narratives, Amy-Jill Levine succinctly explains the then new, and for many still current, approach of historical Jesus research: “The so-called quest of the historical Jesus seeks to understand the man from Nazareth as he was understood in his

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own context and as he understood himself…The understandings of the man from Nazareth vary according to the investigator’s personal interests and also vary depending on the method used, the aspects of Jesus’ life highlighted, the construal of Jesus’ social situation, even the investigator’s theological worldview.”8 Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768) and David Friedrich Strauss (1808–1874) were the first to embark on the Christian quest of the historical Jesus proper. Reimarus, who was appointed professor of Hebrew and Oriental languages at the Hamburg Gymnasium, never made his views on Christianity public. Fragments of his work were posthumously published by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing in 1774 and 1778 and included Von dem Zwecke Jesu und seiner Jünger (The Aims of Jesus and His Disciples).9 Reimarus speculated that there was a profound difference between what Jesus really taught “in accordance with the Jewish way of speaking” and what his disciples preached about him: “I find great cause to separate completely what the apostles say in their own writings from that which Jesus himself actually said and taught.”10 According to Reimarus, Jesus considered himself the Jewish Messiah, a politically motivated candidate for kingship who had announced the deliverance of the Jews from the Romans as the beginning of the Kingdom of God. In opposition to Judaism, his disciples subsequently made him into the savior of people, delivering them from sin, and made him the founder of Christianity. And how did they do it? Reimarus explains that the apostles stole the body (cf. Mt 28:11–15) in order to deceive themselves and the public and to overcome Jesus’s failure. After fifty days they proclaimed his resurrection and imminent return. The quest of the historical Jesus was continued by David Friedrich Strauss, who, at the age of only twenty-eight, had already published his monumental work The Life of Jesus: Critically Examined.11 He also distinguished between

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the historical person of Jesus of Nazareth and the Christ of faith and he also revised an explanation of belief in Christ as a “deception.” Strauss believed he could clearly recognize the outline of the historical figure, but also that it was unintentionally veiled by the poetic legend of myth. Thus, Strauss proposed a mythical transformation of the Jesus tradition. Strauss argued that unconscious mythical imagination rather than deliberate deception explained how Jesus could turn into Christ. Although he considered the myth a positive concept—namely, as an expression of the idea of a unity of God and man—his 1835 publication shocked both theologians and church. David Friedrich Strauss invoked Jesus’s life against church dogma. He saw parallels between criticism leveled against dogma during his time and the history of Jesus. The very criticism which Jesus passed during his lifetime could now be used to free Jesus from church dogma. “For Strauss, a declared Hegelian, the inner nucleus of Christian faith is not touched by the mythical approach. For in the historical individual Jesus is realized the idea of God-humanity, the highest of all ideas.”12 Strauss was offered a theological chair in Zurich in 1839, but he instead chose to work as an independent scholar due to hostility from conservative church circles. A new edition of Das Leben Jesu für das deutsche Volk bearbeitet (The Life of Jesus for the German People) in 1864 was translated into several European languages and helped spread awareness regarding the question of what we can know about Jesus. A number of Strauss’s colleagues and students, among them Ferdinand Christian Baur (1792–1860) and Edward Gottlob Zeller (1814–1908), further expanded on their teacher’s methods and laid the foundations for the socalled Tübinger Schule (Tübingen School) which reinforced and promoted the historical-critical method. A number of Catholic theologians also addressed this issue in the 18th century; including, Johann Sebastian Drey

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(1777–1853) and Johann Adam Möhler (1796–1838).13 The concept of “myth” also played a major role for these scholars. “Myth,” however, was not made truly famous until the twentieth century, when the theologian Rudolf Bultmann (1884–1976) dedicated himself entirely to “demythologizing” the New Testament. The concept of “myth” also plays a crucial role in the conflict between Adolf von Harnack (1851–1930) and Leo Baeck (1872–1956) (this will be discussed later in detail). We should also mention another intriguing personality in this field, one who, in his own manner, devoted himself to researching the life of Jesus: the third president of the United States, Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826). In 1895, the National Museum in Washington posthumously published his work The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth: Extracted Textually from the Gospels in Greek, Latin, French and English, in which, inter alia, he dismissed the resurrection of Jesus, the central belief of Christianity, as “superstition.” The title of this work clearly shows Jefferson’s text-critical approach. It was quite a novelty for both Christian theology as well as Judaism, when, in the wake of the Enlightenment, people began to view history as a dynamic process, thus it was subject to human evaluation.14 Ernst Troeltsch (1865– 1923) recognized that religion was also historically conditioned and consequently relative,15 which is why he wanted to expose religion to the probability judgments of historical criticism using the methods of analogy and correlation. Troeltsch argued that, as a matter of principle, historical events are equivalent and interdependent, but, nevertheless, religion must have its source in absolute values. Paul Tillich (1886–1965), one of the most important theologians of the twentieth century, later elevated the method of correlation to the central approach of systematic theology.16 In Philosophical Fragments,17 Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) had already concluded much earlier

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that any claims to eternal bliss could not be proven because everything historical is also relative. Christians nevertheless still live in hope of achieving this. Historical facts on Jesus—as accurate as they may be—were nevertheless irrelevant to Kierkegaard, as they cannot contain any proof that Jesus is God. This assertion is of a totally different nature: God voluntarily discarded his majesty to become a lowly servant in order to side with his creatures out of love for humankind.18 It is from this paradox of faith in a God incarnate, says Kierkegaard, that Christians draw life. In Concluding Unscientific Postscript, he notes that, for theology, the historical-critical method could, therefore, only be of relative importance.19 This draws on the insight Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729–1781) had already formulated in On the Proof of the Spirit and of Power: The problem is that reports of fulfilled prophecies are not fulfilled prophecies; that reports of miracles are not miracles. These, the prophecies fulfilled before my eyes, the miracles that occur before my eyes, are immediate in their effect. But those—the reports of fulfilled prophecies and miracles, have to work through a medium which takes away all their force. … If no historical truth can be demonstrated, then nothing can be demonstrated by means of historical truths. That is: accidental truths of history can never become the proof of necessary truths of reason.20 Therefore, while the teachings of Jesus may bring one to believe, reports of Jesus’s deeds and miracles do not. For a limited time, historical awareness had a serious impact on the wider perception of Jesus. Like Lessing, Adolf von Harnack, some 150 years later, was convinced that temporally related challenges to Jesus would eventu-

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ally fade, but that his timeless message would remain: “Either the Gospel is in all respects identical with its earliest form, in which case it came with its time and has departed with it; or else it contains something which, under differing historical forms, is of permanent validity. The latter is the true view. The history of the church shows us in its very commencement that ‘primitive Christianity’ had to disappear in order that ‘Christianity’ might remain.”21 Concerning the effect the quest of the historical Jesus had on Christian faith, Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) argued that each new generation would project its own ideal of humanity onto Jesus: The study of the Life of Jesus has had a curious history. It set out in quest of the historical Jesus, believing that when it had found Him it could bring Him straight into our time as a Teacher and Saviour. It loosed the bands by which He had been riveted for centuries to the stony rocks of ecclesiastical doctrine, and rejoiced to see life and movement coming into the figure once more, and the historical Jesus advancing, as it seemed, to meet it. But He does not stay; He passes by our time and returns to His own. … Jesus means something to our world because a mighty spiritual force streams forth from Him and flows through our time also. This fact can neither be shaken nor confirmed by any historical discovery. It is the solid foundation of Christianity. The mistake was to suppose that Jesus could come to mean more to our time by entering into it as a man like ourselves. That is not possible. First because such a Jesus never existed. Secondly because, although historical knowledge can no doubt introduce greater clearness into an existing spiritual life, it cannot call spiritual life into existence. History can destroy the present; it can reconcile the present with the past; can even

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to a certain extent transport the present into the past; but to contribute to the making of the present is not given unto it.22 For Albert Schweitzer, it was impossible to remove the historical Jesus from his time. The unavailability of the historical Jesus and the constant struggle between historical and dogmatic methods informed the context for the modern Christian debate about Jesus. It is the criticism of dogma by so-called liberal Christian theology that makes the historical Jesus studies stimulating. Like when Johannes Weiss (1863–1914), following on from Albrecht Ritschl (1822–1889), demonstrates in Die Predigt Jesu vom Reiche Gottes (Jesus’s Proclamation of the Kingdom of God)23 that Jesus’s preaching was purely eschatological and argued that the Kingdom of God was an immanent moral task.24 His student Wilhelm Herrmann (1846– 1922)25 held that Christian faith can be stripped from false Greek philosophical speculation using historical insight and evidence. Whereby, God reveals himself to humankind through the historical Jesus. The “inner life” of Jesus can be found in the New Testament and has the power to impress on those who form the Christian community. This freedom from any metaphysical supports clearly indicates the Kantian and positivist undertones in Herrmann’s theology. Along with Martin Kähler (1835–1912),26 Herrmann was very cautious about the significance of the quest of the historical Jesus, especially given that textual evidence always depends on the prerequisite of the resurrection and this very presupposition is what makes it very difficult to establish an historical Jesus in the first place. Rudolf Bultmann (1884–1976) developed his existentialist interpretation for this very reason.27 He published his Geschichte der synoptischen Tradition (History of the Synoptic Tradition) in 1921,28 which was a cornerstone for the Form Criticism discipline as a way of understand-

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ing the composition of the Synoptic Gospels. He finally dissociated himself from liberal theology in 1924. In his classic treatment of the historical Jesus, Jesus and the Word,29 Bultmann asserts that “we can now know almost nothing concerning the life and personality of Jesus, since the early Christian sources show no interest in either, are moreover fragmentary and often legendary.”30 What can be discovered, on the basis of critical assessment of the earliest Palestinian level of tradition, are the essentials of Jesus’s message, his “word.” This “word” is connected with the coming of the Kingdom of God, a “miraculous eschatological event,” but one that has to be interpreted existentially: “The Kingdom of God is a power which, although it is entirely future, wholly determines the present because it now compels man to decision.”31 For Bultmann, no path leads back to the historical Jesus. “The message of Jesus is a presupposition for the theology of the New Testament rather than a part of that theology itself.”32 What is significant for the Christian faith is the “kerygmatic” Christ alone, that is, not what Jesus said and did but what God said and did through Jesus on the cross and in the resurrection. One should not inquire beyond this, because in faith, by definition, there is no objective certainty. And so Bultmann holds the view that any scholarly “quest of the historical Jesus” is not only impossible, but theologically illegitimate because it substitutes worldly proof for faith. However, just as many in the field believed the quest had, once again, reached a dead end, scholars picked up the baton and embarked on what is now termed the New Quest. It was in fact Bultmann’s own student Ernst Käsemann (1906–1998),33 who first brought Jesus’s Jewish provenance back into the fold when he taught that the historical “that” of the existence of Jesus indeed has meaning for the Christian faith and that it is also inextricably linked with the question of “how.”34 As the Lord of the church cannot be viewed entirely as a mythological being, unconnected

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to his historical existence, Käsemann proposed that at least some interest in the historical Jesus is theologically valid. “[Jesus] was a Jew and made the assumption of Jewish piety, but at the same time he shatters this framework with his claim [to be the Messiah].”35 Käsemann’s statement referred back to Ferdinand Christian Baur and set in motion what came to be called the “new quest of the historical Jesus.”36 It was Gerhard Ebeling (1912–2001),37 one of the main representatives of hermeneutic theology, who argued that a reconsideration of the historical Jesus was important for the Christology of the church. Throughout his life, Jesus had been a witness of faith and, as a believer, Jesus links Christianity with the historical Judaism of his time and its historical impact. Through his resurrection, Jesus transforms from a witness of faith to a reason for faith that gives the church a framework and a standard. For the eminent Catholic theologian and Vatican II peritus Hans Küng (b. 1928), both the history of the impact and the historical Jesus are equally important. For Küng, the history of the impact begins even before the historical Jesus: “Because the incarnation was prepotently willed from eternity in God’s decree, it could make that redeeming power radiate even before it became a historical event.”38 Thus, he considers the historical person of Jesus of paramount importance. Küng’s criticism of earlier approaches to the quest of the historical Jesus refers to the often-anachronistic appeal to sources that were never meant to be historical records, but rather testimonies of faith. This ahistoricity of the sources, however, is not reason enough for Küng not to consider them in relation to the question of the historical life of Jesus: “The road obviously ran from history to myth and not from myth to history. Jesus of Nazareth is not a myth: his history can be located. … Jesus of Nazareth is not a myth: his history can be dated.”39 Thus, for Küng, a strict separation of the “historical” Jesus and the “believed” Jesus is not productive

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concerning the question about who Jesus is and was. “Certainly the testimonies of faith are not simply accounts, but they contain an account and are based on accounts of the real Jesus.”40 Küng, therefore, is unsatisfied with pure kerygmatic theology. He asserts: “A scholarly answer to the question about the Jesus of history is again regarded as possible today in a new form and within certain limits. … The kerygma of the community simply cannot be understood unless we begin quite concretely with the historical Jesus of Nazareth, as Bultmann’s theology of the New Testament also proves.”41 And this historical context is a Jewish context: This is also what makes this Jesus alien to us Christians. His language itself is foreign to us. For us it always presents a linguistic and theological problem: the often double and triple translation and retranslation from a modern language into Greek and from Greek back into Hebrew or Aramaic. We have the same problem with the metaphors which he used. [That] makes him alien to us Christians, but contemporary to you Jews. … For a long time there has been a greater open-mindedness towards the Old Testament: that we must not only interpret it in a Christian way, but also understand it independently of Christianity.42 Hans Küng then asked: “Can historical-critical research on Jesus, can theological scholarship as a whole produce faith, the certainty of faith, as some hope? No, it cannot provide reasons for faith. For I do not believe ‘in’ research, in theological scholarship, in the results of scholarship. … I believe—first of all, to put it quite simply—in God as he addresses me in this Jesus.”43 And yet Küng still finds it important to pursue the quest for the historical Jesus: “There was faith even before Jesus research, and today

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many believe without regard to the results of research. Such a faith however must be described as naïve in the light of the present state of consciousness. Naiveté in matters of faith is not evil but at the least dangerous.”44 Concerning the relationship between Christians and Jews, Hans Küng sees the perception of Jesus as central: “Can we ever overlook the real point of the controversy? The very person who seems to unite Jews and Christians also separates them abysmally: the Jew Jesus of Nazareth.”45 “For Christians this Jesus of Nazareth is the authoritative standard and he is not only—as Karl Jaspers says—one of the archetypal human beings, but the archetype properly so called. This would be the real difference. For a Jew … , now as before, the law is the authoritative standard and not this Jesus of Nazareth.”46 And he reinforces Ernst Käsemann’s intention to revisit the historical Jesus by quoting him as a conclusion to Küng’s chapter “Christianity and Judaism”: “We must learn again to spell out the question: who is Jesus? Everything else is distraction. We must measure ourselves against Jesus, not measure him against our churches, dogmas and devout church members. … Their value depends entirely on the extent to which they point away from themselves and call us to follow Jesus as Lord.”47 The center of Karl Rahner’s Christology (1904–1984) is the understanding of Jesus as a “Real Symbol”48 whose humanity must be considered as the self-expression of God in history. Rahner’s thinking is based on the definition of Jesus Christ by the Fourth Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon (451): Therefore, following the holy fathers, we all with one accord teach men to acknowledge one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, at once complete in Godhead and complete in manhood, truly God and truly man, consisting also of a reasonable soul and body, of one substance with the Father as re-

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gards his Godhead, and at the same time of one substance with us as regards his manhood; like us in all respects, apart from his sin; as regards his Godhead, begotten of the Father before the ages, but yet as regards his manhood begotten, for us men and for our salvation, of Mary the Virgin, the God-bearer; one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, recognized in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation; the distinction of natures being in no way annulled by the union, but rather the characteristics of each nature being preserved and coming together to form one person and subsistence, not as parted or separated into two persons, but one and the same Son and Only-begotten God the Word, Lord Jesus Christ; even as the prophets from earliest times spoke of him, and our Lord Jesus Christ himself taught us, and the creed of the Fathers has handed down to us.49 Jesus Christ—by being “human” in the fullest sense—can bring God into the immanence of this world. Karl Rahner’s Christology can, thus, be described as transcendental anthropology.50 While Küng represents a Christology with a possibility to approach Jesus “from below,”51 Rahner represents a “Christology from above.” The relationship between the historical Jesus and the Christ of faith also became a matter of concern for the cardinal and president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, Walter Kasper (b. 1933). In his 1974 book Jesus the Christ, he strengthens the claim of historical Jesus studies but also emphasizes the question of its “theological relevance.”52 It is precisely the question of the theological relevance from a Christian perspective that can also distort the view of the historical person of Jesus. For the old church, the

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doctrine of the Trinity was based on incarnational Christology, and the miracle was the human nature of Jesus. In the modern era, the divine nature of Jesus is the subject of inquiry. So there are two conflicting modes of viewing Jesus within Christianity: while the so-called Christology from below concerns itself with the figure of Jesus and his historical context, Christology from above focuses on the incarnation—how God as God turned toward humanity. This Christology already assumes the divinity of Jesus in order to achieve a reconciliation of God and humanity, a reconciliation that according to Judaism has always been granted by God. Wolfhart Pannenberg (b. 1928), for example, begins with the resurrection as a historical event, thus emphasizing that Jesus only received his authority for Christianity through his redeeming action.53 In Jesus: God and Man,54 he constructs a Christology “from below,” deriving his dogmatic claims from a critical examination of the life and particularly the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. This is his programmatic statement of the notion of “history as revelation.”55 He rejects the traditional Chalcedonian “two natures” Christology, preferring to view the person of Christ in light of the resurrection dynamically. The effect of the history of this event continuously reveals its role for humanity. This focus on the resurrection as the key to Christ’s identity has led Pannenberg to defend its historicity, stressing the experience of the risen Christ in the history of the early church rather than the empty tomb. Thus, history receives its significance only proleptically as the historical facts are given their actual meaning. One would have to assume God’s perspective in order to comprehend the path of Jesus in the world. Humans, in their limitations, are unable to do so.56 This position also seems an apt description of Pope Benedict XVI’s image of Jesus, although he does admit that the historical-critical approach can nevertheless illuminate the context of Jesus’s earthly existence.57

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However, the significance of Jesus as the Christ and the true interpretation of the Bible in its two parts can only be assessed retrospectively—by faith. This approach, which conceals the historical Jesus completely behind the curtain of Christ, is proclaimed by the church. In this manner, the person is permanently separated from the function: as the ideal human type, pleasing to God (Immanuel Kant58), as incarnation of the idea of the unity of divine and human nature (Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel59), as assurance and sensuous perceptibility of the unity of God and humanity (David Friedrich Strauss60), as an example of unifying effect (Falk Wagner [1939–1998]61), or as the new being, for the being needs the example that the alienation of humanity from God can in principle be overcome (Paul Tillich62). According to the speculative theology of Alois Emanuel Biedermann (1819–1885), Jesus is the historical revelation of the savior principle.63 Such a view of Jesus, however, consigns the message which seeks to change human actions to the background. This tendency can be found in almost every theology from the two great Christian traditions. The origin of the nineteenth-century quest of the historical Jesus was shaped throughout by emergent Enlightenment rationalism; where getting close to the historical Jesus was a central aim. Over time this initial effort was increasingly pushed into the background by the question of the events and the significance of salvation. This logically led to underestimating the value of the Christian quest of the historical Jesus to central Christian theology. This became particularly apparent in the churches’ stance during the Third Reich and the Shoah. After World War II, the debate about the person of Jesus must be understood as part of a strategy to cope with the churches’ assumption of guilt for the Holocaust. In this regard, interest in Jesus as a historical person was primarily aimed at improving the relationship between the churches and Judaism.

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After 1970, Leonardo Boff (b. 1938) and Dorothee Sölle (1929–2003) concentrated their efforts on viewing Jesus as a political figure as part of their liberation theology. They saw him as a “revolutionary” who totally set himself apart from his former environment in his life and in his teachings.64 The fact that this was not the case was already established in the Christian quest of the historical Jesus from the nineteenth century. After three waves of the quest of the historical Jesus65 one can say that Jesus as a historical person had little lasting influence on Christian systematic theology, even less in Roman Catholic than in Protestant thought. The Second Vatican Council of the Catholic Church had no fundamental impact to change this perspective. Still, the declaration “Nostra Aetate” on the relation to non-Christian religions of 1965 acknowledges God’s lasting covenant with his people and the “bond that spiritually ties the people of the New Covenant to Abraham’s stock”. On the other hand, in the second half of the twentieth century, Protestant churches have been able to forge a close relationship with contemporary Judaism. Here, the challenge comes from evangelical movements which tend to emphasize the way the person of Jesus must ultimately point to that which separates Judaism and the Christian church. Christian revival faces a fundamental contradiction: on the one hand, its followers seek to establish a personal faith relationship to Jesus; on the other hand, they attach little importance to his actual life. It should be noted that Christian theologians never studied the life of Jesus without also focusing on his significance as the savior and central figure of the Christian faith. This perspective is to be expected and it must be respected. However, it is thanks to the unique perspective of the Jewish quest that there is a possibility to discuss Jesus without this dogmatic veil.

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The Jewish Quest as Repatriating Jesus to Judaism William Horbury, a professor of Jewish and early Christian studies at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of Corpus Christi College, is the author of the article Jesus Christ in the Perspective of Judaism. He gives us an excellent description of the Jewish position: “There is no uniform picture of Jesus Christ; one can describe Judaism, without mentioning him at all. From antiquity only a few Talmudic and other Jewish accounts of Jesus are extant. Later, medieval authors discuss him more intensively, often in an apologetic context. Finally, modern Jewish scholars contributed important insights into the quest of the historical Jesus.”66 Next to the key words “historical Jesus studies,” Horbury places an arrow referencing Mark Schröder’s article by that same title.67 Although, a number of Jews who examined Jesus’s life can be found in the article, the reading nevertheless disappoints. Schröder discusses the quest of the historical Jesus from Reimarus to Harnack and Bultmann up to Theissen. But not one of the Jewish scholars of the past two hundred years is mentioned by name. Is it possible that modern Judaism’s engagement with Jesus was so insignificant? Or is the Jewish contribution to historical Jesus studies considered so unimportant that it does not warrant the attention of Christian scholars? But these Jewish thinkers who took an interest in Jesus really do exist, to name but a few: Abraham Geiger, Joseph Klausner, Leo Baeck, Claude G. Montefiore, Robert Eisler, Joel Carmichael, Martin Buber, Schalom BenChorin, Hans-Joachim Schoeps, Pinchas Lapide, David Flusser, Ben Zion Bokser, Robert Raphael Geis, Samuel Sandmel, Hyam Maccoby, Ernst Ludwig Ehrlich, Michael Wyschogrod, Jacob Neusner. In fact, there has been something of a “repatriation of Jesus” to Judaism ever since the nineteenth century.

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Whereas Christian theology devalued the quest of the historical Jesus by turning away from theological liberalism, the beginning of scholarly Jewish research into Jesus which began at the same time continued the liberal tradition. In so doing, it emphasized aspects to which insufficient justice was done in Christian research, namely the Jewish character of the life and teaching of Jesus—a process which is part of “bringing Jesus home to Judaism.” Because the conflict with the Jewish Law was no longer located at the centre of Jesus’ life, other possibilities of interpreting Jesus’ violent death historically were considered.68 Thus Jesus was depicted in the classical accounts of the Jewish quest for Jesus as exemplary Jew and ethicist, as exhorting prophet, as revolutionary, rebel, and freedom fighter, as big brother, and as messianic Zionist.69 The impetus for this Jewish quest was most probably Julius Wellhausen (1844–1918) and the school of historical-critical biblical scholarship. Wellhausen formulated the following sentence, the consequences of which have influenced the work of Christians and Jews ever since: Jesus was not a Christian, he was a Jew.70 This statement must have been quite amazing for the Jewish (and Christian71) public during the nineteenth century—it was readily received by a community striving for civic equality according to Enlightenment principles and who saw itself thwarted in this pursuit by the idea of the “Christian state.” This Jewish study of the central figure of the New Testament was not of a fundamental nature. It came from an apologetic impulse: the desire to participate in the general society without renunciation of one’s Jewish identity. How convenient, then, that Jesus himself was a Jew.

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Abraham Geiger‘s (1810–1874) engagement with the Jewish Jesus and with Christianity provided the basis for a counterhistory. Its polemic tone expounded the reasons why nineteenth century Jews should remain devout, and why they should not view Christianity as a higher form of religious development, one which Judaism, it was implied, had never reached. And so Geiger rings in the dawn of a Jewish life-of-Jesus research era which demanded the appropriate respect for the Jewish sources in the context of religious studies. Particularly in relation to the most prominent and oldest area of Christian theology, namely, interpretation of the figure of Jesus, Jews, it was hoped, were to be regarded as equal partners with respect to research on early Judaism. Christians, however, did not regard the contributions from Jewish Jesus research as a helpful questioning of Christian prejudices or as an invitation to dialogue; instead, Christian scholars perceived Jewish contributions as arrogant. In his 1863 book Das Judenthum und seine Geschichte (Judaism and its History), Abraham Geiger draws a portrait of Jesus as one of the most influential Pharisees of his time.72 According to Geiger, the recorded words and deeds of Jesus are neither unique nor original.73 Rather, the sum total of Jesus’s teachings can be found in the Pharisaic literature. The early Christians, he argued, departed from this faith and doctrine due to Sadducean and pagan influences and absorbed elements from the Greco-Roman world. Geiger’s blueprint of Jesus as a Pharisee and Christianity as a betrayal of Jesus’s Jewish faith became a popular explanatory model of Christian origins for modern Judaism, while at the same time providing a defensive position against the Christian assumption that Judaism constituted merely a fossil, a step toward Christianity. According to this model, Judaism and Christianity entail one another, according to Geiger: there is no Christianity without Judaism, and the significance of Judaism for Western civili-

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zation ultimately depends on the success of its “daughter religions,” Christianity and Islam. Alas, Geiger’s view was not commonly shared by the wider public of the Second German Empire.

Judaism Out of Place: The Berlin Anti-Semitism Debate and Max Liebermann’s “Jesus” In the liberal mind of the Enlightenment, the emancipation of the Jews was a kind of collective educational process with the goal of dissolving Jewish group identity. Judaism was to be understood as a denomination. In 1869, the legal seal on Jewish emancipation was set into the law of the North German Confederation law. Ten years later, pernicious suggestions of a link between Jewish emancipation, the imposition of bourgeois capitalism and the first financial crash led to anti-Semitic campaigns which were ultimately caused by a perception of general instability. In addition, the Catholic stereotype of the culture was as a “war of the Jews against Christianity.” The Liberal’s defeat in the election of 1878/1879 and Bismarck’s antiliberal U-turn also contributed to the rise of modern anti-Semitism as a postemancipatory phenomenon.74 In 1866, the historian Heinrich von Treitschke (1834– 1896), professor of history at the University of Berlin since 1874, became the editor of the Preußische Jahrbücher (Prussian Yearbooks), which contained monthly discussions of politics. In his university lectures, journal articles, political essays, and multivolume German History in the Nineteenth Century, Treitschke was emphatic about his contempt for the Jews. The ostensible reason for Treitschke’s essay “Unsere Aussichten” (Our Prospects) in the Preußische Jahrbücher of November 1879, which culminated in the sentence “The Jews are our misfortune,” was

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Treitschke’s review of the eleventh volume of Heinrich Graetz’s Geschichte der Juden (History of the Jews). In this review he personally attacked Graetz as an example of the supposedly “fanatic rage” of the Jews toward Christianity, their “hereditary enemy.”75 Heinrich Graetz (1817–1891) was the most significant Jewish historian of the nineteenth century. With his History of the Jews (eleven volumes, 1856–1876), Graetz had written the most influential work on Jewish historiography up until that time. For Graetz, the Jewish people are the subject of a long and independent Jewish history proceeding according to its own laws from antiquity to the present. He considered Jewish history a history of suffering and scholarship by the Jews who were united as a people by this shared experience. This new national Jewish approach irritated all those who expected the full assimilation of Jews into the German nation. For most people, Graetz had been skating on thin ice from the very beginning. Only in the second edition of his third volume of History of the Jews of 1862 was he able to include a new chapter on the development of Christianity; in the first edition this chapter was omitted because of the publisher’s apprehensiveness.76 Already before Treitschke, the Kaiser’s court chaplain Adolf Stoecker (1835– 1909), founder of a Christian labor movement which opposed the Social Democrats, had discovered the power of anti-Semitic slogans. In September 1879, Stoecker accused largely acculturated Jews of having misinterpreted the meaning of emancipation if they believed they had become Germans and had earned equal rights. Orthodox Lutherans were particularly angered by the claim from Jewish scholars at the time that Judaism had a unique mission in the modern world. The notion of Judaism’s superiority over Christianity was, for Stoecker, nothing but blasphemy:

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People who pour scathing criticism on the state and church, personalities and affairs, are outraged to the extreme when others allow themselves to cast so much as a scrutinizing glance at Jewry. They themselves fall upon every non-Jewish activity with hatred and scorn. But if we softly speak a word of truth about their doings, they play the insulted innocent, the victims of intolerance, the martyrs of world history. … In fact, I see modern Jewry as a great danger to German national life. [By “modern Jewry”] I do not mean the religion of the Orthodox or the enlightenment of the Reformers. As for the Orthodox with their ossification of the law, their Old Testament without temple, priests, sacrifices, or messiah, they hold no attraction for the children of the nineteenth century and pose no dangers. In its deepest core it is a dead religious form, a lower stage of revelation, a spirit that has outlived itself and, although still worthy of honor, has been invalidated by Christianity. It has no more truth for the present. Reform Judaism has even less religious significance. It is neither Judaism nor Christianity but a shabby little survival of the Age of Enlightenment. … Both types [of Judaism] boast that the Jews are the bearers of the highest religious and moral ideas for the world and humanity and that the mission of Judaism now and for all the future consists of holding fast to these ideas, developing them further, and disseminating them. The Jewish press of the Right and Left is united in this. The incense emanating from the synagogues of both schools simply intoxicates the senses.77 Stoecker argued against rabbis, scholars, and publicists of all Jewish denominations who, in the tradition of Jew-

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ish scholarship, traced Christianity to its Jewish sources using the historical-critical method, such as Rabbi Seligmann Meyer, Rabbi Levi Lazarus Adler, and Sinai Simon Nascher: S. Meyer, editor of the Jüdische Presse, writes: “Indisputably, the lofty ideals upon which rests the moral order of the world and the intellectual content of modern culture and civilization which form the foundation of true brotherhood, all arise from Judaism.” “Everything good in the Gospels is not new, but rather derives from Judaism. And everything new in them is not good.” In the same vein Dr. Adler writes: “The religion of Israel is the eternal, unchanging truth. Christianity and Islam are the preliminary stages which the truth must ascend before the whole truth becomes accessible.” And the Reform rabbi Nascher joins in the chorus: “Israel’s mission and gift is to be the lighthouse on humanity’s sea of thought. It is called upon, like the stars, to shine upon the totality of its fellow-men, or so preaches the vain man to his vain congregation.” Even if one concedes that Israel has a lofty and lasting mission, who are the shining thinkers and poets filled with the spirit of God, proclaiming the living God, praising Him, and bringing Him honor? Perhaps the editors of the [Berliner] Tageblatt? Or the scholars at the Kladderadatsch?78 Where is the school for the prophets of the Holy Ghost in which the apostles for this world mission are to be educated? Where the missions? Where the missionaries? Perhaps on the stock exchanges of Berlin, Vienna, and Paris? Oh, no. The Jews would not be so foolish. And just this will be their doom. They foundered on Christ, lost their divine course, and surrendered their di-

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vine mission. Unheeding of the pithy maxim of the Lord Jesus that “thou canst not serve both God and Mammon,” the Jews ran after the golden calf, leaving off the ways of God. … Israel must give up the desire to be master in Germany. It must renounce the presumption that Judaism will be the religion of the future, since it is so completely of the past. And may foolish Christians no longer strengthen the nation in its darkness. Jewish orthodoxy with its circumcision has outlived itself. Reform Judaism is not even a Jewish religion. When Israel has recognized this, it will properly give up its so-called mission and cease trying to rob the nations that have given it domicile and citizenship of their Christianity.79 Shortly after this, Heinrich von Treitschke wrote his 1879 review that already viewed anti-Semitism as a “movement” that touched all levels of society. Although he distanced himself from the crude brutality of some anti-Semites (he explicitly supported emancipation), he nevertheless seized on Stoecker’s charges of arrogance when he wrote the following: I think, however, some of my Jewish friends will tell me with deep regret that they agree with me when I say that in recent times a dangerous spirit of arrogance has awakened in Jewish circles, and that the influence of Judaism that in the past had created a fair amount of good in our national life has recently been the source of considerable damage. Just read the History of the Jews by Graetz. What fanatical rage against the—arch-enemy, Christianity. What lethal hatred against the purest and mightiest representatives of the Germanic essence from Luther right up to Goethe and Fichte!

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And what empty, insulting self-glorification! [In Graetz] it is demonstrated in constant, spiteful tirades that the nation of Kant was educated to humanity only through the Jews, that the language of Lessing and Goethe has become receptive to beauty, intelligence, and wit through Heine and Börne. What English Jew would dare defame the land that shielded and protected him in such a way? And this benighted contempt against the German goyim is in no way merely the attitude of an isolated fanatic. … Add to this the unfortunate bustling intrusion into all and sundry, which does not even shy away from magisterially passing judgment on the innermost matters of the Christian churches. The anti-Christian defamations and witticisms of Jewish journalists are simply shocking, and such blasphemies are put up for sale in its own language as the latest achievements of—German enlightenment! … Scarcely had emancipation been achieved before they brazenly insisted on its pretext. They demanded literal parity in everything and did not want to see that we Germans are still a Christian people and that the Jews are only a minority among us. We have experienced their demands that Christian images be set aside and that their Sabbath be celebrated in mixed schools.80 Treitschke’s essay sparked strong reactions. Theodor Mommsen drew up a declaration that was signed by seventy-five well-known scholars and other public figures, Jews and non-Jews alike, among them Heinrich von Sybel, Rudolf von Gneist, and Werner von Siemens. Their statement referred to anti-Semitism as a contagious plague that threatened to poison the relationship between Jews and Christians. On 12 November 1880, the declaration

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was published in the Berlin daily National-Zeitung and marked a turning point in the conflict.81 In December 1879, Heinrich Graetz was one of the first to respond to Treitschke’s remarks. He pointed to the untenability of the allegations and he refuted Treitschke’s claim that he had constructed a Jewish state within a state. It was however, mainly Jewish academics and scholars who spoke out against Treitschke’s allegations, including the Breslau rabbi Joel Manuel (1826–1890), the comparative psychologist Moritz Lazarus (1824–1903), the medievalist Harry Breslau (1848–1926), the philosopher Hermann Cohen (1842–1918), and Treitschke’s fellow National Liberal Party members Ludwig Bamberger (1823–1899) and Heinrich Bernhard Oppenheim (1819–1880). Jewish hopes since the beginning of the emancipation period, from Israel Jacobson’s plea for “joint progress to improvement”82 to Abraham Geiger’s call for the “equality of Judaism with other denominations,”83 had been badly damaged by both Stoecker and Treitschke. Now, any Jewish intent to claim equality within the wider German society was received with growing opposition. This was especially true where Jews alluded to the Jewish origin of Jesus. In August 1879, before Stoecker’s and Treitschke’s polemics, Max Liebermann (1847–1935) caused a major scandal with his painting The Twelve-Year-Old Jesus in the Temple. The painting portrayed the boy Jesus as a young Jew in a naturalistic manner. Given Liebermann’s Jewish background, many claimed he was calling Christian iconography into question. However, Liebermann had merely created a Jewish Jesus portrait, entirely in keeping with the literary sketches of Abraham Geiger and Heinrich Graetz. Public outrage, fed by anti-Jewish sentiment, was so great that even the Bavarian Parliament was forced into discussing Liebermann’s depiction. German sentiment, it was proclaimed, had been insulted by the blasphemous painting. Court chaplain Adolf Stoecker aimed a barrage of insults

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at the artist. “Remember, gentlemen of Israel that for us Christ is just as holy as the Lord YHWH is for you, and instead of condemning our anger you ought to honor and respect it. But the Berlin comic pages, all Jewish excrement, mocking and ridiculing all things Christian, and, often in a single issue, three, four times, who knows who reads these filthy pages.”84 In response to the storm of public indignation, Liebermann painted over the painting before it was again shown in Paris in 1884. Thanks to an extant sketch we know that Liebermann originally depicted a barefoot boy with short, unkempt black hair and a stereotypically Jewish profile. The boy in the sketch speaks confidently and with a flourish. The revised painting was not shown until the Berlin Secession Exhibition of 1907.

Leo Baeck and Adolf von Harnack: Controversy and Clashes between the Jewish and Christian Quests In 1900, Adolf von Harnack (1851–1930) published the sixteen lectures on the “Essence of Christianity” which he had delivered at Berlin’s Friedrich-Wilhelm University in the winter semester of 1899–1900 and which had attracted huge attention. In What Is Christianity?, Harnack tried to answer this question using both the academic discipline of history and the experience of life gained from lived history. According to Harnack,85 “the means … of the discipline of history establish a special relationship … with the life experience which is acquired from experienced history.” The historical method is, therefore, the appropriate way for modern consciousness to lead to an understanding of itself, because “what we are and what we possess, in any high sense, we possess from the past and by the past—only so much of it, of course, as has had results and makes its influence felt up to the present day.”86 For the

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historian the “business and highest duty is to determine what is of permanent value, is of necessity required not to cleave to words but to find out what is essential.”87 This includes the notion that a “purely historical survey” cannot be cleanly abstracted from “historical considerations” given that they are always a “subjective act.”88 Harnack also applies this newly defined historical method to Christianity itself. The “substance” of Christianity is “Jesus Christ and his Gospel,” whose “essence” as historical personality can only be reconstructed from within its own influence.89 The Gospels contain “something which, under differing historical forms, is of permanent validity,” and at the same time, the criterion used by this “permanent validity” can be defined as “the Gospel in the Gospel.”90 Harnack’s reference back to the creative power of the personality of Jesus for the purpose of determining the nature of historical Christianity is also an expression of the connection between personality and historical development that is fundamental to his understanding of history.91 It is also the basis of the systematic unfolding of his thesis concerning the development of dogmas that dogma is a product of the Hellenization of the Gospel.92 If the nondogmatic proclamation of Christianity in the Gospels by Jesus represents the original core of Christianity, it is also necessary, on the other hand, to acknowledge the creative element in the appearance of Jesus insofar as it exploded the scope of his time.93 Judaism at the time of Jesus is therefore not represented in its own setting, but primarily represented as an outdated, obsolete precursor to Christianity, and one which threatens to degenerate into a purely rhetorical antithesis: “What asked, duced sen: It

do you want with your Christ,” we are principally by Jewish scholars; “he intronothing new.” To answer with Wellhauis quite true that what Jesus proclaimed,

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what John the Baptist expressed before him in his exhortations to repentance, was also to be found in the prophets, and even in the Jewish tradition of their time. The Pharisees themselves were in possession of it; but unfortunately they were in possession of much else besides. … They reduced everything to one dead level. … As regards purity, the spring of holiness had, indeed, long been opened; but it was choked with sand and dirt, and its water was polluted. For rabbis and theologians to come afterwards and distil this water, even if they were successful, makes no difference.94 Although the Pharisees had already preached the central commandment of love of God and neighbor, their teaching remained ineffective because it was “weak” and consequently harmful. These pronouncements only received historical momentum by “the power of personality that stands behind them. But he [Jesus] ‘taught as one having authority and not as the Scribes.’”95 It is the source of the sovereignty of the Gospel that it “makes its appeal to the inner man who … always remains the same.” 96 By highlighting the individual as God’s creature, the message of Jesus communicates for the first time and in an unsurpassable manner the idea of “the infinite value of the human soul.”97 The essence of Christianity is, according to Harnack, to have given humanity the awareness of their own individuality by placing individuals in direct relationship with God the Father. Despite the prophets’ message of an ethical monotheism celebrated as a “tremendous step forward in the history of religions,” in Jesus’s time, the ethical system “was both ample and profound” but so overgrown with ritual and liturgy that “the morality of holiness had, indeed, been transformed into something that was the clean opposite of it.”98 Against this tendency Jesus proclaimed a “higher righteousness” that

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found expression in mercy and love, and not in the Old Testament reckoning of “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.”99 Because of his prominent position within Protestant theology and also because of his engagement in science policy, Adolf von Harnack was, in the eyes of many Jews, the ambassador of German academic culture par excellence. His controversial position in the battle for the “freedom of science” made him particularly interesting as a historian and as a critic of Christian dogma for modern Jewish theology until the first decades of the twentieth century. The anti-Jewish polemic in Harnack’s “Essence of Christianity” was intensified—from the Jewish perspective—by the fact that the lecture series was conceived and promoted as open “to students of all schools and departments.”100 The location of the event added further concern—Berlin, the city in which academic anti-Semitism had its roots, the city with the largest Jewish community, and also, next to Frankfurt, the main center for liberal Judaism and the Wissenschaft des Judentums (Science of Judaism). The Jewish confrontation with Harnack’s “Essence of Christianity” was of a very public nature. There were numerous lectures at various venues—congregations, learned societies, and so forth—on this issue; a number of these lectures were also published. Public discussions of Harnack’s lectures were not limited to professional theological journals such as the Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums (Monthly for History and Study of Judaism), but occurred even more frequently in newspapers, such as the principal organ of liberal Judaism, the Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums, (General Newspaper of Judaism; founded by Ludwig Philippson and subtitled “a non-partisan organ for all Jewish interests”). Joseph Eschelbacher began his editorial with the following sentence: “We very frequently hear the opinions of Christians about Judaism and the Jewish religion, while opinions of Jews and in

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particular of Jewish theologians concerning Christendom and the Christian religion are very rare.”101 Reaction to the editorial in the Jewish press was generally positive—for example, a review on the front page of Ost und West (East and West) in February 1905.102 The Harnack lectures acted as a catalyst for the renewal of spiritual and academic structures within Judaism. Already in 1902 the Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaft des Judentums (Society for the Promotion of the Science of Judaism) was founded in Berlin. Its task was the preparation and publication of a conceptual design of a “science of Judaism.” Leo Baeck’s and Joseph Eschelbacher’s contributions to the “Essence of Christianity” debate were the first titles published by the society. In the same year, the Liberaler Verein für die Angelegenheiten der jüdischen Gemeinde zu Berlin (Liberal Association for the Affairs of the Berlin Jewish Community), founded in 1895, offered a prize in the Berlin daily Tageblatt for the best work on the “essence of Judaism”. The Jewish claim to equality and the acceptance of a living Jewish faith both at the time of Jesus and in modern times was at the center of the Jewish contribution to the “Essence of Christianity” debate. And Jewish scholars such as Leo Baeck were willing to engage in this debate, which, for both Jewish and for Christian thinkers, gradually descended into an argument about the superiority of their respective religions. In addition to Leo Baeck’s contributions, the most important writings were Was lehrt uns Harnack? (What Can we Learn from Harnack?, 1902) by Felix Perles (1874– 1933), rabbi of Königsberg; Die jüngsten Urteile über das Judentum (The Most Recent Judgments about Judaism, 1902) by Martin Schreiner (1863–1926), Arabic scholar and professor of Jewish history and literature at the Berlin Lehranstalt für die Wissenschaft des Judentums (Academy for Jewish Studies); and two works by the Breslau rabbi Joseph Eschelbacher (1848–1916), Das Judentum und

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das Wesen des Christentums (Judaism and the Essence of Christianity, 1904) and Das Judentum im Urteil der modernen protestantischen Theologie (Judaism in the Judgments of Modern Protestant Theology, 1907).103 The main target for Jewish criticism was Harnack’s thesis, borrowed from Julius Wellhausen, of a religious degeneration process in postexilic Judaism. As a result, it was claimed, Christianity’s origins in Judaism were played down. This meant a twofold negation of Judaism, that is, of historical as well as modern Judaism because modern Judaism should only be understood as part of the continuum of the history of Judaism.104 The reasons for this judgment from a Jewish perspective were as follows:105 1. Disregard of research from the science of Judaism, above all regarding the relation between Jesus or early Christianity and the Judaism of the time (Jüdische Leben-Jesu-Forschung).106 2. The lack of awareness of rabbinic literature (e.g., Harnack’s equating of halakha and aggadah was criticized). Jewish authors invariably accused Harnack of not differentiating between ritual and ethical provisions in the Talmud.107 Against the background of the particular historical situation of the Jews at the turn of the twentieth century, Harnack’s theses, with their anti-Jewish polemics, could only be understood as a serious threat by the Jewish community. From Harnack’s perspective it was irrelevant if Jesus taught something new. Important to him was the fact that Jesus proclaimed his teachings in a unique fashion, “pure” and “powerful.”108 One must not believe in Jesus, but believe as he believed, in the paternal love of God and the infinite value of the human soul. A contemporary of Har­nack’s, Paul Wernle (1872–1939), put it as follows:

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“The history of religion does not primarily progress in that completely new ideas emerge, but in that an entirely new seriousness is made of the old ideas.”109 Whoever understands Jesus as revitalizer is in danger of pathologizing Judaism. This is what Wilhelm Bousset (1865–1920) did in an early work in which he sought to separate Jesus’s living message from its historical Jewish environment. Ernst Troeltsch rightly criticized his friend for it: “You have repositioned the uniqueness of Jesus from the doctrinaire into the virtual personal of awareness of life,” but in the process “you painted Judaism completely black.”110 One of the most sustainable responses to Harnack’s lectures came from Leo Baeck. With stalwart and sturdy polemic, Baeck developed the outline of an essence of Judaism from the criticism of Christianity Harnack had portrayed in his lectures. For Baeck, Jesus was “a genuinely Jewish personality.”111 Baeck, with reference to Abraham Geiger,112 considered Harnack’s denial of the Jewishness of this figure a typical instance of the academic “special treatment” of Judaism. He criticized the contempt with which Harnack dismissed Jewish scholarship and literature. This neglect leads, according to Baeck, to a false view of Judaism at the time of Jesus and an error of judgment concerning the Pharisees.113 Leo Baeck countered Harnack’s presentation of Judaism with the image of a “spiritual” and deeply universal Jewish faith that is determined by ethical standards and whose piety is characterized by good works and confidence. The “essence of Judaism” was, for him, grounded in the ethical monotheism of the prophets. Was it necessary for God to send the world a savior in the form of Jesus Christ? And what validity did the old path of biblical commandment retain after that? For Baeck, this remains the core question of the Jewish identity crisis since Paul. In 1938, at the height of National Socialism, Leo Baeck published Das Evangelium als Urkunde der jüdischen

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Glaubensgeschichte (The Gospel as a Document of the History of Jewish Faith), in which he tried to prove that, throughout his life, Jesus remained a devout Jew to whom it would never have occurred to found a new religion, let alone to have himself worshiped as a god: “In this old tradition we behold a man who is Jewish in every feature and trait of his character, manifesting in every particular what is pure and good in Judaism. This man could only have developed on the soil of Judaism; and only on this soil, too, could he find his disciples and followers as they were. Here alone, in this Jewish sphere, in a Jewish atmosphere of trust and longing, could this man live his life and meet his death—a Jew among Jews.”114 Baeck made his intentions clear in the preface: The question how the Gospels in the New Testament could have developed out of the ancient message of Jesus the messiah has been much disputed. But like the question of the original meaning of these tidings, it can really be approached in one way only by way of the sphere in which all these events took shape. Only in terms of its own space and time will everything become clear to us. We must understand the nature of oral tradition as it was then alive in Palestinian Judaism. We must penetrate its very soul and grasp the essentially poetic manner in which tradition in those days was handed down and apprehended. Only then will harmony and discrepancy in our Gospels be grasped, too. For the Gospels must be understood, not in terms of textual sources out of which they might have been composed, but in terms of the tradition out of which they originated. … A life of Jesus can be written, if at all, only after one has determined what the first generation after Jesus related and handed down. … Our conclusion was

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not summoned; it appeared: The Gospel emerges as a piece, not inconsiderable, of Jewish history— a testimony of Jewish faith.115 Baeck’s pursuit of the historical Jesus exemplifies Jewish attempts to understand the teachings of Jesus as an integral part of Jewish tradition and history. Baeck’s critique of Christianity unfolds like a model of the “polarity” or contrast between “classical” and “romantic” religion and the tension between “mystery” and “commandment” in every religion. Out of this polarity one can deduce the assessment criteria for a deeper analysis of Judaism and Christianity. Baeck identified and distinguished two different primary currents of tradition for Christianity: Paul, Augustine, and Martin Luther represent the element of mystery, the domain of romantic religion; Jesus, Pelagius, and Calvin represent the element of commandment, the domain of classical religion. But whereas in the “traditional” religions, to which Judaism belonged, there was a perfect balance between mystery and commandment, Christianity was primarily formed by Paul and Luther and consequently embodies the romantic religion that ultimately denies human beings the ability of moral creative power. Baeck’s typology may remove major supportive pillars from Christianity but it also points in an important direction for understanding his concern: the meaning of humanity. For the difference between Judaism and Christianity does not lie in the person of Jesus for Baeck: “The fundamental difference between Judaism and Christianity, as it derives from the Pauline theology, has its crucial starting point in the teaching of human nature. It is the old biblical view … that man was created in the likeness of God, that a creative power lives inside him and an ability to make decisions, the freedom given to him is such that the commandment of God before him as a moral task may

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draw near.”116 A man can freely choose between good and evil during his lifetime. If he errs, he is free to correct this. And because he can, he should. This view is diametrically opposed to the Pauline doctrine of grace within Christianity and its insistence on humanity’s need for redemption. And it is here, in the area of morals and ethics, that the actual gap between Judaism and Christianity can be seen. At the center of the dispute was the question of the messiahship of Jesus. Time and again in this context, Harnack’s claim was cited that there was “nothing new” in the Gospel of Jesus. Regarding this statement, Jewish theologians and scholars emphasized that the elements dividing Judaism and Christianity were only introduced into Christianity by Paul. From the Jewish perspective, that meant (1) the Christian acceptance of Jesus through the dogmatic interpretation of his teachings in terms of Logos Christology, (2) the emptying of the concept of monotheism by the doctrine of the Trinity, and (3) the limiting of the ethical content of Jesus’s message by dogmatizing it. The development of the dogma was traced to the repression of Judaism, that is, of Jewish Christianity, by the universal Christianity of Paul’s grace, and the process set into motion by this formation. This not only refers to an irrefutable link between the Jewish position and arguments presented by Harnack’s critique of dogma. But it also infers that this Jewish critique of Pauline Christianity and liberal Protestant theology unite in their opposition to the established, authoritative interpretation of Christianity found in Catholicism and conservative Protestantism. Basically, Judaism is uncomfortable with the emphasis on central founders in religions. While for Harnack Christianity’s uniqueness lay in the power of the personality of Jesus himself, Hermann Cohen (1842–1918) asked if religion needed founding figures at all. At the Weltkongress für Freies Christentum und Re-

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ligiösen Fortschritt (Fifth Conference of the Council of Unitarian and Other Liberal Thinkers and Workers) in Berlin in 1910, Cohen gave a lecture on “Die Bedeutung des Judentums für den religiösen Fortschritt der Menschheit” (The Significance of Judaism for Religious Progress) and said, “Wherever religion is closely linked to a personality, it faces a major problem: it is in danger of being mythologized. For myth means basically a personification of the non-personal. The fact that Judaism does not expect the hoped-for and ultimate divine act—unification of God’s children in harmony and faithfulness—to be accomplished by a person shows how different it is from myth.”117 Constructive Jewish critique from Harnack focused in on the continuity between pre- and postexilic Judaism and the resulting constitutive relationship between Jesus and the Judaism of his time. This continuity ensures— especially in view of the theological content—that Judaism can in no way be viewed as an obsolete precursor of Christianity, but rather as the crucial foundation for today’s Christianity. The Harnack-Baeck debate marks the first encounter and controversy between a Christian and a Jewish theologian on the formative period of Christianity. It was a strong attempt on the Jewish side to point out the lasting relevance of Judaism in line with the beliefs of Jesus of Nazareth himself. The Jerusalem Bible scholar Yehezkel Kaufmann (1889–1963) outlined it in this way: “The attitude of Jesus toward the Torah is the same as that of the masters of the Halachah and Aggadah, the tradition the Pharisees followed. The Torah is the eternal basis of their own positions and teachings, even if they appear to diverge sharply from the literal meaning. … Jesus believed that his teachings were only a completion or explication of the teaching of the Torah, signposts to invite us people how we should live and behave in their spirit.”118 The evidence for

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Jesus’s rabbinic Jewish heritage—his profound knowledge in this field—served at the same time as an argument for the existence of a modern Judaism in Christian-dominated contemporary culture. Another goal was to ascertain the right to equality with the Christian denominations and the proof that Judaism represented an enrichment of the “national spirit” and consequently constituted a genuine asset for Germany. Outside of Germany too, liberal Jews attempted to build bridges of understanding with Christianity across the confrontation with the Jewish Jesus. The British scholar Claude G. Montefiore (1858–1938), who later became president of the World Union for Progressive Judaism, wrote a positive study on the Gospels in 1909, and in his two-volume work The Synoptic Gospels (1909) he attempted to include Jesus in the series of the great prophets of Israel.119 Ten years earlier, Kaufmann Kohler (1843–1926), a leading German-born representative of the American Reform movement, treated Jesus of Nazareth as a reformer in his time.120 Kohler understood Jesus as one of many messiahs, whose death could not be accepted by “the excited imagination” of his followers. Paul was primarily responsible for the negative development of Christianity by introducing a pagan mythology into Christian doctrine with his interpretation of the Crucifixion of Jesus as God’s Son’s atoning sacrifice.121 The exemplary arguments presented here are by no means passé. Even modern Christian theologians face the challenge of explaining how Jesus could found something new when everything he said and did had Jewish parallels. In The First Followers of Jesus: A Sociological Analysis of the Earliest Christianity,122 the Heidelberg Protestant theologian Gerd Theissen describes Jesus’s innovation as “the revitalization of the Jewish religion by Jesus.” In A Theory of Primitive Christian Religion he expands this. The originality of Jesus lay in the fact that the old was

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revitalized from a central tenet, the belief in the one and only God.123 What we can observe is a revitalizing of the Jewish sign language. In other words: Jesus lived, thought, worked and died as a Jew. One of the most important results of 200 years of modern research into Jesus is that he belongs to two religions: to Judaism, to which he was attached with all his heart, and to Christianity, whose central point of reference he became after his death—on the basis of interpretations of his person which his Jewish followers gave.124 As we have seen, this was the same view taken by Harnack and others in the nineteenth century, and this in turn provides evidence for Christian-Jewish agreement when it remains beyond the dogmatic claim of a kerygmatic Christ. This is not altogether without risk; if one ascribes more vitality to Jesus, do you not, then, deny any vitality to the very Jewish environment which later developed into modern Judaism?

The Jewish Quest from Joseph Klausner   to Ernst Ludwig Ehrlich I will now turn to some more recent Jewish efforts to acknowledge and identify the historical Jesus. What is remarkable is the variety of German Jewish scholars within the wider concert of international voices. After three waves of the quest, some Christian scholars today tend to emphasize the limitations of an historical approach toward Jesus. As we have seen, this tendency was epitomized in the twentieth century by examples such as the Protestant New Testament scholar Rudolf Bultmann’s. In the following chapter

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we shall see that Joseph Ratzinger took a similar approach in the twenty-first century when he addressed the topic from a Catholic perspective in his Jesus trilogy (published in 2007, 2011, and 2012). Analogously, the Jewish side is growing more and more interested in the historical Jesus. Joseph Klausner’s (1874–1958) Hebrew Jesus monograph Yeshu ha-Notsri appeared in 1922 in Jerusalem; it created a sensation and was sharply attacked. The German translation was published in 1930 and it was quickly acknowledged as “the first large-scale scholarly representation of the life and teachings of Jesus from the Jewish perspective.”125 In his summary to the six-hundred-page book, Klausner argued that the differences between Judaism and the teachings of Jesus “Ex nihilo nihil fit.” If the teachings of Jesus did not contain the opposite to Judaism, it would have been impossible for Paul to use them to justify abolishing the ceremonial laws and to break through the barriers of particularistic Judaism. His conclusion: “On the one hand, this doctrine led, even though it was influenced by the spirit of prophetic and partly also of Pharisaic Judaism, to the denial of all practical and religious Jewish necessities of life, and on the other hand, it also increased spiritual Judaism to such an extreme that it flipped almost dialectically into its own opposite. So before us arises the strange picture: Judaism gave birth to Christianity in its original form (as a teaching of Jesus), but it disowned the daughter, as she attempted to smother her mother in a deadly embrace.”126 Nevertheless, “Jesus is, for the Jewish nation, a great teacher of morality and an artist in parable. He is the moralist for whom, in the religious life, morality counts as—everything.”127 By 1931 more than four hundred critical essays had appeared in twelve languages about Klausner’s book. It was the first time that all the then-known material about Jesus, including previously unacknowledged sources, had been compiled. The attempt to reconstruct, or rather to

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construct, a historical account of the life of Jesus on the basis of the Gospels was not only met with approval. “Here, the fundamental assumption of the author that the Gospels can serve as historical sources must definitely be disputed,” argued the Viennese rabbi Benjamin Murmelstein in his review.128 One unique voice was the biochemist and scholar of religion Eduard Strauss (1876–1952), a key member of the Freies Jüdisches Lehrhaus (Independent Jewish Academy for Adult Studies) in Frankfurt (the school was founded and chaired by Franz Rosenzweig). In the 1920s, Strauss discussed the New Testament, Buddhism, and mysticism in the religions of the world. We still have four of his lectures on Christianity. The planned book was never published; and a lot of the undated material can be found at the Leo Baeck Institute in New York. His lectures on “Jesus of Nazareth,” “Paul the Proselytizer,” and “Augustine the Convert” were published by Martin Buber in his journal Der Jude (The Jew); the one on “Francis of Assisi” was published in Die Kreatur (The Creature). Strauss’s critique: Jesus comes “between God and man, between the Lord and his eternal people.” Jesus’s “but I say unto you” drowns out the “we the people of the One,” and when Jesus confronts “the Jewish ‘we’ with his ‘I’ with the same claim of eternity he steps out of the covenant of God with us into an individual covenant and leaves Judaism.”129 How Jesus represents his individualistic path as a model “is solitary and must in solitary conception continuously create for itself new solitary ones as witnesses,” such as Paul.130 The philosopher of religion Martin Buber (1878–1965) is often quoted regarding his reference to himself as the brother of Jesus: From my youth onwards I have found in Jesus my great brother. That Christianity has regarded

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him and does regard him as God and Saviour has always appeared to me a fact of the highest importance which, for his sake and my own, I must endeavour to understand. My own fraternally open relationship to him has grown ever stronger and clearer, and today I see him more strongly and clearly than ever before. I am more than ever certain that a great place belongs to him in Israel’s history of faith and that this place cannot be described by any of the usual categories.131 The bridge-builder Buber also stressed the divisive: “Jesus is my older brother, but the Christ of the church is a colossus with feet of clay.”132 In no way does Buber attribute messiahship to Jesus: I firmly believe that the Jewish Community during its rebirth will receive Jesus, and not just as a great man of their religious history, but also in the living connection of a messianic event that extends over millennia, that will culminate in the redemption of Israel and the world. But I also believe firmly that we will never acknowledge Jesus as the Messiah who has come because that would contradict the innermost sense of our messianic passion. … No knot has been tied in the mighty rope of our faith in our Messiah that, attached to a rock on Mount Sinai, stretches up to a pylon, still invisible, but driven into the very foundation of the earth. … For us there is no cause of Jesus, God is our only cause.133 Together with Martin Buber’s understanding of Jesus as brother, the pioneering work of Joseph Klausner paved the way for a number of other books by Jewish authors about Jesus of Nazareth. These include works by Schalom

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Ben-Chorin and Pinchas Lapide who have become very popular in German-speaking regions. For the Jewish philosopher of religion and journalist Schalom Ben-Chorin (1913–1999), born in Munich in 1935 as Fritz Rosenthal and later emigrated from there to Palestine, Jesus was a “central figure in Jewish history,” namely, an “arch-martyr,” or a “prototype,” who embodies the “Jewish destiny of suffering.”134 While Schalom Ben-Chorin does not acknowledge the New Testament as a “holy scripture in the canonical sense,” he agrees with Leo Baeck’s notion that the Gospel is a document “that belongs to the history of Jewish faith.”135 This makes Jesus worthy of reintegration into the context of the Jewish people. In his most famous book, Bruder Jesus: Der Nazarener in jüdischer Sicht (Brother Jesus: The Nazarene through Jewish Eyes),136 Ben-Chorin created an image of Jesus of Nazareth as deeply rooted in the tradition of the Pharisees: “[I]t is probably not wrong to reckon Jesus among the Pharisees, albeit as part of an internal opposition movement within this largest Judaic group of his day.”137 Ben-Chorin not only approaches Jesus through exegesis, but also through intuition based on his “lifelong familiarity with the text.” For Judaism, according to BenChorin, Jesus cannot be the Messiah, because the world has not changed for the better after his sacrifice on the cross. Ben-Chorin rejects Jesus as savior who has suffered for us. He can relate, however, to a Jesus who has suffered like his Jewish people. By demythologizing Jesus, Ben-Chorin gives new reality to the Jewish traits of the Nazarene; Jesus had been far too spiritualized by a dogmatic Christian elevation, generating the risk of creating a specter.138 However, in his intent to bring Jesus home to Judaism, he resorts to speculation when he disagrees with the Gospels and states that Jesus in no way broke with Jewish tradition.139 For example, he provides no evidence

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for his hypothesis that “Jesus was married like any rabbi in Israel”140 and had children. According to Ben-Chorin, “In the Jewish historical view, Jesus ends up a tragic failure. That does not, however, belittle his greatness, not even in terms of Jewish historical understanding.”141 He creates a picture of Jesus as a human being par excellence: “A man such as you and I, a typical human being in his or her lowliness. This is the kind of man Jesus understood himself to be: a man who lives, as a man, a typically human life, without possessions and subject to pain. In designating himself ‘Son of Man,’ Jesus does not stand before us as a prophet or the Messiah but as our brother. And since he is the son of man, the human question erupts within him: ‘Who am I?’”142 Out of a deep sense of kinship with the figure of Jesus and the Jewish world in which he lived, Ben-Chorin concludes: Jesus is for me an eternal brother—not only my human brother but my Jewish brother. I sense his brotherly hand clasping mine and asking me to follow him. It is not in the hand of the Messiah, this hand marked by a wound; it is certainly no divine hand. It is rather a human hand, in whose lines the deepest sorrow is inscribed. … His belief, his unconditional belief, his simple trust in God the Father, his willingness to humble himself completely before the will of God—that is the attitude of which Jesus is the supreme example, the attitude that can join us, Jews and Christians, together. The belief of Jesus unifies us, but the belief in Jesus divides us.143 Born in Vienna, Pinchas E. Lapide (1922–1997) was a Jewish scholar respected by European Christians. He read the Gospels under the motto “Let us two study with

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one another and discover the earthly Jesus from below.”144 Lapide studied Judaism and early Christianity in Jerusalem under the influence of Martin Buber, was in the diplomatic service of Israel, and earned his PhD in 1971 after doing research in Cologne on “The Use of Hebrew in Christian Communities with Particular Reference to the Country of Israel.” Just as Buber had called Jesus of Nazareth his great brother in faith, so Lapide wanted to bring Jesus home with his book Der Rabbi von Nazaret: Wandlungen des jüdischen Jesusbildes in 1974 (The Rabbi of Nazareth: Transformations of the Jewish Image of Jesus,),145 following Schalom Ben-Chorin in this attempt. He also sided with the hypotheses of the American historian Joel Carmichael (1915–2006), publisher of the Zionist journal Midstream, who had portrayed Jesus of Nazareth as a militant Jewish rebel in his book The Death of Jesus in 1962.146 No doubt stemming from his own support for the Jewish national movement, Lapide made Jesus into a pious Jewish Pharisee and freedom fighter: It is certain that he was Jewish in spirit in at least six respects: in his hope, in his eschatology, in his Jewish ethos, in his blind trust in God, in his very Jewish messianic impatience and—last but not least—in his Jewish suffering. … The fact that he often presented a contrast with his milieu also makes him Jewish, for I know no luminary of Judaism from Moses onwards who did not provoke lively opposition among the Jewish people.147 But if Jesus was so true to the Torah,148 why was he crucified? His “messianic Zionism” made him an enemy of the Romans, who, for Lapide, bear sole responsibility for his death. He sums up the debt he believed Christians owed Judaism as such:

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For eighteen hundred years the Church has done three things to Jesus: it has de-judaized him, it has hellenized him, and it has effectively put us off him. This it has done by compulsory sermons, compulsory baptisms, kidnapping children. … As I see it, Christianity owes its foundation to the sublime image of Jesus in the primitive Church, in that Jewish community which saw in him, besides the prophet, a just man and a luminary of Israel or the Messiah—all mortal sons of Israel.149 Lapide, a New Testament scholar, published his most poignant and striking hypotheses in his 1979 Der Jude Jesus: Thesen eines Juden; Antworten eines Christen (The Jew Jesus: Theses of a Jew; Answers from a Christian, 1980):150 • Jesus did not make himself known to his people as the Messiah. • His people did not reject Jesus. • Jesus did not reject his people. By translating the Koine Greek of the Gospels back into Hebrew, Pinchas Lapide tried to reach an understanding of the primordial sources in their Jewish context: The vine and the vineyard, the fig tree, the children of the kingdom, the wicked husband-men, the prodigal son and—if you want—a hundred other metaphors of Jesus are straightforward allusions meant only for the Jew familiar with the Bible and for his ears. As soon as they are translated into Greek or—still more—into a modern European language, they sound not only strange but distorted and unnatural.151

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Lapide did not tolerate any contradiction of this consciously subjective picture of Jesus: Who wishes to repurpose this life-affirming, Bibleinspired, Nazarene who was filled with love for Israel into an otherworldly preacher and theologian, a man who allegedly refuses to participate in the desperate resistance struggle of his Jews … who manages that in the name of theology, commits an insult of Jesus that borders on character assassination, if not anti-Judaism.152 In his book Auferstehung: Ein jüdisches Glaubenserlebnis (The Resurrection of Jesus: A Jewish Perspective), 153 Lapide goes so far as to declare Easter a Jewish moment of faith that opens a path to God for the Gentile world. When asked what could bring the continuity of salvation history home afresh, he replied: [F]or the Jews of my generation, ours is fundamentally a paschal self-understanding. It belongs to Easter, because, for all Jews of our time, even for those who were never in Europe, Auschwitz really means what Good Friday must be for devout Christians: a Golgotha on a national scale. The foundation of the State of Israel, on the other hand, is Easter Sunday: the resurrection from the ruins of the whole people, which finds its way out of this mass-Golgotha back to its biblical homeland, exactly as twenty-seven prophesies in the Old Testament predict. For Jews who were always persecuted, who were always the first victims of men’s injustice and want of love whenever world-history was in the making, who all too often had to bear the cross in which Christians believe, who—despite all power and all violence—were

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able to endure as a holy remnant: for this Jewish people what better embodiment could you find than this poor rabbi of Nazareth? … Is not this rabbi, bleeding on the cross, the authentic incarnation of this suffering people: all too often murdered on the cross of this hatred of Jews which we had to feel ourselves when we were young?154 This contrasts drastically with the view of Samuel Sandmel (1911–1979), professor of Bible and Hellenistic literature at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati. In his view, the New Testament writings permit no real view of the historical Jesus, but only provide a few sparse facts: [T]he New Testament is a religious book, the product of a religious community which believed that it had received a heritage of God’s revelation. In this sense, it is not history, though history is in it; nor a story book, though stories are in it. Rather it is a testimony to the assumption that all things are possible to God, and therefore it is also a record of those things which it believed happened.155 Sandmel raises the question of whether the New Testament can be a reliable source to identify the historical Jesus at all. In contrast to many voices we have heard, he suspects that there is little basis for a truly historical account. “The historian is required to fill in blank places at frequent junctures, and to make perilous deductions from hazy clues.”156 Instead, it is only possible to report what the evangelists wrote about Jesus—and then already from a position of faith. Certain bare facts are historically not to be doubted. Jesus, who emerged into public notice in Galilee when Herod Antipas was its Tetrarch, was a real

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person, the leader of a movement. He had followers, called disciples. The claim was made, either by or for him, that he was the long-awaited Jewish Messiah. He journeyed from Galilee to Jerusalem, possibly in 29 or 30, and there he was executed, crucified by the Romans as a political rebel. After his death, his disciples believed that he was resurrected, and had gone to heaven, but would return to earth at the appointed time for the final divine judgment of mankind.157 From these bare facts no picture of the historical Jesus emerges. “The primary interest of Jesus’ followers … was not in what Jesus said or did, but rather in what he was.”158 The historian reaches a barrier here. On the one hand, Jesus was a teacher, but on the other hand, his teaching was without apparent originality. On the one hand, Jesus considered himself the Messiah, but on the other hand, he died a Roman martyr. Therefore, Sandmel cannot detect or reconstruct Jesus as a historical figure. The quest for the precise, human Jesus has not been successful. Indeed, we can see now that it was foredoomed to failure since it essayed something impossible, on an attractive but deceptive premise, that literary materials created out of supernatural beliefs would submit to scholarly sifting and yield a naturalistic residuum. … Only if one wants a semi-historical answer, or an unconsciously or deliberately mendacious one, or a careless summary, can one stop at the statement, Jesus said this, or Jesus taught that. It is possible to report on Jesus only as the evangelists report on him.159 In addition, another critique should be added to earlier Jewish homages to Jesus. Compared to Jewish voices

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from the quest of the historical Jesus which attribute uniqueness and incomparability, and peerlessness to Jesus (e.g., David Flusser, 1917–2000160), Sandmel emphasizes that, for a religious Jew, these characteristics can only be attributed to God, never a human being. A human being, according to Jewish understanding, can at best be “great.”161 Such “greatness” Sandmel willingly attributes to Jesus: “Only a Jew whose unique combination of qualities was extraordinary could have been thought by other Jews to have been accorded a special resurrection.”162 A position close to Samuel Sandmel can be found in the work of the Judaic scholar and theologian Ernst Ludwig Ehrlich (1921–2007) from Basel, Switzerland. He argued that the New Testament sources did not say enough about the man and Jew Jesus because their authors saw only the Christ of faith. Thus, the historical Jesus could not be identified by searching behind the kerygma of the New Testament. “Despite intensive scientific research we will probably never succeed in regaining a full picture of the ‘historical Jesus.’”163 In contrast to many other Jewish interpreters of Jesus, Ehrlich sees only two certain results: the truisms that Jesus was a Jew and that Jesus died on the cross.164 The real challenge of Jesus’s life consists in his proclamation of the nearness of the Kingdom of God and his claim to fulfill the will of God as he understood it. “As a result of this apocalyptic mind-set,” Ehrlich says, “Jesus was critical of the law,”165 probably more in the prophetic tradition, and therefore distinguished himself radically from his Pharisaic environment. Here Ehrlich conforms with Erlangen historian of religion Hans-Joachim Schoeps (1909–1980), who saw in Jesus “sharp criticism and condemnation of certain Jewish practices.”166 Schoeps sees the cause of Jesus’s conflict with the Pharisees as rooted in his alternative assessment “of the Old Testament Law.”167 With this perception both Ehrlich and Schoeps differ radically from a vast majority

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of their Jewish colleagues, especially Schalom Ben-Chorin and Pinchas Lapide, who recognize the “brother” in Jesus rather than the Pharisaic stamp. Schoeps also believes that there is a direct line between the Jesus tradition and early Christian communities.168 Neither Paul nor John the Evangelist were the basis for the formation of the Christian church, but Jesus. One of Schoeps’s first publications, The Jewish-Christian Argument: A History of Theologies in Conflict, is worth mentioning here.169 The book was published in 1937 in Berlin’s Vortrupp publishing house (quasi-excluding the non-Jewish public) in the year before his escape to Sweden. In this book, Schoeps presents the history of the discussion between Israel and the church in the mirror of the controversies from nineteen centuries and concludes with his expectation of a future union of Judaism and Christianity: “Both are united by one common expectation, that the truth, which we do not know, which we can only guess, is yet to come, in that hour when the beginning is swallowed up in the end.”170 For Sandmel, Ehrlich, and Schoeps, as we have seen, only a few definite statements can be made about the “historical Jesus.” Schoeps’s image of Jesus is derived from Sandmel’s and Ehrlich’s insight “that the Reconstruction of an ‘Urjesus,’ a Jesus as he originally was, is impossible for us in light of the present source material from the Gospels accessible to us.”171 In this chapter, I have sought to give a brief overview of the various strands of the Jewish quest of the historical Jesus in the twentieth century. Some Jews who attempted to reintegrate Jesus into early Judaism as a charismatic religious leader were optimistic about their quest; others considered the attempt futile. My primary interest is to show why Jews investigated this Jesus more closely. The intention, I believe, was predominantly apologetic: Jews wanted to remain Jews and yet be part of the wider Chris-

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tian society. How fortunate, then, that Jesus himself was a Jew. This chapter cannot finish without mentioning Géza Vermes (1924–2013), one of the major Judaic scholars of our time. Archbishop Rowan Williams said of him in the Guardian in 2012, “Geza Vermes is the unchallenged doyen of scholarship in the English-speaking world on the Jewish literature of the age of Jesus, especially the Dead Sea Scrolls.”172 A Hungarian child with a secular Jewish background, this longtime head of the Forum for Qumran Research at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies converted with his parents to Catholicism when he was six years old. He was ordained as a priest after the Holocaust but later found his way back to Judaism. Vermes had been discussing Jesus—his person, history, and teachings—since the 1960s and may well be counted among the optimists when it comes to Jesus as a historically identifiable Jew. Five major volumes best summarize his contribution to the Jewish quest of the historical Jesus. His first book on the subject, Jesus the Jew: A Historian’s Reading of the Gospels (1973), attracted worldwide attention and appeared in several editions. It was translated into numerous languages, including German in 1993.173 In 1983, he wrote Jesus and the World of Judaism,174 and in 1993 The Religion of Jesus the Jew.175 A fresh approach followed in 2000 with a reexamination of the sources in The Changing Faces of Jesus.176 A companion volume became his fifth book on the matter in 2002, The Authentic Gospel of Jesus.177 Finally, Vermes also looked at Jesus and the early church in Christian Beginnings: From Nazareth to Nicaea (AD 30–325).178 In all of his books, Géza Vermes attempts to outline the personality of the real Jesus as a Jewish holy man and the quintessence of his authentic eschatological Gospel as he tries to reconstruct it through literary analysis. Vermes roots Jesus in the milieu of Jewish charismatics who ap-

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pear as exorcists, miracle workers, and popular preachers and are referred to as Hasidim Rishonim in the rabbinic literature: “It would seem, Jesus can best be defined as an outstanding Galilean charismatic Hassid.”179 “Whereas none of the claims and aspirations of Jesus can be said definitely to associate him with the role of Messiah, not to speak of that of son of man, the strange creation of modern mythmakers, everything combines … to place him in the venerable company of the Devout, the ancient Hasidim.”180 These “Devout” were viewed as heirs to an old prophetic tradition. Thus Vermes does not place Jesus among the Pharisees, Essenes, Zealots, or Gnostics, but in a charismatic context as a holy miracle worker of Galilee.181 Insofar as the Christian quest of the historical Jesus is concerned, the “Jesus the Jew formulation” was an emotionally loaded synonym for the Jesus of history in contrast to the divine Christ for Vermes; he argued that Jesus was not the alleged founder of Christianity,182 but “second to none in profundity of insight and grandeur of character” and “an unsurpassed master of the art of laying bare the innermost core of spiritual truth.”183 With all this, says Vermes, Jesus must be considered a dead man, not a resurrected deity. Vermes later wrote a scalding review of Pope Benedict XVI’s first volume of his Jesus of Nazareth where Vermes claims the reader was presented with “mountains of pious and largely familiar musings”: In 2007 Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI published the first volume of Jesus of Nazareth not just as a devotional book, a “personal search for the face of the Lord,” but as one written in conformity with “the historical-critical method.” Scholars of this school treat the gospels as ancient literature and investigate them linguistically, historically and doctrinally in the cultural context of their age.

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The first volume did not really follow these rules: it was devoid of philological analysis and shied away from comparing contradictory statements, such as whether the gospels were intended only for the lost sheep of Israel or for the world at large. We were offered an old-fashioned story in which the gospels were taken quasi-literally and interpreted not in their historical framework, but in light of any passage picked ad lib from the Old and New Testament or from two millennia of Christian thought. It represented biblical exegesis as it was practised in the pre-modern era.184

Notes 1. Jakob Emden, Ez Awot (Amsterdam, 1751), Avot 4:11, 20, 21. 2. Cf. Allen H. Podet, A Translation of the Magen Wa-Hereb by Leon Modena, 1571–1648: Christianity through a Rabbi’s Eyes (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2001), xiix. 3. Abraham Geiger, Leon da Modena: Rabbiner zu Venedig und seine Stellung zur Kabbalah, zum Thalmud und zum Christentume (Breslau: Johann Urban Kern, 1856), 50–53. 4. Moses Mendelssohn, Jerusalem; or, On Religious Power and Judaism, ed. Allan Arkush (Hanover, NH: Brandeis University Press, 1983), 134. 5. Joseph Salvador, Jésus-Christ et sa doctrine (Paris: A. Guyot et Scribe, 1838). 6. Isaak Markus Jost, Allgemeine Geschichte des Israelitischen Volkes, Zweiter Teil (Berlin: C. F. Amelang, 1832), 67f. 7. For an overview of the Christian quest of the historical Jesus, see Gerd Theissen and Annette Merz, The Historical Jesus: A Comprehensive Guide (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998), 1–15; Markus Schröder, “Leben-Jesu-For-

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8. 9.

10.

11.

schung,” in Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, ed. Hans Dieter Betz et al., 4th ed. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck Verlag, 2002), vol. 5, col. 147–148, and in Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, ed. Josef Höfer und Karl Rahner (Freiburg: Herder, 1986), vol. 6, col. 859–864; John Macquarrie, “Jesus Christus VI,” in Theologische Realenzyklopädie, ed. Gerhard Müller et al. (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1993), 17:16–42; Dieter Georgi, “Leben-JesuTheologie/Leben-Jesu-Forschung,” in Müller et al., Theologische Realenzyklopädie, 20:566–575. Cf. Amy-Jill Levine, “Introduction,” in The Historical Jesus in Context, ed. Amy-Jill Levine, Dale C. Allison Jr., and John Dominic Crossan (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006), 3–14. Levine, “Introduction,” 3. Hermann Samuel Reimarus, Von dem Zwecke Jesu und seiner Jünger: Noch ein Fragment des Wolfenbüttelschen Ungenannten [On the intentions of Jesus and his disciples], ed. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (Braunschweig, 1778), introduced and translated by George W. Buchanan as The Goal of Jesus and His Disciples (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1970); Hermann Samuel Reimarus, Fragments from Reimarus: Brief Critical Remarks on the Object of Jesus and His Disciples as Seen in the New Testament, trans. from the German of G. E. Lessing, ed. Charles Vorsey (London: Williams and Norgate, 1879; repr., Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985), 9–28. Hermann Samuel Reimarus, “On the Intentions of Jesus and His Disciples,” in Reimarus: Fragments, ed. C. H. Talbert (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971), §3, p. 64. David Friedrich Strauss, The Life of Jesus: Critically Examined (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1973). See also David Friedrich Strauss, Streitschriften zur Vertheidigung meiner Schrift ueber das Leben Jesu und zur Charakteristik der gegenwaertigen Theologie (Hildesheim: Olms, 1980; repr., Tübingen: C.F. Osiander, 1837); David Friedrich Strauss, Der Christus des Glaubens und der Jesus der

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12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

18. 19.

20.

21.

Geschichte: Eine Kritik des Schleiermacher’schen Leben Jesu (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus Gerd Mohn, 1971; repr., Berlin: Duncker, 1865). Theissen and Merz, Historical Jesus, 4. Cf. Jan Rohls, Protestantische Theologie der Neuzeit (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1997), 1:526ff. Cf. Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia (London: Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1936). Cf. Ernst Troeltsch, Religion in History (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991). Cf. especially Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, vol. 1 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951). Søren Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments; or, A Fragment of Philosophy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1962); Søren Kierkegaard. “Philosophische Brocken: Abschließende unwissenschaftliche Nachschrift (Teil 1 und 2),” in Gesammelte Werke, trans. by Hermann Gottsched and Christoph Schrempf, vols. 6–7 (Jena: Diederichs, 1910). Cf. Hayo Gerdes, Das Christusbild Søren Kierkegaards verglichen mit der Christologie Hegels und Schleiermachers (Düsseldorf: Diederichs, 1960). Macquarrie, “Jesus Christus VI,” 25. Søren Kierkegaard, Abschließende unwissenschaftliche Nachschrift zu den Philosophischen Brocken (Düsseldorf and Cologne: E. Diederichs, 1950), 25; Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992). Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, “On the Proof of the Spirit and on Power,” in Lessing’s Theological Writings, ed. Henry Chadwick, A Library of Modern Religious Thought (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1956), 52–53. Emphasis in original. Adolf Harnack, What Is Christianity?, trans. Thomas Bailey Saunders (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957), 13f.

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22. Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus: A Critical Study of its Progress from Reimarus to Wrede, trans. W. Montgomery (London: A & C Black, 1910), 33. 23. Johannes Weiss, Die Predigt Jesu vom Reiche Gottes (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1892; 3rd ed., Ferdinand Hahn, 1964). An English translation is available: Jesus’ Proclamation of the Kingdom of God, trans. Richard H. Hiers and David L. Holland (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971; repr., Chicago: Scholars Press, 1985). 24. Macquarrie, “Jesus Christus VI,” 31. Cf. Albrecht Ritschl, The Christian Doctrine of Justification and Reconciliation, vols. 1–3 (Clifton, NJ: Reference Book, 1966). 25. Wilhelm Herrmann, Systematic Theology (Dogmatik) (New York: Macmillan, 1927), §23; Wilhelm Herrmann, The Communion of the Christian with God (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971). 26. Martin Kähler, The So-Called Historical Jesus and the Historic Biblical Christ (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988). 27. Rudolf Bultmann, Jesus (Berlin: Deutsche Bibliothek, 1926); Rudolf Bultmann, Das Verhältnis der urchristlichen Christusbotschaft zum historischen Jesus, Sitzungsberichte der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-Historische Klasse 1960, no. 3 (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag C. Winter, 1960); Rudolf Bultmann, Jesus Christ and Mythology (London: SCM Press, 1960). The first book on the historical Jesus produced in the Bultmann school since Bultmann’s own Jesus and the Word was Günther Bornkamm, Jesus von Nazareth (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1956), translated as Jesus of Nazareth (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1960). 28. Rudolf Bultmann, The History of the Synoptic Tradition (New York: Harper and Row, 1963). 29. Rudolf Bultmann, Jesus and the Word, trans. Louise P. Smith and Erminie H. Lantero (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1934); printed in the original German in 1926 as Jesus. 30. Ibid., 8.

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31. Ibid., 45, 51. 32. Rudolf Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament, trans. Kendrick Grobel (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1951), 1:3. 33. Cf. James Robinson (b. 1924) who argues that “new quest” proper begins after Ernst Käsemann; see also. Leander E. Keck, “The Second Coming of the Liberal Jesus,” in Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time: The Historical Jesus and the Heart of Contemporary Faith, ed. Marcus Borg (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1995). Another representative of this “third quest” is John Dominic Crossan (b. 1934), cofounder of the controversial Jesus Seminar in California which describes itself as dedicated to the search of authentic material about Jesus of Nazareth. See also Georgi, “Leben-Jesu-Theologie,” 20:571f. 34. Ernst Käsemann, Jesus Means Freedom: A Polemical Survey of the New Testament (London: SCM Press, 1969). 35. Ernst Käsemann, “The Problem of the Historical Jesus,” in Essays in New Testament Themes (London: SCM Press, 1964), 38. 36. See James M. Robinson, A New Quest of the Historical Jesus, Studies in Biblical Theology 25 (London: SCM Press, 1959). 37. Gerhard Ebeling, “Die Frage nach dem historischen Jesus und das Problem der Christologie,” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 1 (1959): 14–30. 38. Hans Küng, Justification: The Doctrine of Karl Barth and a Catholic Reflection (Philadelphia: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004), 129. 39. Hans Küng, On Being a Christian, trans. Edward Quinn (London: SCM Press, 1977), 148. Emphasis in original. 40. Ibid., 156. Emphasis in original. 41. Ibid., 157. 42. Hans Küng and Pinchas Lapide, Brother or Lord? A Jew and a Christian Talk Together (Glasgow: William Collins Sons, 1977), 15f. 43. Küng, On Being a Christian, 161. Emphasis in original.

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44. 45. 46. 47.

48.

49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57.

58. 59.

Ibid., 164. Ibid., 172. Küng and Lapide, Brother or Lord?, 38. Ernst Käsemann, Perspectives on Paul (Philadelphia: Fortress Press; London: SCM Press, 1971), 53, cited in Küng, On Being a Christian, 174. Cf. Karl Rahner, “Zur Theologie des Symbols,” in Sämtliche Werke, ed. Karl Lehmann et al. (Freiburg: Herder, 1997), 4:300. Henry Bettenson, Documents of the Christian Church (New York: Oxford University Press, 1947), 73. Macquarrie, “Jesus Christus VI,” 41. Küng, On Being a Christian, 174. Cf. Walter Kasper, Jesus the Christ (London: Burns & Oates; New York: Paulist Press, 1976), i. Wolfhart Pannenberg, Grundzüge der Christologie (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus Gerd Mohn, 1964). Wolfhart Pannenberg, Jesus: God and Man (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1968). Wolfhart Pannenberg, Revelation as History (New York: Macmillan, 1968). Macquarrie, “Jesus Christus VI,” 39f. Joseph Ratzinger, Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration (New York: Doubleday, 2007), xii–xiii. Immanuel Kant, Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone (New York: Harper & Row, 1960). For Hegel, the fundamental content of Christianity is the incarnation of God in Jesus: “This becoming human of divine essence … is the simple content of the absolute [or Christian] religion” (Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller with analysis of the text and foreword by J. N. Findlay [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977], col. 405, 14–16). Thus, “divine nature is the same [thing] as human [nature], and this unity is what is viewed” in Jesus (Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, col. 406, 8–10). Cf. Daniel P. Jamros, “Hegel

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60.

61.

62.

63. 64.

65.

on the Incarnation: Unique or Universal?,” Theological Studies 56 (1995): 276–300. David Friedrich Strauss, Die christliche Glaubenslehre in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung und im Kampfe der modernen Wissenschaft (Tübingen: Osiander, 1841; repr., Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2009). Falk Wagner, “Christologie als exemplarische Theorie des Selbstbewusstseins,” in Die Realisierung der Freiheit: Beiträge zur Kritik der Theologie Karl Barths, ed. Trutz Rendtorff (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus Gerd Mohn, 1975), 135–167. Paul Tillich, The New Being (New York: Scribner, 1955); Paul Tillich, “Christologie und Geschichtsdeutung,” in Gesammelte Werke, vol. 4, Der Widerstreit von Raum und Zeit: Schriften zur Geschichtsphilosophie (Stuttgart: Evangelisches Verlagswerk, 1963), 83–96. Alois Emanuel Biedermann, Christliche Dogmatik, 2nd ed., vols. 1–2 (Berlin: Reimer, 1884–1885). Cf. Leonardo Boff, Jesus Christ Liberator: A Critical Christology for Our Time (New York: Orbis Books, 1978); Dorothee Sölle and Luise Schottroff, Jesus of Nazareth (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002). The first quest usually denotes the various nineteenthcentury efforts to write “lives” of Jesus as a great religious personality: Albert Schweitzer’s 1906 book The Quest of the Historical Jesus is generally understood to mark the end of the first quest. During the first half of the twentieth century the focus shifted from the Jesus of history onto the early communities that shaped and transmitted the traditions behind the canonical Gospels. During the 1950s and 1960s a “New Quest” was initiated by some of Rudolf Bultmann’s pupils (e.g. Ernst Käsemann, Gerhard Ebeling, Gunter Bornkamm). New archaeological finds and a reassessment of first-century Judaism in the light of social history triggered off a “Third Quest” and new attempts to recover Jesus as a historical figure. Cf., Fer-

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66.

67. 68. 69.

70. 71.

72.

73. 74.

75. 76.

nando Bermejo Rubio has cogently argued against using the three quests paradigm in his essay: “The Fiction of the ‘Three Quests’: An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Historiographical Paradigm” Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 7 (2009): 211–253. Others, including Helen K. Bond, argue for three quests with four phases, see The Historical Jesus (London: Bloomsbury, 2013). William Horbury, “Jesus Christus,” in Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, ed. Hans Dieter Betz et al., 4th ed. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001), vol. 4, col. 483. Schröder, “Leben-Jesu-Forschung,” vol. 5, cols. 147–148. Theissen and Merz, Historical Jesus, 9. Werner Vogler, Jüdische Jesusinterpretationen in christlicher Sicht (Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1988), x. Julius Wellhausen, Einleitung in die drei Evangelien (Berlin: Georg Reimer, 1905), 113. See Craig Evans discussion of the “surprising lack of interest” Christian Scholars showed in Jesus’s Jewish background, and the consequences this had on later research, in: “Assessing Progress in the Third Quest of the Historical Jesus” in Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus Vol. 4.1 (2006), 36ff. Abraham Geiger, Das Judentum und seine Geschichte (1864–1871; repr., Breslau: Wilhelm Jacobsohn, 1910), 109f. Cf. Susannah Heschel, Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998). Geiger, Das Judentum, 119. Cf. Walter Homolka, Jewish Identity in Modern Times: Leo Baeck and German Protestantism (Providence, RI: Berghahn Books, 1995), 12–13. Cf. Michael A. Meyer, Great Debate on Antisemitism: Jewish Reaction to New Hostility in Germany, 1879–1881 (New York: Leo Baeck Institute, 1966). Heinrich von Treitschke, “Unsere Aussichten,” Preußische Jahrbücher 44, no. 5 (November 1879): 575. Heinrich Graetz, Geschichte der Juden, vol. 3 (Leipzig: Leiner, 1863), preface.

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77. “Court Preacher Adolf Stöcker Introduces Antisemitism to the Christian Social Workers’ Party (September 19, 1879),” in German History in Documents and Images, vol. 4, Forging an Empire: Bismarckian Germany, 1866–1890, http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/sub_document.cfm ?document_id=1798. Accessed 23 July 2014. 78. The only satirical magazine in Berlin to survive the 1848 revolution. 79. Adolf Stoecker, “Unsere Forderungen an das moderne Judenthum,” in Das moderne Judenthum in Deutschland, besonders in Berlin: Zwei Reden in der christlich-socialen Arbeiterpartei, 2nd ed. (Berlin, 1880), 4–20. Source of English translation: Richard S. Levy, Antisemitism in the Modern World: An Anthology of Texts (Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath, 1991), 58–66. 80. Treitschke, “Unsere Aussichten,” 559–577. Source of English translation: Levy, Antisemitism in the Modern World, 69–73. 81. Cf. Karsten Krieger, ed., Der “Berliner Antisemitismusstreit” 1879–1881: Eine Kontroverse um die Zugehörigkeit der deutschen Juden zur Nation, Kommentierte Quellenedition (Munich: K. G. Saur, 2004), 2: 551–554. 82. Cf. Rede des Herrn Präsidenten Jacobson, “Feyerliche Einweihung des Jacobs-Tempels in Seesen,” Sulamith 3, no. 1 (1810): 309. 83. Ludwig Geiger, ed., Abraham Geiger’s Nachgelassene Schriften, vol. 5, no. 2 (Breslau, 1878; repr., Hildesheim: Olms, 1999), 360. 84. Cited by Martin Faass and Henrike Mund, “Sturm der Entrüstung: Kunstkritik, Presse und öffentliche Diskussion,” in Der Jesus-Skandal: Ein Liebermann-Bild im Kreuzfeuer der Kritik, ed. Martin Faass (Berlin: MaxLiebermann-Veranstaltungs GmbH, 2009), 70. 85. Cf. Harnack, What Is Christianity?, 6. In 1902, Alfred Loisy attempted a “determination of the essence” of Christianity from a Catholic perspective with his work The Gospel and the Church (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1976). 86. Harnack, What Is Christianity?, 4.

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87. Ibid., 13. 88. Ibid., 18. 89. Ibid., 15–17. Cf. Carl-Jürgen Kaltenborn, Adolf von Harnack als Lehrer Dietrich Bonhoeffers, Theologische Arbeiten 31 (Berlin: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1973), 35. 90. Harnack, What Is Christianity?, 14. 91. Cf. Adolf von Harnack, “Über die Sicherheit und die Grenzen geschichtlicher Erkenntnis (1917),” in Reden und Aufsätze (Gießen: Töpelmann, 1923), 4:3–23, esp. 21; see also Harnack, What Is Christianity?, 89–98. 92. Adolf von Harnack, History of Dogma (Boston: Little, Brown, 1901), 1:22. 93. Although at the beginning of his work What Is Christianity? Harnack emphasizes the restriction of all human beings to their peculiar disposition and time (13), later the weight of his argument shifts to the “eminent, epoch-making personalities” who are primarily judged by what of them continues to live on in history (53). 94. Ibid., 47f. 95. Ibid., 48. 96. Ibid., 115. 97. Ibid., 65. 98. Ibid., 70. 99. Ibid., 73, 76. 100. The title page of the German Das Wesen des Christentums (3) states, “The following lectures were held during the last winter semester before an audience of approximately six hundred students from all departments” (Die folgenden Vorlesungen sind im vergangenen Wintersemester vor einem Kreis von etwa sechshundert Studierenden aller Fakultäten gehalten worden). 101. Joseph Eschelbacher, Das Judentum und das Wesen des Christentums: Vergleichende Schriften, Schriften der Gesellschaft der Wissenschaft des Judentums (Berlin: Poppelauer, 1905), 1.

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102. M. G., “Das Judentum und das Wesen des Christentums,” Ost und West: Illustrierte Monatsschrift für modernes Judentum, no. 2 (February 1905): 73–84. 103. Cf. Joseph Eschelbacher, Das Judentum und das Wesen des Christentums: Vergleichende Studien, 2nd ed., Schriften 3 (Berlin: Poppelauer, 1908), 21–23; Martin Schreiner, Die jüngsten Urteile über das Judentum kritisch untersucht (Berlin: Cronbach, 1902), 14f. The historical-critical research has been closely watched among Jewish theologians: see Eschelbacher, Das Judentum und das Wesen des Christentums: Vergleichende Schriften, 2–8; Eschelbacher, Das Judentum im Urteile der modernen protestantischen Theologie, Schriften 5 (Leipzig: Fock 1907), 1–22. See also the treatment of the dispute between Felix Perles and Wilhelm Bousset in Heinrich Holtzmann, “Besprechung der Kontroverse zwischen F. Perles und W. Bousset,” Theologische Literaturzeitung 29 (1904): 43–46. 104. According to Felix Perles, Was lehrt uns Harnack? (Frankfurt: J. Kauffmann, 1902), 29f. 105. For the following, cf. Schreiner, Die jüngsten Urteile, v–vii. 106. Gösta Lindeskog, Die Jesusfrage im neuzeitlichen Judentum: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Leben-JesuForschung (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1973). 107. Cf. ibid., 15–18; Perles, Was lehrt uns Harnack?, 23f.; Eschelbacher, Das Judentum und das Wesen des Christentums: Vergleichende Schriften, 25; cf. also Michael Guttman, Das Judentum und seine Umwelt (Berlin: Philo-Verlag, 1927), 1:338ff. 108. Harnack, What Is Christianity?, 48. 109. Cf. Johann Hinrich Claussen referring to Paul Wernle, Jesus (Tübingen: Mohr, 1916), in “Die Dornenkrone war nicht im Paket,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 25 May 2004.

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110. Johann Hinrich Claussen referring to Wilhelm Bousset, Jesus (Göttingen: Gebauer-Schwetschke, 1904) in “Die Dornenkrone war nicht im Paket.” 111. Leo Baeck, “Harnack’s Vorlesungen über das Wesen des Christentums,” Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums 45, no. 2 (1901): 118. 112. Ibid., Baeck cites Abraham Geiger as follows: “Passing derogatory judgments on objects of study for which the required preconditions and qualifications for independent appraisal are lacking would, in all other fields, surely force one to reconsider his actions; only in relation to Judaism does one, with confident caprice, believe he can get stuck in.” “Absprechend über Gegenstände zu urtheilen, zu deren selbständiger Erforschung es an den nöthigen Voraussetzungen und Fähigkeiten gebricht, würde man sich wahrlich auf jedem anderen Gebiete doppelt und dreifach bedenken; nur dem Judenthum gegenüber glaubt man mit souveräner Willkür zu Werke gehen zu dürfen.” 113. Ibid., 105. 114. Leo Baeck, “The Gospel as a Document of History,” in Judaism and Christianity: Essays by Leo Baeck, trans. Walter Kaufmann (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1958), 101. In addition, Baeck also worked intensively on Paul. Cf. Elias H. Füllenbach, “Vom Paulus zum Saulus: Christliche und jüdische Paulusauslegung im 20 Jahrhundert,” Wort und Antwort 49 (2008): 100–104. 115. Leo Baeck, “The Gospel as a Document of History,” in Judaism and Christianity: Essays by Leo Baeck, trans. Walter Kaufmann (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1958), 41f. 116. Leo Baeck, “Abweichungen der christlichen Religionen vom Judentum in den Grundgedanken: Einleitung,” in Die Lehren des Judentums nach den Quellen, Fünfter Teil (Judentum und Umwelt) (Berlin: Schwetschke & Sohn, 1929), 67.

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117. Eva Jospe, ed., Reason and Hope: Selections from the Jewish Writings of Hermann Cohen (New York: Norton, 1971), 121. 118. Yehezkel Kaufmann, Goleh ve-nekhar (Tel Aviv: Devir, 1929), 342. 119. Claude G. Montefiore, The Synoptic Gospels (London: Macmillan, 1909). Cf. Walter Jacob, Leo Baeck, and Claude Montefiore, “Die Evangelien aus jüdischer Sicht,” in Leo Baeck: Zwischen Geheimnis und Gebot; Auf dem Weg zu einem progressiven Judentum der Moderne, ed. Walter Homolka, Herrenalber Forum 19 (Karlsruhe: Evangelische Akademie Baden 1997), 185–191. 120. Kaufmann Kohler, Jesus from Nazareth from a Jewish Point of View (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1899). 121. Kaufmann Kohler, Jewish Theology, Systematically and Historically Considered (New York: Ktav, 1968), 435. 122. Gerd Theissen, The First Followers of Jesus: A Sociological Analysis of the Earliest Christianity, trans. John Bowden (London: SCM Press, 1978). 123. For “the revitalization of the Jewish religion by Jesus” as a concept, see Gerd Theissen, A Theory of Primitive Christian Religion (London: SCM Press, 1999), 21, 24, 27, 38, 165. 124. Ibid., 22. 125. Joseph Klausner, “Die Gegensätze zwischen dem Judentum und der Lehre Jesu,” Menorah, nos. 5–6 (May 1930): 223–232. 126. Ibid., 231. 127. Joseph Klausner, Jesus of Nazareth: His Life, Times and Teachings (New York: Bloch, 1989), 414. 128. Benjamin Murmelstein, “Joseph Klausner: Jesus von Nazareth,” Menorah, nos. 11–12 (November 1930): 603–605. 129. Eduard Strauss, “Jesus von Nazareth,” Der Jude 6, no. 11 (1921–1922): 686–691. 130. Eduard Strauss, “Paulus, der Bekehrer,” Der Jude 7, no. 1 (1923): 32–44.

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131. Martin Buber, Two Types of Faith (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1951), 12f. 132. Schalom Ben-Chorin, Zwiesprache mit Martin Buber (Gerlingen: Bleicher, 1978), 63. 133. Martin Buber, Pfade in Utopia (Heidelberg: Schneider, 1985), 378. 134. Clemens Thoma, “In memoriam Schalom Ben-Chorin (1919–1999),” Freiburger Rundbriefe: Zeitschrift für christlich-jüdische Begegnung, n.s., 1999: 312. 135. Schalom Ben-Chorin, Brother Jesus: The Nazarene through Jewish Eyes (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2012), 4. 136. Schalom Ben-Chorin, Bruder Jesus: Der Nazarener in jüdischer Sicht (Munich: List Verlag, 1967). 137. Ben-Chorin, Brother Jesus, 14. 138. Schalom Ben-Chorin, Das Judentum im Ringen um die Gegenwart (Hamburg: Evangelischer Verlag Herbert Reich, 1965), 42. 139. Werner Vogler, Jüdische Jesusinterpretationen in christlicher Sicht (Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1988), 55. 140. “We must now ask, if Jesus had been unmarried, would his disciples not have questioned him about this fault? Even more, would his opponents not have used against him the fact that in his own life he had left unfulfilled the first of the obligations, or mitzvoth, in the Torah: ‘Be fruitful and multiply’ (Gen 1:22)?” (Ben-Chorin, Brother Jesus, 101). 141. Ibid., 17. 142. Ibid., 107. 143. Ibid., 5f. 144. Hans Küng and Pinchas Lapide, Brother or Lord? A Jew and a Christian Talk Together (Glasgow: William Collins Sons, 1977), 44. Emphasis in original. 145. Pinchas Lapide, Der Rabbi von Nazareth: Wandlungen des jüdischen Jesusbildes (Trier: Spee-Verlag, 1974).

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146. Joel Carmichael, The Death of Jesus (New York: Macmillan, 1962). 147. Küng and Lapide, Brother or Lord?, 25. 148. “Neither Luke nor Mark nor Matthew, however, in their accounts of the action of Jesus assert that a single precept was ever infringed or still less broken. In this respect you must believe me, for I do know my Talmud more or less. … This Jesus was as faithful to the law as I would hope to be” (Küng and Lapide, Brother or Lord?, 27). 149. Ibid., 17. 150. Pinchas Lapide, Der Jude Jesus: Thesen eines Juden; Antworten eines Christen (Zürich: Benzinger, 1980). 151. Küng and Lapide, Brother or Lord?, 14. 152. Ibid., 44. 153. Pinchas Lapide, Auferstehung: Ein jüdisches Glaubenserlebnis (Stuttgart: Calwer; Munich: Kösel, 1978); translated by Wilhelm C. Linss as The Resurrection of Jesus: A Jewish Perspective (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2002). 154. Küng and Lapid, Brother or Lord?, 20. 155. Samuel Sandmel, A Jewish Understanding of the New Testament, 3rd ed. (Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights, 2005), 9. 156. Ibid., 32. 157. Ibid., 33. 158. Ibid. 159. Ibid., 198f. 160. Cf. David Flusser, The Sage from Galilee: Rediscovering Jesus’ Genius (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007). 161. Sandmel, A Jewish Understanding of the New Testament, 283. 162. Ibid., 284. 163. Ernst Ludwig Ehrlich, “Eine jüdische Auffassung von Jesus,” in “Was uns trennt, ist die Geschichte”: Ernst Ludwig Ehrlich—Vermittler zwischen Juden und Chris-

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164. 165. 166.

167.

168. 169.

170.

171. 172. 173. 174. 175. 176. 177. 178.

ten, ed. Hanspeter Heinz and Hans Hermann Henrix (Munich: Verlag Neue Stadt, 2008), 179–190. Ibid., 186. Ibid., 185. Hans Joachim Schoeps, Die großen Religionsstifter und ihre Lehren, 3rd ed. (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1954), 75. Hans Joachim Schoeps, “Jesus und das jüdische Gesetz,” in Studien zur unbekannten Religions und Geistesgeschichte, Veröffentlichungen d. Gesellschaft für Geistesgeschichte 3 (Göttingen: Musterschmidt, 1963), 41–61. Ibid., 64. First published in German: Hans Joachim Schoeps, Jüdisch-christliches Religionsgespräch in neunzehn Jahrhunderten: Geschichte einer theologischen Auseinandersetzung (Berlin: Vortrupp-Verlag, 1937). Hans Joachim Schoeps, The Jewish-Christian Argument: A History of Theologies in Conflict (London: Faber & Faber, 1963), 172. Emphasis in original. Schoeps, Die großen Religionsstifter und ihre Lehren, 60. Rowan Williams, “Review of Christian Beginnings, by Géza Vermes,” Guardian, 14 July 2012. Géza Vermes, Jesus the Jew: A Historian’s Reading of the Gospels (London: Collins, 1973). Géza Vermes, Jesus and the World of Judaism (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1984). Géza Vermes, The Religion of Jesus the Jew (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993). Géza Vermes, The Changing Faces of Jesus (London: Allen Lane, 2000). Géza Vermes, The Authentic Gospel of Jesus (London: Allen Lane, 2003). Géza Vermes, Christian Beginnings: From Nazareth to Nicaea (AD 3–325) (London: Allen Lane, 2012; New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013).

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179. Géza Vermes, Jesus in the Jewish World (London: SCM Press, 2010), 19; Géza Vermes, Jesus the Jew, Claude Montefiore Memorial Lecture 1974 (London: Liberal Jewish Synagogue, 1974), 11. 180. Vermes, Jesus in the Jewish World, 4. Emphasis in original. 181. Vermes, Jesus the Jew: A Historian’s Reading of the Gospels, 223. 182. See also Géza Vermes, “Jesus the Jew,” in Jesus’ Jewishness: Exploring the Place of Judaism in Early Judaism, ed. J. H. Charlesworth (New York: Crossroads, 1991), 108–122. 183. Vermes, Jesus the Jew: A Historian’s Reading of the Gospels, 224. 184. Géza Vermes, “Review of Jesus of Nazareth, Part 2: Holy Week, by Pope Benedict XVI,” Guardian, 12 March 2011.

Chapter 3

Jesus the Jew and Joseph Ratzinger’s Christ A Theological U-Turn

Jesus Was a Jew: A Cultural Coincidence? Despite harsh judgment from Géza Vermes, the quest of the historical Jesus from both Christians and Jews has been given new wind due to Joseph Ratzinger’s (b. 1927) Jesus trilogy, which began to be published in 2007. Is it not incredible that there have been almost no comments on Ratzinger’s book from the Jewish perspective to date? As I was unable to find anything, I asked my colleague Rabbi Michael A. Signer (1945–2009), a professor at the Catholic University of Notre Dame and one of the initiators of “Dabru Emet: A Jewish Statement on Christians and Christianity” from 2002. With the notable exception of Jacob Neusner (b. 1932), which will be discussed later, he did not know of any significant Jewish comments on the pope’s book on Jesus either. Given that Joseph Ratzinger placed a devotional image of Jesus as the “Christ,” specifically designed to bridge the gaps left by the historicalcritical approach, at the center of his book, it probably aroused little serious interest from Jewish scholars. In fact, for Joseph Ratzinger, the historical Jesus we inherited from research from the last two centuries had become too lean.

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He notes this at the beginning of his book: The gap between the “historical Jesus” and the “Christ of faith” grew wider and the two visibly fell apart. … As historical-critical scholarship advanced, it led to finer and finer distinctions between layers of tradition in the Gospels, beneath which the real object of faith—the figure [Gestalt] of Jesus—became increasingly obscured and blurred. At the same time, though, the reconstruction of this Jesus (who could only be discovered by going behind the traditions and sources used by the Evangelists) became more and more incompatible with one another: at one end of the spectrum, Jesus was the anti-Roman revolutionary … ; at the other end he was the meek moral teacher.1 The divergent results of the historical Jesus studies tended to create idealized images of their authors rather than uncovering the real Jesus. “[T]he figure of Jesus himself has for that very reason receded even farther into the distance. … Intimate friendship with Jesus, on which everything depends, is in danger of clutching at thin air.”2 Cardinal Christoph Schönborn (b. 1945) made clear during the book presentation in Rome that Jacob Neusner’s A Rabbi Talks with Jesus had inspired the pope to write this new work. Neusner pointed out that he had been involved in a literary disputation with the pope: Disputation went out of style when religions lost their confidence in the power of reason to establish theological truth. … The heritage of the Enlightenment with its indifference to the truth-claims of religion fostered religious toleration and reciprocal respect in place of religious confrontation and claims to know God. … For the past two centuries

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Judeo-Christian dialogue served as the medium of a politics of social conciliation, not religious inquiry into the convictions of the other.3 Contrary to this trend, Ratzinger—like Neusner himself— is a “truth seeker.” Nevertheless, the Christian debater has to cope with the fact that Neusner would not have followed Jesus: “I explain in a very straightforward and unapologetic way why, if I had been in the Land of Israel in the first century and present at the Sermon on the Mount, I would not have joined the circle of Jesus’ disciples. I would have dissented, I hope courteously, and I am sure with solid reason and argument and fact. If I heard what he said in the Sermon on the Mount, for good and substantive reasons I would not have become one of his disciples.”4 One must give Ratzinger credit that he allows a Jewish position to confront his position of faith. For, as we have seen, contributions from Jewish Jesus researchers have not usually been viewed as helpful challenges to the Christian position or even as an invitation to dialogue, but rather as presumptive arrogance. Unfortunately, Jacob Neusner is the only Jewish sparring partner who appears in Joseph Ratzinger’s work. This book would have been vastly enriched if the author had not limited himself to this one singular reference, but had rather engaged the general Jewish quest of the historical Jesus. I take this as an indication the theologian (formerly) on the papal throne was not really concerned with the Jewish quest of the historical Jesus as he developed his portrait of Jesus. What is clear, however, is that Joseph Ratzinger owes the Jewish position greater discussion. A parallel can be found in his Introduction to Christianity (1968), where he writes of humanity’s responsibility for the earth and that in the end they would be judged “by their works.”5 He also drew an explicit parallel to Judaism: “It might be useful in this context to recall certain things said by the great

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Jewish theologian Leo Baeck. The Christian will not entirely agree with them, but he cannot disregard their seriousness.”6 Ratzinger resolves the tension between the Christian doctrine of grace and the Jewish demand for actively shaping the world, without, however, mentioning incongruities with the saving message of Judaism. And he accomplishes this even though he clearly understands the universal claim of the ethics of Judaism: “Baeck then shows how this universalism of salvation founded on the deed crystallized more and more firmly in the Jewish tradition and finally emerged clearly in the ‘classical’ saying: ‘Even the pious who are not Israelites share in the eternal bliss.’”7 Ratzinger’s resolution is succinct: “Perhaps in the last analysis it is impossible to escape a paradox whose logic is completely disclosed only to the experience of a life based on faith.”8 One has the impression that we are listening to someone who has intimate knowledge of the Jewish position. But it does not concern him: “It is not part of our task to consider in detail how this statement can coexist with the full weight of the doctrine of grace.”9 If, however, God’s salvation history with his people has not ended, if Judaism continues to bear testimony to its covenant with God, and if it is fraternally connected to Christianity, then why is Ratzinger so casual in his appraisal of the Jewish position? Ratzinger’s starting point with Neusner is nonetheless interesting because it shows that Jewish preoccupation with Jesus can also motivate Christians to think about this important Jew and to remind them that his Jewish heritage was no cultural coincidence, but a part of Christian salvation history. In his “Address to the Participants of the Vatican Colloquium on the Roots of Anti-Judaism in Christianity” in 1997, Pope John Paul II put it thus: Those “who regard the fact that Jesus was a Jew and that his milieu was the Jewish world as mere cultural accidents, for which one could substitute another religious tradition from which the Lord’s person could be

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separated without losing its identity, not only ignore the meaning of salvation history, but more radically challenge the very truth of the Incarnation and make a genuine concept of enculturation impossible.”10

The “Rabbi Jesus”: For Christians Only Important as Christ? Joseph Ratzinger himself points out everything that a Jew could say about Jesus: “that we have very little certain knowledge about Jesus and that only at a later stage did faith in his divinity shape the image we have of him. This impression has by now penetrated deeply into the minds of the Christian people at large,”11 warns the pope. This is “a dramatic situation for faith, because its point of reference is being placed in doubt.”12 “But what can faith in Jesus as the Christ possibly mean, in Jesus as the Son of the living God, if the man Jesus was completely different from the picture the Evangelists painted of him and that the church, on the evidence of the Gospels, takes as the basis of her preaching?”13 Joseph Ratzinger asks himself. Yes—what? The pope wants to make it clear that those Jesus images were only “photographs” of their authors, not an uncovering of the historical Jesus of the Bible. His answer is clear: if God steps into actual history, “incarnatus est,” belief must also subject itself to historical research.14 This is not a new insight; he already came to the same conclusion in his Introduction to Christianity back in 1968: The attempt to outflank historical Christianity and from the historian’s retorts to construct a pure Jesus by whom one should then be able to live, is intrinsically absurd. Mere history creates no present; it only confirms what happened in the past.

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In the last analysis the romantic approach to Jesus is just as devoid of value for the present or future as the flight to the pure verbal event was bound to be. … Yet the shuttle movement of the modern mind between Jesus and Christ … was not entirely wasted.15 In this manner Ratzinger recognizes the findings of modern exegesis, but he has doubted its reach for decades. For him, historical-critical research is incapable of grasping the belief that Jesus, as a human being, was God.

“Reading the Whole Bible in the Light of Christ”: Joseph Ratzinger’s Hermeneutics Joseph Ratzinger is basically concerned with viewing the process that shapes scripture “in the light of Jesus Christ.”16 From this perspective it can be seen that the whole points in one direction and the “Old Testament and New Testament belong together.”17 Had Christians abandoned the Old Testament, as Adolf von Harnack suggested in the wake of Marcion, “our New Testament would be meaningless in itself.”18 “It is clear that a Christian rejection of the Old Testament would not only put an end to Christianity itself as indicated above, but, in addition, would prevent the fostering of positive relations between Christians and Jews, precisely because they would lack common ground,” says Ratzinger in his preface to the opinion of the Pontifical Biblical Commission of 2001, The Jewish People and Their Sacred Scriptures in the Christian Bible. At the same time, for Ratzinger, the Christian hermeneutics of the Old Testament, which must be distinguished from that of Judaism, still represent a way of interpreting these texts.19 Joseph Ratzinger’s position on the relationship between faith in the Old and New Testaments is categorically

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an a priori faith. He starts out from the fact that only faith makes Jesus Christ the “key for the whole” for Old and New Testaments; by itself, the historical method cannot produce this understanding. This had already been implied in his preface from 2001, where the words of scripture are supported by an “inner deeper value,” a multidimensionality of human language that is not fixed on a particular moment in history, but anticipates the future. He is interested in “how the Word of God can avail of the human word to confer on a history in progress a meaning that surpasses the present moment and yet brings out, precisely in this way, the unity of the whole.”20 In the first volume of his Jesus trilogy he builds on his earlier comments: “The author is not simply speaking for himself on his own authority. He is speaking from the perspective of a common history that sustains him and that already implicitly contains the possibilities of its future, of the further stages of its journey.”21 Therefore, Jews and Christians have a common foundation in scripture, but are separated by their different ways of reading. Joseph Ratzinger’s critique of the historical-critical research is therefore logical: “That the biblical authors in the centuries before Christ, writing in the Old Testament, intended to refer in advance to Christ and New Testament faith, looks to the modern historical consciousness as highly unlikely.”22 I am tempted to remark here that this also seems very unlikely, even for a Jew. Therefore, based on the “shared scripture” argument, there is no substantial proximity between Jews and Christians.

Christian Faith and “Historical Reason” For Jews, Joseph Ratzinger’s assertion that this act of faith is based on “historical reason”23 is very problematic. In his encyclical letter Spe Salvi of 30 November 2007, Joseph

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Ratzinger formulated this interweaving of faith and reason as a central thought: “Reason therefore needs faith if it is to be completely itself: reason and faith need one another in order to fulfill their true nature and their mission.”24 But if Christianity wishes to demand any significant claim to the truth, at least since the Enlightenment, then it must submit to the same procedure of testing and verification as is expected in the secular sciences. Rabbi Abraham Geiger summarized the Jewish understanding of reason well. On a portrait made during his years as a rabbi at the local Storchen Synagogue in Wrocław, which probably dates to 1840, we find his motto: “Through investigation of the particular to knowledge of the universal, through acquaintance with the past to understanding of the present time, through reason to faith.”25 Joseph Ratzinger’s trilogy on Jesus seems to suggest that one ought to proceed in exactly the opposite way. Without doubt, Ratzinger’s trilogy has given new splendor to the risen Christ for the church and its faith. For the Jewish reader, it is clear that the author is not just personally in search of faith, but already under the presupposition of faith. In this respect he is following the tradition of those who wish to supersede the quest of the historical Jesus. Jews, on the other hand, have come to look upon Jesus as one of us who has come a long way as a human to bring closer God’s will to all humankind.

Notes 1. Joseph Ratzinger, Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration (London: Bloomsbury, 2008), xi–xii. 2. Ibid., xii. 3. Jacob Neusner, “My Argument with the Pope,” Jerusalem Post, 29 May 2007, p. 13.

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4. Ibid. 5. Joseph Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity, trans. by J. R. Foster (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004), 323. 6. Ibid. 7. Ibid., 324. 8. Ibid. 9. Ibid. 10. See Marvin Meyer and Charles Hughes, eds., Jesus Then & Now: Images of Jesus in History and Christology (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 2001), 234; “Ansprache an die Teilnehmer des vatikanischen Kolloquiums über die Wurzeln des Antijudaismus im christlichen Bereich,” in Die Kirchen und das Judentum, vol. 2, Dokumente von 1986– 2000, ed. Hans Hermann Henrix and Wolfgang Kraus (Paderborn: Bonifatius, 2001), 109. 11. Joseph Ratzinger, Jesus of Nazareth, xii. 12. Ibid. 13. Ibid., xi. Emphasis in original. 14. Ibid., xv. 15. Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity, 201. 16. Ratzinger, Jesus of Nazareth, xix. 17. Ibid. 18. Joseph Ratzinger, “Preface,” in The Jewish People and Their Sacred Scriptures in the Christian Bible, ed. Pontifical Biblical Commission (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2002), 10: “The document of the Pontifical Biblical Commission introduced by this Preface declares: ‘Without the Old Testament, the New Testament would be an unintelligible book, a plant deprived of its roots and destined to dry up and wither’.” (no.: 84). 19. Ibid., 11–12. The commission states on p. 142: “Christian readers were convinced that their Old Testament hermeneutic, although significantly different from that of Judaism, corresponds nevertheless to a potentiality of meaning that is really present in the texts.” (no.: 64). 20. Ibid., 10. 21. Ratzinger, Jesus of Nazareth, xx.

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22. Ratzinger, “Preface,” 9. 23. Ratzinger, Jesus of Nazareth, xix. 24. Benedict XVI, Encyclical Letter Spe Salvi of the Supreme Pontiff, Benedict XVI, to the Bishops, Priests and Deacons, Men and Women Religious and All the Lay Faithful on Christian Hope (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2007), 47. 25. Jakob J. Petuchowski, New Perspectives on Abraham Geiger (Cincinnati: Ktav, 1975); cf. Hartmut Bomhoff, Abraham Geiger: Durch Wissen zum Glauben (Berlin: Hentrich & Hentrich, 2006), 30.

Conclusion

Over the last two thousand years Jewish perceptions of Jesus have undergone an exciting transformation: from confrontation, distance, dissociation and anxiety to a cautious repatriation. What began as a defensive attitude has now become a largely self-confident affiliation with Jesus; where Jesus is presented as one of the many voices within the Jewish world of his time. This has been the result of an impressively large body of Jewish research, especially since the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.1 Parallel to this, and often without any real reciprocity, the Christian quest attempted to strip Christ of his dogmatic veil in order to catch a glimpse of the historical figure beneath it— Jesus of Nazareth. The fruits of this quest have been perceived quite differently within Christianity over the past two centuries and any attempt to reveal the historical Jesus has all too often been met with suspicion. The final chapter of this book looked in detail at the most recent example of Christian misgiving toward the historical Jesus, namely Joseph Ratzinger’s Jesus trilogy. Despite these apparently intransigent views and positions, Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen nevertheless emphasizes a useful continuity across the Christian quests: While there are radical, irreconcilable differences between the various stages—and one almost questions the wisdom of connecting them terminologically—they share the desire of questioning much

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of two thousand years of ecclesiastical and theological formulations of Christology.2 If questioning which leads to progress can be described as the true nature of the quest then indeed there are grounds for optimism. James Dunn succinctly summarized the achievements of the Christian quest since the 1980s: “In the closing decades of the twentieth century the most helpful advance in life of Jesus research was the recognition that the quest must primarily have in view Jesus the Jew and a clearer and firmer grasp of the consequences. What distinguishes this ‘third quest of the historical Jesus’ is the conviction that any attempt to build up a historical picture of Jesus of Nazareth should and must begin from the fact that he was a first-century Jew operating in a first-century milieu… What more natural, one might think, what more inevitable than to pursue a quest of the historical Jesus the Jew?”3 Jewish interest in Jesus the Jew, certainly at the beginning, was primarily driven by an apologetic impulse; but although Jewish scholars were initially defensive, they always pursued a common strategic goal; namely, the justification of Judaism as a contemporary expression of faith within the “Christian state.” I have shown how this apologia was met by determined, and often anti-Semitic, opposition. This was especially true in the period after the foundation of the Second German Empire, although it persisted well on into the Weimar Republic and beyond. Over the course of the twentieth century there was a significant shift in focus and genuine curiosity, or rapprochement, rather than any ulterior political motive appears to have become the main catalyst for Jewish interest

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in Jesus. Leo Baeck’s elaborate studies on Jesus and Christianity, for example, were attempts to define common ground even during the time of the Third Reich.4 But especially in the decades after the Shoah, the image of Jesus as captured by Jewish scholars has become more familiar (e.g. “Brother Jesus” by Schalom BenChorin). This latest development is creating completely new lines of investigation: Jesus’s teaching from the Jewish Halakha5 perspective is one area where he is now being perceived as somebody arguing from within the tradition rather than as the dangerous outsider of former centuries.6 What is particularly striking is the fact that Jesus has become a figure within Jewish literature7 and so, finally, he has become a figure of identification within the boundaries of Jewish culture and civilization. While these literary paths continue to grow and connect up to earlier biographical studies from Jewish scholars, there has been little contemporary movement in the Jewish theological sphere. This is not surprising when one considers the Jewish quest of the historical Jesus against the backdrop of the concept of the Messiah as we find it in biblical and rabbinic Judaism. There are strong arguments which seem to indicate a decline in the relevance of this theological concept since medieval times and particularly since the Jewish emancipation period.8 Jewish interest in Jesus the Jew began to flourish at exactly the same time as the Messianic idea—after a long series of pseudo-messianic disappointments—began to lose appeal. The fact that, by and large, nineteenth and twentieth century Judaism no longer anticipates a personal Messiah could plausibly lead one to the conclusion that interest in Jesus never had much theological intent in the first place. What image of Jesus can we now draw from the Jewish point of view? Jesus may have been a great man in his time, but he was not a perfect human being. And even as a great man he assumes no special status, after all, Judaism has

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produced many great men. Therefore Jesus warrants no supernatural status. Nevertheless, as a phenomenon and an integral part of Western civilization, he cannot be overlooked, even by Jews. Ernst Ludwig Ehrlich sees no reason to grant Jesus any other status because, he argues, he changed “nothing, absolutely nothing.” Ehrlich adds the insight that, “Judaism has never acknowledged a single teacher, only the chain of teachers, the stream of tradition. It has always resisted placing one person at the center.”9 “The deepest misunderstanding between Jews and Christians,” he continues, consists in the fact that Jews can lead “full-fledged religious lives without ever having heard of Jesus and having heard the gospel.”10 If it is true that God is the Lord of history, then the historical impact of Christianity must be recognized as a religion closely linked with Judaism. Some Jewish scholars reminded us Jews of this fact when they engaged in Jewish-Christian dialogue. They reinforced the insight that, for the sake of their common heritage, Christianity and Judaism have to be open to dialogue now that the long period of silence has been overcome. What can be said about Jesus the Nazarene from a Jewish point of view? Was he a Pharisee and scribe? Maybe. Was he significant? Without a doubt. Was he the Messiah or even the Son of God? According to the Jewish understanding: no.

Notes 1. See Evans “Assessing Progress in the Third Quest of the Historical Jesus,” 36ff. 2. Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, Christology (Grand Rapids, MI: 2003), 108. 3. James Dunn: Jesus Remembered; Christianity in the Making Vol. 1 (Grand Rapids, MI: 2003), 86.

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4. Cf. David Nowak for an enlightening discussion of how Christian-Jewish Dialogue in relation to the figure of Jesus began in North America at the beginning of the twentieth century, much earlier than in Continental Europe: “The Quest for the Jewish Jesus.” Modern Judaism 8, no. 2 (1988): 119–138. 5. See Chaim Saiman, “Jesus’ Legal Theory: A Rabbinic Reading.” Journal of Law and Religion 23, no. 1 (2007/ 2008): 97–130; David A. Skeel Jr. “What were Jesus and the Pharisees Talking about When They Talked about Law?” Journal of Law and Religion 23, no. 1 (2007/2008): 141–146. 6. An early Christian example of such interpretation is Hermann L. Strack/Paul Billerbeck: Kommentar zum Neuen Testament aus Talmud und Midrasch: 4 vol., (Munich, 1922–1928). 7. See Melissa Weininger, “An Ethical Zionist: Jesus in A. A. Kabak’s Bemish’ol hatsar.” Prooftexts: A Journal of Jewish Literary History 32, no. 1 (2012): 1–32; Karl-Josef Kuschel, “Afterword” to the new edition of Max Brod’s “Der Meister” [1952] in: Max Brod – Ausgewählte Werke (Ed. Hans-Gerd Koch and Hans Dieter Zimmermann), Göttingen, 2015; Neta Stahl, Other and Brother: Jesus in the 20th-century Jewish literary landscape. Oxford, New York, 2013. 8. Walter Homolka, “Die Messiasvorstellungen im Judentum der Neuzeit,” in Der Messias, Berliner Theologische Zeitschrift Issue:1 (Leipzig, 2014): 106–141. 9. Ehrlich, “Eine jüdische Auffassung von Jesus,” 186. 10. Ibid., 190.

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Index

Adler, Levi Lazarus, 52 Aleinu (prayer), 21–22 Allgemeine Geschichte des Israelitischen Volkes (General History of the Israelites, Jost), 31 anti-Christian attitudes/texts: Jewish, 13–14, 16–22. See also polemics anti-Semitism/anti-Judaism, xv–xvii, xviii, 20 in Germany, 49–56, 59, 60–61, 112 See also polemics apocalyptic mind-set of Jesus, 79 apostles see disciples arrest of Jesus, 7–8 Ashkenazi liturgy, 23 Aslan, Reza, xix Auferstehung: Ein jüdisches Glaubenserlebnis (The Resurrection of Jesus: A Jewish Perspective, Lapide), 76 Babylonian Talmud, 16 Baeck, Leo, 60, 62–65, 72, 104, 113 baptism of Jesus, 4 Bauer, Fritz, 8–9

Ben Stada (Egyptian magician), 15 Ben-Chorin, Schalom, 15, 18, 72–73, 80, 96n140 Benedict XVI (pope). See Ratzinger, Joseph Berger, David, 21 Bethlehem, as birthplace of Jesus, 2–3 Biedermann, Alois Emanuel, 44 biography of Jesus, 2–5, 7–9, 16 blood libel stories, xvi–xvii Boff, Leonardo, 45 book burnings, medieval, 23, 24 Bousset, Wilhelm, 62 brother, Jews seeing Jesus as, 70–71, 73 Bruder Jesus: Der Nazarener in jüdischer Sicht (Brother Jesus: The Nazarene through Jewish Eyes, BenChorin), 72 Buber, Martin, 70–71, 74 Bultmann, Rudolf, xi, 34, 37–38, 40 Caiaphas, 8 Capernaum, 4

136 • Index Carmichael, Joel, 74 Catholic Church, on historical Jesus, 45 celibacy of Jesus, 72–73, 96n140 Celso, 15 censorship, of Jewish literature, 22–23, 24 Chalcedon, Fourth Ecumenical Council of (451), 41–42 charismatics, Jewish, 81–82 Christ before the High Priest (painting, van Honthorst, 1617), xxi Christian scholarship on Jesus, 31–45, 57–58, 61–62, 67–69, 82–83, 89–90n65, 101–108, 111–112 on Judaism, 57–58, 62 on Old Testament, 106 Christian-Jewish relations. See Jewish-Christian relations Christianity, 14, 57, 58 anti-Judaism in, xvi–xvii, xviii, 19, 20, 22–24 foundation/Jewish origins of, 61, 65, 69, 75, 80, 107 Jewish views of, 13–14, 29–30, 48–49, 50, 52 Christians, Jewish, 13–14, 15, 65 Christology, 41–43 Cohen, Hermann, 65–66 coherence criterion, xii Cohn, Haim, 8

commandments, Jesus on, 6 Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments (Kierkegaard), 35 correlation method, 34 Crossan, John Dominic, 87n33 crucifixion of Jesus, 9 dating of crucifixion/death of Jesus, 3, 9 of the Gospels, 1 Davidic descent of Jesus, 2, 15 death of Jesus, 3, 9, 16, 74 The Death of Jesus (Carmichael), 74 demythologizing Jesus, 72 disciples of Jesus, 4, 32 disputations, JewishChristian, 19–20, 21, 22, 23–24, 102–103 dissimilarity criterion, xi–xii dogmas, xvii, 33, 37, 65 Donin, Nicholas, 22 Dunn, James, 112 Duran, Profiat, 21 Easter, Jewish views of, 76–77 Ebeling, Gerhard, 39 Ebendorfer, Thomas, 19 Egger, Anton, xvi Ehrlich, Ernst Ludwig, 79–80, 114 Eliezer ben Hyrcanus, 15 emancipation of Jews, 47, 49, 50

Index • 137

Emden, Jakob, 29–30 Emmerick, Anna Katharina, xviii Encyclopaedia Judaica, 18–19 Enlightenment Jewish, 29–31 quest for historical Jesus in, 44 Esau, negative images of, 14–15 Eschelbacher, Joseph, 59–60, 60 ‘Essence of Christianity’ lectures (von Harnack), 56, 59–60, 61, 62, 92n100 ethics Christian, 14 Jewish, 58–59, 60, 62, 104 evangelical movements, 45 Das Evangelium als Urkunde der jüdischen Glaubensgeschichte (The Gospel as a Document of the History of the Jewish Faith, Baeck), 62–64 evangelization of Jews, 22 Evans, Craig, 90n71 existentialist interpretations of Jesus, 37–38 faith and historical Jesus, 39, 40–41, 42, 44, 45, 101–102, 105–106 and reason, 107–108 The First Followers of Jesus: Sociological Analysis of

the Earliest Christianity (Theissen), 67 Flusser, David, 7 folk literature, on Jesus, 17–19 Form Criticism, 37–38 Fourth Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon (451), 41–42 Galilee, 4 Geiger, Abraham, 30–31, 48–49, 55, 62, 94n112, 108 Genizah fragments on Jesus, 18–19 Germany anti-Semitism in, 49–56, 59, 60–61, 112 Jewish scholarship in, 60–61 Geschichte der synoptischen Tradition (The History of the Synoptic Tradition, Bultmann), 37–38 Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaft des Judentums (Society for the Promotion of the Science of Judaism), 60 Gibson, Mel, xviii God as human, xix, 20, 33, 41–42, 43, 88n59 Jesus as son of, 35, 41–42, 43, 88n59, 114 Kingdom of, 32, 37, 38 Gospels, 1, 57, 82–83 Hebrew translations of, 19 Jewish scholarship on, 16, 30, 70, 72, 77–78

138 • Index Jewishness of, xii, 63–64, 75 on life of Jesus, 1, 2–3, 4, 5–6, 7, 9, 77–78, 79 Synoptic, 38 on women, xii See also John’s Gospel; Luke’s Gospel; Mark’s Gospel; Matthew’s Gospel Graetz, Heinrich, 18, 50, 53–54, 55 Gregory IX (pope), 22–23 Guttmann, Jehoshua, 18–19 Ha’minim Birkat (prayer), 13–14 Harnack, Adolf von, 35–36, 56–60, 65, 92n93, n100, 106 Jewish criticism of, 61, 62, 66 Hasidim Rishonim, 82 Hebrew, translations of the Gospels in, 75 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 88n59 heretics, 13–14, 22–23 Hermann, Wilhelm, 37 hermeneutical lenses, xv, xvii Hillel, 6 historical Jesus, xi–xiii, xix Christian scholarship on, 31–45, 57–58, 61–62, 67–69, 82–83, 89–90n65, 101–108, 111–112 and faith, 39, 40–41, 42, 44, 45, 101–102, 105–106

impossibility of study of, 77–78, 79, 80 Jewish scholarship on, xiii, xix–xx, 19–22, 29–31, 46–49, 64, 67, 69–83, 104, 108, 111, 112–114 sources, 1–2, 39, 77–78 historical-critical approaches, 33, 34, 35, 40, 43, 52, 82–83 criticism of, 102, 106, 107 history, 43, 56–57, 92n93 of Christianity, 57 of the Jews, 50 of religion, 34, 62 History of the Jews (Graetz), 50, 53–54 Hizzuk Emunah (Affirmation of the Faith, Isaac of Troki), 20, 30 Homolka, Walter, xvii Honthorst, Gerrit van, xxi Horbury, William, 46 human concept of God as, xix, 20, 33, 41–42, 43, 88n59 Jewish understandings of, 79 humanity, 64–65 Ibn Shaprut, Shem Tov ben Isaac, 19 Innocent IV (pope), 23 Introduction to Christianity (Ratzinger), 103–104, 105–106

Index • 139

Isaac (ben Abraham) of Troki, 20, 30 Islam on Jesus, xix Jewish views of, 29–30 Issak Troki: Ein Apologet des Judenthums am Ende des 16 Jahrhunderts (An Apologist for Judaism at the End of the Sixteenth Century, Geiger), 30 Jacobson, Israel, 55 Jaspers, Karl, 41 Jefferson, Thomas, 35 Jesus the Christ (Kasper), 42 ‘Jesus Christ in the Perspective of Judaism’ (article, Horbury), 46 Jesus: God and Man (Pannenberg), 43 Jesus the Jew: A Historian’s Reading of the Gospels (Vermes), 81 Jesus of Nazareth (Benedict XVI), 82–83 Jesus and the Word (Bultmann), 38 Jewish charismatics, 81–82 Jewish Christians, 13–14, 15, 65 Jewish Enlightenment, 29–31 Jewish literature censorship of, 22–23, 24 folk, 17–19 rabbinic, 15–17, 19–22, 23–24 The Jewish People and Their Sacred Scriptures in the

Christian Bible (Ratzinger), 106, 109n18, 19 Jewish scholarship on Christianity, 13–14, 29–30, 48–49, 50, 52, 65–66 in Germany, 60–61 on Gospels, 16, 30, 70, 72, 77–78 on Jesus, xiii, xix–xx, 19–22, 29–31, 46–49, 62, 64, 67, 69–82, 103, 104, 108, 111, 112–114 on reason, 108 Jewish sources on heretics, 13–14 on Jesus, 1–2, 15–22, 23–24 used in Christian antiJewish polemics, 22–24 The Jewish-Christian Argument: A History of Theologies in Conflict (Schoeps), 80 Jewish-Christian relations, xx–xxi, 29, 80 dialogue, 102–107, 114, 115n4 and perceptions of Jesus, 41, 44, 45, 48, 73–74, 114 Jewishness of Gospels, xii, 63–64, 75 of Jesus, xii–xiii, xix, xxi, 3, 6–7, 38–39, 40, 47, 55, 62, 63, 64, 66–68, 69, 70–71, 72–73, 74, 75–76, 97n148, 104–105, 112, 113

140  •  Index John the Baptist, 3–4, 58 John Paul II (pope), 104–105 John’s Gospel, 1, 9 Josephus, Flavius, xii, 1–2 Joshua ben Perahyah, 23 Jost, Isaak Markus, 31 Judaism, 13 Christian views of, 57–58, 62–66 Christianity originating from, 61, 65, 69, 75, 80, 107 ethics/essence of, 58–59, 60, 62, 104 messiahship in, 113 and teachings of Jesus, 5–7, 69, 70–71, 75–76, 79, 113 Judas Iscariot, 8, 18 Der Jude Jesus: Thesen eines Juden; Antworten eines Christen (Jesus the Jew: Theses of a Jew; Answers from a Christian, Lapide), 75 Judenstein (Jewstone) story, xvi Das Judenthum und seine Geschichte (Judaism and its History, Geiger), 48 Die Predigt Jesu vom Reiche Gottes (Jesus’s Proclamation of the Kingdom of God, Ritschl), 37 Kabbalists, Jesus and his disciples as, 21 Kähler, Martin, 37 Kärkkäinen, Veli-Matti, 111–112 Käsemann, Ernst, xi–xii, 38–39, 41

Kasper, Walter, 42 Kaufmann, Yehezkel, 66 kerygma theology, 40 Kierkegaard, Søren, 34–35 Kimchi, David, 20 Kimchi, Joseph, 19–20 Kingdom of God, 32, 37, 38 Klausner, Joseph, 2, 6, 16, 69–70 Kohler, Kaufmann, 67 Krauss, Samuel, 19 Krochmalnik, Daniel, 14 Küng, Hans, 39–41, 42, 97n148 Lapide, Pinchas E., 73–77, 80, 97n148 Das Leben Jesu für das deutsche Volk bearbeitet (The Life of Jesus for the German People, Strauss), 33 Leon da Modena: Rabbiner zu Venedig und seine Stellung zur Kabbalah, zum Thalmud und zum Christentume (Rabbi to Venice and His Position on the Kabbalah, the Talmud and Christianity, Geiger), 30–31 Leon de Modena, 30 Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, 32, 35 Levine, Amy-Jill, 31–32 liberal Christian theology, 37, 38 Liberaler Verein für die Angelegenheiten der jüdischen Gemeinde zu

Index  •  141

Berlin (Liberal Association for the Affairs of the Berlin Jewish Community), 60 liberation theology, 45 Liebermann, Max, 55–56 The Life of Jesus: Critically Examined (Strauss), 32–33 The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth: Extracted Textually from the Gospels in Greek, Latin, French and English (Jefferson), 34 Limor, Ora, 22 linguistic suitability criterion, xii literacy, of Jesus, 3 liturgy, Ashkenazi, 23 Louis IX (king of France), 23 love thy neighbor commandment, 6 Luke’s Gospel, 3, 4, 7, 9 Magen wa-Hereb (Sword and Trowel, Leon de Modena), 30 Magonet, Jonathan, xix–xx Maier, Johann, 1, 14, 15, 16, 17–18 Mark’s Gospel, 1, 2, 5, 9 Matthew’s Gospel, 2 Meir ben Baruch of Rothenburg, 23 Menachem Ha-Meiri of Perpignan, 14 Mendelssohn, Moses, 31 Merz, Annette, 47 messiahship of Jesus, Jewish denial of, 71, 73, 114

in Judaism, 113 Meyer, Seligmann, 52 Middle Ages anti-Christian Jewish texts/attitudes in, 14, 16–22 anti-Jewish polemics in, 19, 22–24 censorship of Jewish literature in, 22–23, 24 minim (antirabbinic Jews, heretics), 13 miracles, 35 Mishnah, 13, 15 Mommsen, Theodor, 54 Montefiore, Claude G., 67 multiple attestation criterion, xii Murmelstein, Benjamin, 70 myths anti-Semitic, xvi–xvii and historical Jesus, 33, 34, 39 and personification, 66 Nachmanides, 23–24 naiveté in faith, 41 Nascher, Sinai Simon, 52 Neusner, Jacob, 102–103, 104 New Testament see Gospels Nostra Ætate declaration (Second Vatican Council), 45 Old Testament, 106–107, 109n18, 19. See also Torah On the Proof of the Spirit and of Power (Lessing), 35

142 • Index other, creation of, xvii Palestinian Talmud, 16 Pannenberg, Wolfhart, 43 Pantera(s), as name for Jesus, 15 parables, of Jesus, 5 Paris Disputation (1240), 23 Passion, xviii, 1, 15–16 The Passion of the Christ (film, 2004), xviii Paul, 65, 67, 69 personification of religion, 66 Pharisees, 58 Jesus in conflict with, 79 Jesus fitting in tradition of, 48, 72, 74 Philosophical Fragments (Kierkegaard), 34–35 polemics anti-Christian, 14, 16–22 anti-Jewish, 19, 22–24, 51, 52–54, 59, 60–61 political role of Jesus, 45 Pontius Pilate, 9 preaching of Jesus, 3, 4–5, 37 Die Predigt Jesu vom Reiche Gottes (Jesus’s Proclamation of the Kingdom of God, Weiss), 37 Preußische Jahrbücher (Prussian Yearbooks), 49–50 prophecies, fulfilled, 35 Protestant Church, and Judaism, 24, 45 purification, ritual, 4

Q source, 1, 6 The Quest of the Historical Jesus (Schweitzer), 89n65 rabbi title for Jesus, 5 Der Rabbi von Nazaret: Wandlungen des jüdischen Jesusbildes (The Rabbi of Nazareth: Transformations of the Jewish Image of Jesus, Lapide), 74 rabbinic argumentation of Jesus, 5 rabbinic Judaism, 13, 14 rabbinic texts, on Jesus, 15–17, 19–22, 23–24 Rabe, Johann Jacob, 24 Rahner, Karl, 41, 42 Rashi (Solomon Yitzhaki), 14 Ratzinger, Joseph (pope Benedict XVI), xvii, 43, 69, 82–83, 101–102, 105–107, 109n18 and Judaism/Jewish scholarship, 102–104 reason, and faith, 107–108 Reimarus, Hermann Samuel, 32 religion history of, 34, 62 personification of, 66 resurrection of Jesus, 43, 76–77 revelation, notion of history as, 43 revolutionary nature of Jesus, 45 Ritschl, Albrecht, 37

Index • 143

ritual purification, 4 Rubio, Fernando Bermejo, 90n65 Salvador, Joseph, 31 Sandmel, Samuel, 77–79, 80 Schäfer, Peter, 16–17 Schoeps, Hans-Joachim, 79–80 Scholem, Gershom, 21 Schönborn, Christoph, 102 Schöpf, Gottfried, xvi Schröder, Mark, 46 Schweitzer, Albert, xi, 36–37, 89n65 Schwöbel, Christoph, xx scientific history, xi Sefer Ha’Berit (Book of the Covenant, Joseph Kimchi), 20 Sefer Nizzahon Yashan (Book of Refutation), 21 self-censorship, Jewish, 24 Sha’ali Serufah Ba’Esh (elegy, Meir of Rothenburg), 23 Shafer, Ingrid, xxi Signer, Michael A., 101 Sölle, Dorothee, 45 sources on life of Jesus, 39 Gospels, 1, 2–3, 5–6, 7, 9, 77–78, 79 Jewish sources, 1–2, 15–22, 23–24 Spe Salvi (Ratzinger), 107–108 Stecher, Reinhold, xvi–xvii Stoecker, Adolf, 50–51, 52–53, 55–56

Strauss, David Friedrich, 32, 32–33 Strauss, Eduard, 70 suffering of Jesus, 72, 76–77 of the Jews, 18, 24, 72 Swidler, Leonard, xxi Synoptic Gospels, 38 The Synoptic Gospels (Montefiore), 67 systematic theology, 34 Talmud Christian criticism of, 22–23 on Jesus, 15–16, 23, 24 Te Deum (prayer), 21–22 teachings of Jesus, 5–7, 32, 58–59, 61 Jewish views of, 48, 69, 70–71, 75–76, 79 Temple, conflict over, 8 tevilah practice (ritual purification), 4 text-critical approaches, 34 Theissen, Gerd, 5, 47, 67–68 theology Christian liberal, 37, 38 kerygma, 40 liberation, 45 systematic, 34 Theory of Primitive Christian Religion (Theissen), 67–68 Tillich, Paul, 34 Tisha B’Av, 23 Toledot Yeshu, 17–19 Torah Jesus’ knowledge of, 3

144  •  Index obligations of (mitzvoth), 96n140 See also Old Testament translations, of the Gospels, 75 Treitschke, Heinrich von, 49–50, 53–55 trial of Jesus, 8–9 Trinity doctrine, 43 Troeltsch, Ernst, 34, 62 truth, xv, 35 Tübinger Schule (Tübingen School), 33 The Twelve-Year-Old Jesus in the Temple (painting, Liebermann), 55–56 ‘Unsere Aussichten’ (essay, Our Prospects, von Treitschke), 49–50, 53–54 Vatican Colloquium on the Roots of Anti-Judaism in Christianity, 104–105 Vatican Council, Second, 45 Vermes, Géza, xviii, 81–83

Vögtle, Anton, 3 Von dem Zwecke Jesu und seiner Jünger (The Aims of Jesus and His Disciples, Reimarus), 32 Weiss, Johannes, 37 Wellhausen, Julius, 47, 57, 61 Wernle, Paul, 61–62 What Is Christianity? (von Harnack), 56–59, 92n93 Williams, Rowan, 81 Winter, Paul, 8 women, religious statements on, xii Yehiel ben Joseph, 23 Yeshu ha-Notsri (Jesus of Nazareth, Klausner), 69–70 youth of Jesus, 2–3 Yuval, Israel, 21 Zealot (Aslan), xviii