The Jewish Annotated New Testament (166 page)

Josephus was born in 37 CE in Jerusalem to a priestly family of the Hasmonean line. After receiving an education befitting an urban aristocrat, he became involved in politics in 64 CE when he went to Rome in order to secure the release of some priests, “perfect gentlemen,” who had been arrested by Judea’s Roman governor (
Life
13). Upon his return to Jerusalem he found the city in turmoil, riven by factional strife and revolutionary fervor. Josephus was caught up in these events, and when the war broke out in the fall of 66 CE he became a general of the revolutionary forces in Galilee. (Josephus gives two inconsistent versions of these events, one in the
Jewish War
and the other in the
Life
.) In Galilee, Josephus spent most of his time escaping various attempts on his life and surviving the maneuvers of his political rivals. The Roman general Vespasian met little resistance when he attacked Galilee in the spring of 67 CE; Josephus was soon captured, and the Romans were on their way toward Judea.

Josephus spent the rest of his life among the Romans. He claims that upon capture by Vespasian, he prophesied that the general would someday become Roman emperor, a prophecy realized in 69 CE. Josephus continues this theme in his
Jewish War
, written under the patronage of Vespasian and his son Titus; its main thesis is that God supported the Romans against the Jews. Titus’s destruction of the Temple in the summer of 70 CE proves not divine impotence but divine justice, since the destruction was condign punishment visited upon the sinful Jews. The revolutionaries had rebelled not only against the Romans but also against God, and the Jews should hold themselves to blame for the catastrophe.

The
Jewish Antiquities
is a different kind of work. The first half paraphrases the Bible, beginning with Genesis 1, while the second half gives the postbiblical history of the Jews in both the homeland and the Diaspora, up to the outbreak of the war in 66 CE. Thus Josephus gives two different versions of the reign of Herod the Great and the Roman administration of Judea, one in the opening book and a half of the
Jewish War
and another in the last seven books of the
Jewish Antiquities
. These parallel accounts often disagree. (For example, the portrait of Herod the Great in
J.W
. is much more favorable than in
Ant
.) The
Antiquities
is a large and complex work that had a wide range of motives, among them to introduce Jews and Judaism to the Greco-Roman world, to correct certain misconceptions about the Jews, and to show that the Jews were a distinguished people with a distinguished past and present. This apologetic motive was taken up further in Josephus’s final work,
Against Apion
.

At numerous points the narratives of Josephus intersect directly with the New Testament. For example, Josephus gives a fuller portrait of various political figures mentioned in the Gospels and Acts, including Herod the Great, his sons Archelaus, Herod Antipas, and Philip, his grandson Agrippa I, and his great-grandson Agrippa II; the Roman governors of Judea Pontius Pilate, Antonius Felix, and Porcius Festus; and the first-century high priests Ananus (Annas), Caiaphas, and Ananias son of Nedebaeus.

In
Antiquities
Josephus mentions Jesus, John the Baptist, and James the Just.
Ant
. 18.3.3, the so-called
Testimonium Flavianum
, is Josephus’s account of Jesus:

About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he was one who performed surprising deeds and was a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. He was the Messiah [Greek: the Christ]. And when, upon the accusation of the principal men among us, Pilate had condemned him to a cross, those who had first come to love him did not cease. He appeared to them spending a third day restored to life, for the prophets of God had foretold these things and a thousand other marvels about him. And the tribe of the Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared. (trans. W. Whiston)

Most modern scholars believe that Josephus could not have written this text as we have it; specifically, he would not have written “He was the Christ.” A shorter text was likely revised by Christian copyists who wanted Josephus to endorse Christianity. Scholars disagree about exactly how to reconstruct the original of the passage.

John the Baptist is mentioned in
Ant
. 18.5.2. Speaking of Herod Antipas, who suffered a military defeat at the hands of the king of the Nabataeans, Josephus says that the conflict arose because Herod Antipas was planning to divorce his wife, daughter of the Nabataean king, in order to marry Herodias, the wife of his half-brother. Josephus continues:

Now some of the Jews thought that the destruction of Herod’s army came from God, and was a very just punishment for what he did against John called the baptist. For Herod had him killed, although he was a good man and had urged the Jews to exert themselves to virtue, both as to justice toward one another and reverence towards God, and having done so join together in baptism. For immersion in water, it was clear to him, could not be used for the forgiveness of sins, but as a sanctification of the body, and only if the soul was already thoroughly purified by right actions. And when others massed about him, for they were very greatly moved by his words, Herod, who feared that such strong influence over the people might lead to a revolt—for they seemed ready to do anything he should advise—much preferred to move now rather than to have him raise a rebellion later and engage him in actions he would regret.

And so John, out of Herod’s suspiciousness, was sent in chains to Machaerus, the fort previously mentioned, and there put to death; but it was the opinion of the Jews that out of retribution for John God willed the destruction of the army so as to afflict Herod. (trans. W. Whiston, rev.)

This passage disagrees with the New Testament. In Mark 6.17–28 the femme fatale who sets the story in motion is not Herodias but her daughter, she who does her famous dance. Also, in Mark 1.4 John the Baptist is said to preach a “baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins,” a position that Josephus’s John appears to reject (“For immersion in water, it was clear to him, could not be used for the forgiveness of sins”). In Josephus, John is executed out of fear that he may be a revolutionary, a motif that is absent from the New Testament.

James the Just is mentioned in
Ant
. 20.9.1. The governor Festus has just died, and his successor Albinus has not yet arrived in Judea. During the interregnum the high priest Ananus son of Ananus acts against his enemies:

Ananus thought he had now a proper opportunity since Festus was now dead, and Albinus was but upon the road; so he assembled a session [Greek: the Sanhedrin] of judges, and brought before them a man named James, the brother of Jesus who was called Christ, and some others. He accused them of being breakers of the law, and delivered them to be stoned. But those who were reputed to be the most equitable of the citizens, and who were strict in observance of the laws—they disliked what was done. They therefore secretly sent to the king [Agrippa II], desiring him to send to Ananus that he should act so no more. (trans. W. Whiston, rev.)

James the Just, brother of Jesus, is mentioned in a number of New Testament passages, but his death is reported only here. What is striking is that Ananus accuses James of transgressing the Torah, but in the New Testament James appears as an advocate of loyalty to the Torah (Gal 2.12; Acts 21.20–24). These three Josephan passages, which parallel and yet differ from what is written in the New Testament, suggest that by the late first century CE, the period when the Gospels were being composed and Josephus was writing his
Antiquities
, a variety of historical traditions were in circulation concerning the founding figures of earliest Christianity.

JEWISH RESPONSES TO BELIEVERS IN JESUS

Claudia Setzer

Contemporary Jews and Christians have a stake in understanding the relations of Jesus and his early followers to other Jews, but we are limited to a few tendentious sources. The majority of sources are Christian: the New Testament;
The Martyrdom of Polycarp
(a late second-century account of the death of Polycarp [ca. 69–155 CE], bishop of Smyrna, at the hands of the Roman authorities); the pseudepigraphical
Gospel of Peter
(second century CE); comments from the mid-second-century apologist Justin Martyr (ca. 100–165 CE) in his
Dialogue with Trypho
. We also have the testimony of the staunch Platonist, the pagan Celsus (as reported in writings of the Christian thinker Origen [ca. 185–254]; his work
Contra Celsum
[
Against Celsus
, mid-third century] quotes extensive portions of Celsus’s critique of Christianity,
True Discourse
[
Alēthēs Logos
, ca. 178]); two comments by the Jewish historian Josephus; and a handful of rabbinic references from the third century and later.

Complicating the study is the question of
how
to read each source: Is it stylized rhetoric, symbolic language, or a reflection of lived reality? Were boundaries between groups apparent, or were they erected by later religious thinkers, trying to tame a messy social reality? Christ-followers, both Jew and Gentile, must have had different kinds of relationships with different kinds of Jews in different places, at different times. The dashing of hope for Jewish self-rule after the Bar Kochba revolt (132–35), coupled with the replacement of Jewish church leaders in Jerusalem with Gentile bishops made it very difficult to be both a loyal Jew and a Jesus-follower in Judea. This tells us nothing about the Diaspora, however, and how Jewish and Christian neighbors regarded each other in cities like Antioch and Rome.

VERBAL POLEMIC

The vast majority of references are to Jews
saying
things to or about believers in Jesus. Scattered references in the Gospels and Acts allude to criticism over observance of Jewish law,
orthopraxy
, particularly extra-scriptural laws like particulars of Sabbath observance: not plucking grain, Mt 12.1–8; Mk 2.23–24; not healing (i.e., working) on the Sabbath, Mt 12. 9–14; Mk 3.1–6; hand-washing for religious purposes before eating (Mt 15.1–20; Mk 7.1–4), and some instances of fasting (Mt 9.14–17; Mk 2.18–20). In Acts (e.g., 13.45,50; 14.1–2), Jews opposed to the mission of Paul and Barnabas stir up opposition to it in order to get the missionaries expelled from the area. Although the Gospel references are set in Jesus’ time, they more likely represent the period of the redaction of the Gospels from 70s to the 90s; the Acts incidents probably reflect the situation in the early second century.

According to Justin Martyr, writing in Rome ca. 160, Jews slander, ridicule, and even curse Christians in the synagogue (
Dial
. 96). But he also engages in arguments about belief,
orthodoxy
(lit., “right opinion”). He says Jews deny Jesus’ resurrection, repeating a charge from the Gospel of Matthew (28.13–15) and the apocryphal
Gospel of Peter
(8.29–31) that Jews claim Jesus’ tomb was empty because his disciples stole his body, not because he rose from the dead. Matthew adds: “this story is still told among the Jews to this day” (28.15), placing the debate in his own time. The debate has a long trajectory, and is attested also by the pagan author Celsus (Origen,
Cels
. 2.55), and in Justin’s many proofs of the resurrection from scripture in his debate with the Jew Trypho (
Dial
. 32.3–6; 106–108).

Similarly, the nature of Jesus’ death by crucifixion led to dispute between Christians and Jews. As early as the 50s Paul notes Christ crucified is “a stumbling block to Jews” (1 Cor 1.23). One hundred years later, Justin (
Dial
. 89,94,96, and other places) attributes to the Jew Trypho the same view: that a Messiah cannot be crucified. Paul suggests (Gal 3.13) that one element of the debate was Deut 21.23, which states (in relation to people executed for a capital crime): “anyone hung on a tree is under God’s curse,” but the reference is in the context of discussion of Gentile obedience to Torah, not Jewish denial of Jesus’ messianic status.

Another tenet of belief for many Christians, the virgin birth, was linked by some Jews to questions of Jesus’ legitimacy and pedigree. In John 8.41, when “the Jews” say to Jesus, “we were not born of fornication,” they may imply that he was. In Justin’s
Dialogue with Trypho
the virgin birth is a full-blown controversy (
Dial
. 66,68,71,77) that depends on whether the word “virgin” appears in Isaiah 7.14 and whether it refers to events at the time of Hezekiah, Isaiah’s contemporary, or the time of Jesus’ birth. Celsus affirms the proclamation of the virginal conception to be a point of Jewish attack, and he is the earliest source to indicate that some Jews call Jesus “ben Panthera” (Pantera, Pandera, Pantiri), “son of Panthera” (purported name of a Roman legionary), suggesting he was the illegitimate son of a Roman soldier (Origen,
Cels
. 1.28,32,69). Some rabbinic materials, primarily Palestinian, repeat this name (
t. Hul
. 2.22–24;
y. Avodah Zara
2.2/12;
Eccl. Rab
. 1.8 [3], and others). Tertullian, at the end of the second century, says Jews call Jesus the son of a prostitute (
Spect
. 30.3).