I recently wrote a review of a book on Jesus
by Shmuley Boteach
which I am sharing here. In Kosher Jesus, he argues that “Jesus was a wise,
learned rabbi who despised the Romans…worked to rekindle Jewish observance of
every aspect of the Torah…was willing to die to end Roman dominion and renew
Jewish sovereignty in ancient Israel.”
The question, of course, is to whom is he appealing? Does he really think Jesus
existed as portrayed in Christian sources? If so what could he possibly have to
offer Jews that is not already on record from our own great leaders of the
century he is supposed to have lived in? Perhaps out of his genuine friendship
and affection for his Christian admirers Shmuley is trying to remove the
600-pound gorilla in the room, the fundamentally different way Jews and
Christians see the character of Jesus Christ. He wants Christians to understand
Jesus was not God but a nice loyal Jewish boy (forgive me, I can’t stop myself
recalling the line from the Monty Python movie, Life
Of Brian, “He’s not the Messiah; he’s a very naughty
boy”). And, as a sop, he wants Jews to stop thinking of Jesus as a heretic and
the founder of a religion that persecuted them for two thousand years. Not only,
but he has endowed him with a totally unsubstantiated title.
He leans heavily on the work of Hyam Maccoby, an English academic (one of my
teachers and a grandson of the Kamenitzer Maggid), who masterfully showed how
little in the Gospels made any historical sense and how contradictory and
improbable their narratives were. Judea at the time was choc-a-bloc with
radicals, rebels, saints, charismatic healers, and Teachers of Righteousness
(to use Dead Sea Sect terminology), any one of whom, or even a combination of
whom, could have served as a model for someone intent on creating a new
movement designed for the Roman Empire.
The Gospels were written in Greek some hundred years at least after the
purported events. The words attributed to Jesus contained nothing that would in
any way have been offensive to the Pharisee, Rabbinic school of Judaism.
Politically, the Jews at the time were as divided as today between the peace
party and those refusing to compromise. No one would have objected to somebody
claiming to be the Messiah, which to them was simply the term used for an
anointed leader who would throw off the occupation and restore Jewish
sovereignty. After all, many of them supported Bar Kochba, who tried to do just
that in 132. The proof of the pudding was in the eating. If you won, you’d be
the Messiah, and if you failed, a corpse. Neither was being the "Son of
God" a problem, because the Bible calls us all sons and daughters of the
one God. And for any human to have claimed he actually was God would, in the
eyes of his contemporaries in Judea, simply have consigned him to the ranks of
the delusionary.
Since Geza Vermes, the Regius Professor at Oxford, wrote Jesus
the Jew in 1973, academics have been trying to recast Jesus as a Jew. But
it is all rather fanciful, because we have absolutely no direct, firsthand
evidence whatsoever that Jesus actually existed. The Gospels were written for a
gentile audience. Josephus, who might have been a contemporary and refers to
him, never met him, and his record is not to be relied on. The Apostle Paul,
whom Maccoby cast as the founder of Christianity, only met Jesus in a vision on
the road to Damascus. We have no more facts about the actual man said to be
Jesus than we do about Noah. The Gospels are important documents, but not
proofs of existence. I am not talking about the legacy or about the
significance of the myth, simply the facts. Orthodox Jews often refer to
uncensored scurrilous Talmudic references, usually in code, but we don’t know
when they were written and whether they reflected later tensions.
A lot of people were trying to make the world a better place as the Roman
Empire began to unravel. If you read Daniel Boyarin, particularly A Radical Jew:
Paul and the Politics of Identity, you will know that it was
almost impossible to tell many Jews from many Christians or Nazarenes in the
sectarian turmoil, splits, and persecutions of those days. It wasn’t really
until Constantine’s Council of Nicaea in 325 that the dividing lines were
finally drawn between Jews and Christians and between those who believed Jesus
was a man and those who believed him to be God.
I felt, reading this book, the way I did after reading Freud’s Moses and
Monotheism
Whoever we are, we believe what we are taught, conditioned, persuaded and we
act on the basis of those convictions. Variety in itself is healthy. What we
religious folk, must do is stop persecuting people for thinking differently,
not try to persuade them to change their ideas. That is why Rav Yosef Dov
Soloveitchik (1903–1993) laid his ground rules for
interfaith that still define the dominant Orthodox position. We should engage
in mutually beneficial interaction over causes and matters of joint concern.
But to try to engage in Theological Disputation is pointless. I would only want
to qualify this by saying it is always beneficial to study other points of view
and “know what to reply even to the Epicurian” (Avot 2.14).
I respect and value all religions that try to make this world a better place
and increase love between humans. I despise any religion that tries to impose
its worldview on others. It doesn’t matter who that religion has as a founding
figure, or what tales it tells. No committed Jew is going to follow Jesus as a
role model over Hillel, who said virtually the same things. Just as no
believing Christian is going to take Hillel over Jesus. So why the need to
pretend that Jesus existed and that he was a rabbi, or a shoemaker, or a
financial advisor?
It’s as idiosyncratic a book, as its author who ranks Maimonides on a higher
level than Hillel. We contentious Jews can’t even agree amongst ourselves about
our own religion, let alone someone else’s. His potted history is too
simplistic, with the odd mistake and debatable judgments. For example, it was
not Pompey who started using the term “Palestinia” instead of “Judea”, it was
Hadrian. Pharisees and Sadducees did indeed on occasion cooperate despite their
differences, as the Mishna Yoma shows.
It is, however, fascinating how someone supposedly born of Jewish parents in
Judea should be transformed into a blond Aryan, born in a Dutch barn surrounded
by Scandinavian pines. We do indeed create gods in our own image. The long
history of Christian persecution and anti-Semitism cannot entirely be blamed on
a single mythical narrative. It is the continuous teaching that nonbelievers
are inferior subhumans that is the source of most evil in our world, regardless
of which religion.
Still, like all his books, it’s a fun romp and an easy if controversial
introduction to a contentious issue.
Shabbat Shalom,
Jeremy
