Saint Saul. A Skeleton Key to the Historical Jesus by Donald Harman Akenson (review)

HUMANITIES 191 Donald Harman Akenson. Saint Saul. A Skeleton Key to the Historical Jesus McGill-Queen=s University Press. x, 346. $32.95 Saint Saul is a work of history written by a savvy, clear-thinking, independent-minded historian in love with words. This is a great read both because of the freshness of its historical probings and its rollicking joyous style. The question Akenson addresses is the historical Jesus. He proposes that we look for Jesus in the letters of Paul. This suggestion is, in and of itself, radical. The quest for the historical Jesus has relied primarily on the gospels and extra-canonical materials. Akenson=s provocative proposal is that biblical scholars have chosen the wrong evidentiary basis in their quest for the historical Jesus. Paul is the primary source for Jesus. This claim is made on both a negative and a positive basis, by both debunking the approach of the Jesus Seminar and arguing for the appropriateness of using Paul. Akenson sustains a strong argument against the methods of the Jesus Seminar without carping, and often with humour. His critique of its use of the Secret Gospel of Mark and the Gospel of Peter is particularly entertaining. Akenson contends that Paul is the most appropriate source for knowledge about the historical Jesus, for only Paul inhabits the same religious and political world as Jesus. The writers of the rest of the New Testament come from a period after the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE. Consequently, Paul, or B as Akenson prefers to refer to him B Saul, is the best source for learning about Yeshua (Jesus). Akenson prefers the Hebrew forms of their names in an effort to encourage his readers to recognize that both Saul and Yeshua inhabited a pre-Christian, pre-rabbinic Jewish world B the world of Second Temple Judahism. Akenson intelligently sketches the contours of Second Temple Judahism (he chooses Judahism, not Judaism, in order to signify that this world was pre-rabbinic and so multifaceted and fluid in its theological concepts, and that it was centred in the Jerusalem Temple). Here, and elsewhere, Akenson typically incorporates and critiques the best of current scholarship, regularly adding pungent observations. When describing Second Temple Judahism, for instance, Akenson notes that there was in fact very little messianic expectation in the period and that what expectation there was was pluriform. He observes that the Christianity of the gospels must be explained as largely non-linear; it does not follow naturally from pre-70 Judahism. Akenson critiques some of the major scholars on the Second Temple period, in particular E.P. Sanders, whose main deficiency, according to Akenson, is that he portrays a more homogeneous situation than is historically probable. Akenson=s opinion is that Second Temple Judahism was wildly inventive and diverse. 192 LETTERS IN CANADA 2000 After determining how he will use Paul, particularly whether Acts will figure in his reconstruction of Paul=s Jesus, Akenson proceeds to read Saul as evidence for one of the several variant types of Yeshua-faith in the late Second Temple era. That is, Akenson recognizes that there were different forms of faith in Jesus prior to the destruction of the Temple, and that Paul gives evidence for one of them. Saul tells us that Yeshua is the Messiah, and that the resurrection is the point at which his transformation to Messiah occurred. For Paul the resurrection is not a physical event but rather a cosmic one. Yeshua is also for Saul the Son of God. Akenson lists thirteen other aspects of Yeshua=s biography and behaviour that exist in Paul=s letters. Recognizing the paucity of what can be found about Yeshua in Saul, Akenson proposes that we look at the matter differently. Since Saul=s selfproclaimed desire is to live in imitation of Christ, Akenson suggests that we regard his letters as the first recorded instance of a life lived in this imitation. It is Saul=s own imitation of Christ that functions as the key to aspects of the historical Yeshua. What we learn from Saul is the character, not the content, of the historical Jesus, and according to Akenson, that character is summarized...