The Jewish Jesus: Revelation, Reflection, Reclamation

How Credible Is Jewish Scholarship on Jesus?

251 How Credible Is Jewish Scholarship on Jesus? Michael J. Cook This essay explores the problem of the methodological credibility of Jewish scholarship on Jesus. My prism will be a number of “favorite” Gospel topics toward which Jews most often gravitate: • Jesus’ Last Supper • his Sanhedrin trial • his “blasphemy” verdict • his pairing with Barabbas • his Jewish opponents • his partiality for the “lost sheep . . . of Israel” • his Jewish observances • his Passion-week outline • his intent to “fulfill” the Law I am often asked by Christian scholars why Jews overly accept the Gospels ’ basic historical “facts” about Jesus. They ask also in writing—for example, Donald Hagner: “modern Jewish scholars . . . on the whole . . . surprisingly tend to ascribe more reliability to these materials than do many of the more radical non-Jewish critics.”1 Some Jews have agreed—for example, Samuel Sandmel: “I am sometimes aghast at the amateurishness of Jewish scholars in Christian literature,” at “the almost fundamentalism of some Jewish scholars when they approach the Gospels”2 ; also Trude Weiss-Rosmarin: “Jewish historians tend to accept the Gospel data on Jesus as basically factual. . . . They take issue with the Gospel accounts of his trial and death as if they were history.”3 252 MIchaEl J. cooK If we Jews predicate our analyses of Jesus on events about whose very occurrence many Christian scholars entertain doubts, I feel not only that our credibility in their eyes suffers but also that the closing of this chasm devolves upon us, and via three avenues: 1) fuller exposure to Christian scholarship; 2) fuller sensitivity to the problems the Gospel writers felt constrained to address; and 3) fuller recognition of the techniques early Christian writers applied to resolve those problems—techniques I have named “Gospel Dynamics.” Giving Christian Scholarship Its Due When we Jews by-pass Christian scholarship and plunge directly into Gospel studies, we can appear to commit trespass—securing entry without paying our admission fee. Given the long and enormous accrual of Christian scholarship, the Gospels appear an ever-enlarging smorgasbord of contrasting “data,” with different Jesus profiles proliferating depending upon how selected passages are arrayed. Hence the mushrooming of creditable (although not uniformly respectable ) Christian efforts showing Jesus to have been a pacifist or militant, prophet, apocalypticist, Pharisee, reformer, liberator, Essene, charismatic, magician, healer-exorcist, cynic-philosopher, savior, even pure myth (or combinations of these). Thus multiple Jesuses are projected simultaneously on the same screen, frustrating confident retrieval of the original. Another impediment is that peculiar tendency of different generations of Christian researchers to reconceptualize Jesus more as they are than as he was (likened to peering down a well at the “person below,” really one’s self-image reflected).4 If there are cogent reasons why Christian scholars themselves have reached this impasse, then should not Jewish scholars become fully versed in how this predicament evolved? Most rewarding is an immersion in the history of Christian scholarship commencing with early nineteenth-century writers. For it has now indeed been over 200 years that brilliant Christian minds have refined methods to determine who the historical Jesus was only to see findings by one generation of scholars significantly modified, even overturned, by some succeeding enterprise. That Christian “quests” for the historical Jesus—spurts of research extending decades at a time—are numbered signals that interim periods have been essentially calls for “time-out,” for giving up the venture altogether, or possibly for reversions to earlier conventional views. But the inevitable effect of reading these past giants is not simply deepening our knowledge but what is even more impactful still: altering our very thinking patterns. Thus, while the conclusions I will impart in this essay are Jewish as well as original, my process of reaching them I owe to the absorption of Christian scholarship. Given that almost all Jewish scholars are far less steeped in Gospel scholarship than are our Christian counterparts, why presume that we can succeed where they have admitted limited, even no, success? We may bear special expertise (e.g., in rabbinics) or, seeing matters from different vantage points, feel we how credible is Jewish Scholarship on Jesus? 253 have something distinctive to contribute. But inevitably, if we are perceived as cutting corners, then analyses we offer will seem suspect. Giving Early Church Problems Their Due Gospel traditions became reshaped, even invented outright, to solve problems arising for Jesus’ followers between his death and the Gospels’ completion. Respecting many Gospel...