Scholarship as Moral Vision: David Flusser on Jesus, Paul, and the Birth of Christianity

David Flusser, the late Israeli scholar of the New Testament and early Judaism, wrote extensively on the figure of Jesus. He insisted that Jesus be understood entirely within the framework of first-century Palestinian Judaism. For Flusser, Jesus was not a critic of Judaism, not even a reformer, but the embodiment of what Flusser calls the moral essence of ancient Judaism. Against those who have seen in Jesus an illiterate am ha-arets, Flusser argued that Jesus was a Pharisee of sorts and that his teachings show traces of influence from the community at Qumran. By the same token, the gospels, and virtually all of later Christianity, get Jesus wrong, most notably the gospel of Matthew in the final stages of its redaction. Overall, Flusser sees in Jesus a moral exemplar for the modern world, for Jews as well as Christians. In his earlier writings, Flusser contrasted the figures of Jesus (seen in a thoroughly positive light), and Paul (more negatively). But in his later writings on Paul, Flusser moved toward a break with the traditional view of Paul as one who repudiated the Law, not just for Gentiles but also for Jews. Flusser was among the first to understand that Paul's arguments about the Law are addressed to an internal audience of Jesus-followers; his view that the Law was no longer valid applied only to Gentiles, never to Jews. This insight brought him to the brink of a total departure from traditional views of Paul as the father of Christian anti-Judaism.