The Jewish Jesus: Revelation, Reflection, Reclamation

Jesus the “Material Jew”

47 Jesus the“Material Jew” Joshua Schwartz Introduction To speak today of “Jesus the Jew” is commonplace. Jesus, son of Joseph and Mary, residents of Nazareth, was born a Jew, lived as a Jew and died as one. But what kind of Jew was he? During the course of the years, scholarship has helped us understand much about his life and his basic teachings and not a small amount of work has been done on the Jewish context of his life and teachings. However, much less attention has been paid to the physical and material realities surrounding the everyday life and teachings of Jesus. The “academic” Judaism of Jesus is often a “literary” Judaism, short on material culture and archaeology, although attempts have been made recently to focus on “Jesus archaeology.”1 Less work, however, has been devoted to material culture and realia, or in the words of Marianne Sawicki: “Until recently, studies of Jesus have paid surprisingly little attention to the land, regarding it merely as a kind of stage or neutral platform supporting the events told in the Gospels. . . . Anyone who wants to know about Jesus must seek him on his native turf, in his own land and landscape.”2 This is easier said than done, however, or as stated by Peter Richardson: “It is difficult to use realia in Galilee, Judea, and South Syria in descriptions of the rising of the Jesus movement, in part because no realia can certainly be associated with it in these early stages.”3 “Christian archaeology” is still very monument oriented and still expends much energy on actively seeking archaeological confirmation of the New Testament, focusing on the “big” issues, and not the micro issues of everyday life.4 Thus, the material life and culture of Jesus is perforce the material life of Jesus the Jew. 48 JoShua SchwarTZ But how can that material life be determined? Surprisingly, there is not agreement about the composition of “material culture.” There are those who stress landscape with material culture being a segment of one’s physical environment shaped by humans. Others stress artifacts seeing material culture as the totality of artifacts in culture, including remnants left behind from the physical world. The former would seem to reflect the quote of Sawicki above. The latter might be identified with archaeology, but it is not. Material culture and archaeology are related but not the same. To both of these views it is possible to add liberally from the theories (and sometimes jargon) of the world of social sciences forming satellite and subviews including issues of caste, kinship, and gender.5 It is also not easy to determine just what makes up “Jewish” material culture as opposed to material culture of the Jews. Thus, the material life of the Jews in Hellenistic-Roman Palestine was not that much different that that of their non-Jewish neighbors, both in terms of urban and rural life. What was different related to “Jewish” aspects of everyday life or halakha and included such ethnic and religious material markers as mikvaot, or stone vessels, both relating to purity , the wearing of fringes on a four-cornered garment, or the use of religious paraphernalia such as “Sabbath lamps.” There might also have been some minor differences in agricultural procedures and perhaps in agricultural tools and implements. Certain types of burial, such as secondary burial, might be an indicator of Jewishness, animal bone profiles that lack pig and aniconic decoration, without human or animal figures, might also be (negative) Jewish material markers .6 Are we to look then for Jesus and the Jesus movement to be frequenting mikvaot or using stone implements? Did they wear fringes on their garments? Could we even tell them apart from any other Palestinian Jew of the time in terms of their material culture and everyday life? For our purposes, what we seek is material culture of the Jews and here and there some “Jewish” material culture. Both of these would probably have also served as the material framework for Jesus and his followers. While even the “historical Jesus” may have lived at times in an apocalyptic world,7 his images and thought used a language of everyday life in Roman Palestine. His teachings and parables mention stone vessels, lamps and flasks, pots, utensils, vineyards and towers, coins, and swords, among other items. Understanding the realia of his world, Jewish or not, is of the highest priority in re-creating his social world and this in turn can help...