Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth (35 page)

It would seem that the Qumran community did indeed await two different messiahs. The
Community Rule suggests this in 9:12 when it speaks of the
coming of “the Prophet and the Messiahs of Aaron and Israel.” Clearly a differentiation
is being made between the kingly and priestly messianic figures. This notion is further
developed in the Rule of the Congregation. In this scroll a banquet is described in
the “last days” in which the messiah of Israel sits in a subordinate position to the
priest of the congregation. While the text does not use the word “messiah” to refer
to the priest, his superior position at the table indicates his eschatological power.
These texts have led scholars to deduce that the Qumran community believed in the
coming of a kingly messiah and a priestly messiah, with the latter dominating over
the former. See James Charlesworth, “From Jewish Messianology to Christian Christology;
Some Caveats and Perspectives,”
Judaisms and Their Messiahs at the Turn of the Christian Era
, ed. Jacob Neusner et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 225–64.

It should be noted that nowhere in the Hebrew Scriptures is the messiah explicitly
termed the physical descendant of David, i.e., “Son of David.” But the imagery associated
with the messiah and the fact that it is thought that his chief task is to reestablish
David’s kingdom permanently linked messianic aspirations to Davidic lineage. This
is in large part due to the so-called Davidic covenant, based on the prophet Nathan’s
prophecy: “Your [David’s] house and your kingdom shall be made sure for ever before
me; your throne shall be established forever” (2 Samuel 7:16).

Jesus’s lineage from King David is stated over and over again, not just throughout
the gospels but also in the letters of Paul, in which Jesus is repeatedly described
as “of the seed of David” (Romans 1:3–4; 2 Timothy 2:8). Whether it was true is impossible
to say. Many people claimed lineage to the greatest Israelite king (who lived a thousand
years before Jesus of Nazareth), and frankly none of them could either prove such
lineage or disprove it. But obviously the link between Jesus and David was vital for
the early Christian community because it helped prove that this lowly peasant was
in fact the messiah.

It is widely accepted that the original text of Mark ended with 16:8 and that Mark
16:9–20 was a later addition to the text. Per Norman Perrin: “It is the virtually
unanimous opinion of modern scholarship that what appears in most translations of
the gospel of Mark 16:9–20 is a pastiche of material taken from other gospels and
added to the original text of the gospel as it was copied and transmitted by the scribes
of the ancient Christian communities.” Perrin,
The Resurrection According to Matthew, Mark, and Luke
(Philadelphia: Fortress Press: 1977), 16. However, there are still some who question
this assumption, arguing that a book cannot end with the Greek word γαρ, as Mark 16:8
does. That view has been debunked by P. W. van der Horst, “Can a Book End with TAP
Note on Mark XVI.8,”
Journal of Theological Studies
23 (1972): 121–24. Horst notes numerous texts in antiquity that do in fact end in
this manner (e.g., Plotinus’s 32nd treatise). In any case, anyone who reads Mark in
the original Greek can tell that a different hand wrote the final eight verses.

For prophecies claiming that “when the messiah comes, no one will know where he is
from,” see 1 Enoch 48:6 and 4 Ezra 13:51–52. For a complete breakdown of the so-called
messianic “proof texts,” see J.J.M. Roberts, “The Old Testament’s Contribution to
Messianic Expectations,”
The Messiah
, 39–51. According to Roberts, these texts fall into five categories. First, there
are those passages that appear to be prophecies
ex eventu
. Roberts cites Balaam’s oracle in Numbers 24:17 (“a star will come forth out of Jacob”)
as an instance in which a prophecy that seems to find its fulfillment in the early
monarchical period (in this case, the celebration of David’s victories as king of
Israel over Moab and Edom, as is indicated in verses 17b and 18) has been forced to
function as a prophecy regarding future divine kingship. Such a futuristic interpretation,
argues Roberts, ignores the original setting of the prophecy. The second category
deals with prophetic passages that seem to have settings in the enthronement ceremonies
of the anointed kings. For instance, Psalm 2 (“You are my son … / this day I become
your father”) and Isaiah 9:6 (“For a child has been born to us … and his title will
be Wonderful Counselor, Mighty Hero, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace”) were most likely
composed for specific occasions to serve both religious and political functions. The
political usage of these texts is apparent in their claims of the authoritative power
of the king and his direct link to God. They also establish a link between the responsibilities
of the king toward his people and the commands of God. The king who serves in God’s
stead must display God’s justice. Even so, such statements as are found in these verses
would no doubt create a powerful tool for kingly propaganda. The third category of
the messianic proof texts do indeed speak of a future ruler and are perhaps the verses
most frequently quoted by those who want to give a salvific interpretation to the
messiah of the Hebrew scriptures (Micah 5:1–5; Zechariah 9:1–10). These texts speak
of the embodiment of the Davidic ideal,
metaphorically
(not physically) referred to as a king of the Davidic line, who will restore the
monarchy of Israel to its former glory. But for Roberts, the promises of a future
king (e.g., Micah’s promise of a king rising from the humility of Bethlehem) “imply
a serious criticism of the current occupant of the Davidic throne as less than an
adequate heir to David.” Such criticism is apparent throughout the prophetic texts
(see Isaiah 1:21–26, 11:1–9, 32:1–8). Roberts uses the same approach in the fourth
group of messianic proof texts envisioning a future king. These texts, primarily Jeremiah
and Ezekiel, Roberts places at the end of the Judean kingdom, when a restoration of
the Davidic dynasty was a response to growing existential concerns over the future
of Israel as a theocracy. The final category deals with the postexilic texts. According
to Roberts, upon return from exile, the Jews were faced with a destroyed Temple, a
disgraced priesthood, and no Davidic king. The prophetic texts of Zechariah and Haggai
dealt with these problems in oracles that placed Zerubbabel in the position of restoring
Israel’s
monarchy and Temple (Haggai 2:20–23; Zechariah 4:6–10). Roberts believes that the
prophecies regarding the restoration of the crown and the Temple (e.g., Zechariah
6:9–15) refer solely to the actions of Zerubbabel and are an optimistic response to
the terrible circumstances that existed in the postexilic period. He also traces the
later priestly expectations of the messiah to the texts of this period that include
a restoration of the priesthood under Joshua (Zechariah 3:1–10). Roberts is convinced
by his study of the messianic proof texts that the idea of a salvific messiah is not
explicitly stated in the Hebrew scriptures but is rather a later development of Jewish
eschatology that was adopted by the Pharisees, perhaps in the second or first century
B.C.E.
, and later incorporated into “normative Judaism.”

Some scholars believe that
tekton
means not “woodworker” but any artisan who deals in the building trades. While Mark
6:3 is the only verse that calls Jesus a
tekton
, Matthew 13:55 states that Jesus’s father was a
tekton
. Considering the strictures of the day, the verse is likely meant to indicate that
Jesus was a
tekton
, too (though this passage in Matthew does not actually name Jesus’s father). Some
scholars believe that artisans and day laborers in the time of Jesus should be considered
akin to a lower middle class in the social hierarchy of Galilee, but that view has
been disproven by Ramsay MacMullen in
Roman Social Relations: 50
B.C
. to
A.D
. 384
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974).

Many studies have been done about the language of Jesus and of first-century Palestine
in general, but none are better than those of Joseph Fitzmyer. See “Did Jesus Speak
Greek?”
Biblical Archaeology Review
18.5 (September/October 1992): 58–63; and “The Languages of Palestine in the First
Century
A.D.
,” in
The Language of the New Testament
, ed. Stanley E. Porter (Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic Press, 1991), 126–62. Other
fine studies on the language of Jesus include James Barr, “Which Language Did Jesus
Speak? Some Remarks of a Semitist,”
Bulletin of the John Rylands Library
53.1 (Autumn 1970): 14–15; and Michael O. Wise, “Languages of Palestine,” in
Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels
, ed. Joel B. Green and Scot McKnight (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1992),
434–44.

John Meier makes an interesting comment about the passage in Luke in which Jesus stands
at the synagogue reading the Isaiah scroll: “Anyone who would wish to defend Luke’s
depiction of the Isaiah reading as historically reliable even in its details would
have to explain (1) how Jesus managed to read from an Isaiah scroll a passage made
up of Isaiah 61:1a, b, d; 58:6d; 61:2a, with the omission of 61:1c, 2d; (2) why it
is that Jesus read a text of Isaiah that is basically that of the Greek Septuagint,
even when at times the Septuagint diverges
from the Masoretic text.” See Meier,
Marginal Jew
, vol. 1, 303. Nevertheless, Meier actually believes that Jesus was not illiterate
and that he even may have had some kind of formal education, though he provides an
enlightening account of the debate on both sides of the argument (271–78).

Regarding Jesus’s brothers, arguments have been made by some Catholic (and a few Protestant)
theologians that the Greek word
adelphos
(brother) could possibly mean “cousin” or “step-brother.” While that may be true,
nowhere in the entire New Testament is the word
adelphos
ever used to mean either (and it is used some 340 times). Mark 6:17 uses the word
adelphos
to mean “half brother” when he refers to Philip’s relationship to Herod Antipas,
but even this usage implies “physical brother.”

One interesting sidenote about Jesus’s family is that they were all named after great
heroes and patriarchs of the Bible. Jesus’s name was Yeshu, short for Yeshua or Joshua,
the great Israelite warrior whose wholesale slaughter of the tribes inhabiting Canaan
cleansed the land for the Israelites. His mother was Miriam, named after the sister
of Moses. His father, Joseph, was named after the son of Jacob, who would become known
as Israel. His brothers, James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas, were all named after biblical
heroes. Apparently the naming of children after the great patriarchs became customary
after the Maccabean revolt and may indicate a sense of awakened national identity
that seemed to have been particularly marked in Galilee.

The argument in Matthew that Jesus’s virgin birth was prophesied in Isaiah holds no
water at all, since scholars are nearly unanimous in translating the passage in Isaiah
7:14 not as “behold a virgin shall conceive” but “behold, a young maiden (
alma
) will conceive.” There is no debate here:
alma
is Hebrew for a young woman. Period.

For one particularly controversial argument about Jesus’s illegitimate birth, see
Jane Schaberg,
The Illegitimacy of Jesus
(San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1978). Schaberg claims Mary was very likely raped,
though it is not clear how she comes to that conclusion.

Celsus’s story about the soldier Panthera is from his second-century tract
True Discourse
, which has been lost to history. Our only access to it comes from Origen’s polemical
response to the work titled
Against Celsus
, written sometime in the middle of the third century
C.E
.

It should be noted that both Matthew and Luke recount the “son of Mary” passage in
Mark 6:3, but both fix Mark’s statement by pointedly referring to Jesus as “the carpenter’s
son” (Matthew 13:55) and “the son of Joseph” (Luke 4:22) respectively. There are variant
readings of Mark that insert “the son of the carpenter” in this verse, but it is generally
agreed that these are later additions. The original of Mark 6:3 undoubtedly calls
Jesus “son of Mary.” It is possible, though highly unlikely, that Jesus was called
“son of Mary” because Joseph had
died so long ago that he was forgotten. But John Meier notes that there is only a
single case in the entire Hebrew Scriptures in which a man is referred to as his mother’s
son. That would be the sons of Zeruiah—Joab, Abishai, and Asahel—who were soldiers
in King David’s army (1 Samuel 26:6; 2 Samuel 2:13). All three are repeatedly referred
to as “sons of Zeruiah.” See Meier,
Marginal Jew
, vol. 1, 226.

For more on the question of whether Jesus was married, see William E. Phipps,
Was Jesus Married?
(New York: Harper and Row, 1970) and
The Sexuality of Jesus
(New York: Harper and Row, 1973). Karen King, a professor at Harvard University,
has recently unearthed a tiny scrap of papyrus, which she dates to the fourth century,
that contains a Coptic phrase that translates to “Jesus said to them, my wife …” At
the time of this writing, the fragment had yet to be authenticated, though even if
it is not a forgery, it would only tell us what those in the fourth century believed
about Jesus’s marital status.

There are some great stories about the boy Jesus in the gnostic gospels, especially
The Infancy Gospel of Thomas
, in which a petulant Jesus flaunts his magical powers by bringing clay birds to life
or striking dead neighborhood kids who fail to show him deference. The best and most
complete collection of the gnostic gospels in English is
The Nag Hammadi Library
, ed. Marvin W. Meyer (New York: Harper and Row, 1977).