Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth (43 page)

That the Seven were leaders of an independent community in the early church is proven
by the fact that they are presented as actively preaching, healing, and performing
signs and wonders. They are not waiters whose main responsibility is food distribution,
as Luke suggests in Acts 6:1–6.

Hengel writes that “the Aramaic-speaking part of the community was hardly affected”
by the persecution of the Hellenists, and he notes that, considering the fact that
the Hebrews stayed in Jerusalem until at least the outbreak of war in 66
C.E
., they must have come to some sort of accommodation with the priestly authorities.
“In Jewish Palestine, only a community which remained strictly faithful to the law
could survive in the long run”;
Between Jesus and Paul
, 55–56.

Another reason to consider the Jesus movement in the first few years after the crucifixion
to be an exclusively Jewish mission is that among the first acts of the apostles after
Jesus’s death was to replace Judas Iscariot with Matthias (Acts 1:21–26). This may
indicate that the notion of the reconstitution of Israel’s tribes was still alive
immediately after the crucifixion. Indeed, among the first questions the disciples
ask the risen Jesus is whether, now that he was back, he intended to “restore the
kingdom to Israel.” That is, will you perform now the messianic function you failed
to perform during your lifetime? Jesus brushes off the question: “it is not for you
to know the times or the season that the Father has put down in his power [to accomplish
such things]” (Acts 1:7).

Of the letters in the New Testament that are attributed to Paul, only seven can be
confidently traced to him: 1 Thessalonians, Galatians, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Romans,
Philippians, and Philemon. Letters attributed to Paul but probably not written by
him include Colossians, Ephesians, 2 Thessalonians, 1 and 2 Timothy, and Titus.

There is some debate over the date of Paul’s conversion. The confusion rests with
Paul’s statement in Galatians 2:1 that he went to the Apostolic Council in Jerusalem
“after fourteen years.” Assuming that the council was held around the year 50
C.E
., that would place Paul’s conversion around 36 or 37
C.E
. This is the date favored by James Tabor,
Paul and Jesus
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 2012). However, some scholars believe that by “after
fourteen years,” Paul means fourteen years after his
initial
appearance before the Apostles, which he claims
took place three years after his conversion. That would place his conversion closer
to 33
C.E.
, a date favored by Martin Hengel,
Between Jesus and Paul
, 31. Adolf Harnack, in
The Mission and Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries
(New York: Harper and Row, 1972), calculates that Paul was converted eighteen months
after Jesus’s death, but I think that is far too early a date for Paul’s conversion.
I agree with Tabor and others that Paul’s conversion was more likely sometime around
36 or 37
C.E
., fourteen years before the Apostolic Council.

That these lines of Paul in the letter to the Galatians regarding the “so-called pillars
of the church” were directed specifically toward the Jerusalem-based Apostles and
not some unnamed Jewish Christians with whom he disagreed is definitely proven by
Gerd Ludemann in his indispensable works
Paul: The Founder of Christianity
(New York: Prometheus Books, 2002), especially page 69 and 120; and, with M. Eugene
Boring,
Opposition to Paul in Jewish Christianity
(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989). See also Tabor,
Paul and Jesus
, 19; and J.D.G. Dunn, “Echoes of the Intra-Jewish Polemic in Paul’s Letter to the
Galatians,”
Journal of Biblical Literature
112/3 (1993): 459–77.

There has been a fierce debate recently about the role of Paul in creating what we
now consider Christianity, with a number of contemporary scholars coming to Paul’s
defense and painting him as a devout Jew who remained loyal to his Jewish heritage
and faithful to the laws and customs of Moses but who just happened to view his mission
as adapting messianic Judaism to a gentile audience. The traditional view of Paul
among scholars of Christianity could perhaps best be summed up by Rudolf Bultmann,
Faith and Understanding
(London: SCM Press, 1969), who famously described Paul’s doctrine of Christ as “basically
a wholly new religion, in contrast to the original Palestinian Christianity.” Scholars
who more or less agree with Bultmann include Adolf Harnak,
What Is Christianity?
(New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1902); H. J. Schoeps,
Paul: The Theology of the Apostle in the Light of Jewish History
(Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1961); and Gerd Ludemann,
Paul: The Founder of Christianity
. Among the recent scholars who see Paul as a loyal Jew who merely tried to translate
Judaism for a gentile audience are L. Michael White,
From Jesus to Christianity
, and my former professor Marie-Éloise Rosenblatt,
Paul the Accused
(Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 1995).

Ultimately, there is some truth in both views. Those who believe that Paul was the
creator of Christianity as we know it, or that it was he who utterly divorced the
new faith from Judaism, often do not adequately take into consideration the eclecticism
of Diaspora Judaism or the influence of the Greek-speaking Hellenists, from whom Paul,
himself a Greek-speaking Hellenist, likely first heard about Jesus of Nazareth. But
to be clear, the Hellenists may have deemphasized the Law of Moses in their preaching,
but they did not demonize it; they
may have abandoned circumcision as a requirement for conversion, but they did not
relegate it to dogs and evildoers and suggest those who disagree should be castrated,
as Paul does (Galatians 5:12). Regardless of whether Paul adopted his unusual doctrine
from the Hellenists or invented it himself, however, what even his staunchest defenders
cannot deny is just how deviant his views are from even the most experimental Jewish
movements of his time.

That Paul is speaking about himself when he cites Isaiah 49:1–6 regarding “the root
of Jesse” serving as “a light to the Gentiles” is obvious, since even Paul admits
that Jesus did not missionize to the gentiles (Romans 15:12).

Research done by N. A. Dahl demonstrates just how unusual Paul’s use of the term
Xristos
(Christ) was. Dahl notes that for Paul,
Xristos
is never a predicate, never governed by a genitive, never a title but always a designation,
and never used in the appositional form, as in
Yesus ha Xristos
, or Jesus
the
Christ. See N. A. Dahl,
Jesus the Christ: The Historical Origins of Christological Doctrine
(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991).

It was not unusual to be called Son of God in ancient Judaism. God calls David his
son: “today I have begotten you” (Psalms 2:7). He even calls Israel his “first-born
son” (Exodus 4:22). But in every case, Son of God is meant as a title, not a description.
Paul’s view of Jesus as the literal son of God is without precedence in second Temple
Judaism.

Luke claims that Paul and Barnabas separated because of a “sharp contention,” which
Luke claims was over whether to take Mark with them on their next missionary trip
but which is obviously tied to what happened in Antioch shortly after the Apostolic
Council. While Peter and Paul were in Antioch, they engaged in a fierce public feud
because, according to Paul, Peter stopped sharing a table with gentiles as soon as
a delegation sent by James arrived in the city, “for fear of the circumcision faction”
in Jerusalem (Galatians 2:12). Of course, Paul is our only source for this event,
and there are plenty of reasons for doubting his version of the story, not the least
of which is the fact that sharing a table with gentiles is in no way forbidden under
Jewish law. It is more likely that the argument was about the keeping of Jewish dietary
laws—that is, not eating gentile food—an argument in which Barnabas sided with Peter.

Luke says Paul was sent to Rome to escape a Jewish plot to have him killed. He also
claims that the Roman tribune ordered nearly five hundred of his soldiers to personally
accompany Paul to Caesarea. This is absurd and can be flatly ignored.

Claudius expelled the Jews from Rome, according to the historian Suetonius, “because
the Jews of Rome were indulging in constant riots at the instigation of Chrestus.”
It is widely believed that by Chrestus, Suetonius meant Christ, and that this spat
among the Jews was between the city’s Christian and non-Christian Jews. As F. F. Bruce
notes, “we should remind ourselves that, while we
with our hindsight can distinguish between Jews and Christians as early as the reign
of Claudius, no such distinction could have been made at that time by the Roman authorities.”
F. F. Bruce, “Christianity Under Claudius,”
Bulletin of the John Rylands Library
44 (March 1962): 309–26.

The description of James and the entreaties of the Jews are both taken from the account
of the Palestinian Jewish Christian Hegesippus (100–180
C.E.
). We have access to Hegesippus’s five books of early Church history only through
passages cited in the third-century text of
Ecclesiastical History
by Eusebius of Caesarea (c. 260–c. 339
C.E.
), an archbishop of the Church under the Emperor Constantine.

How reliable a source Hegesippus may be is a matter of great debate. On the one hand,
there are a number of statements by Hegesippus whose historicity the majority of scholars
accept without dispute, including his assertion that “control of the Church passed
together with the Apostles, to the brother of the Lord James, whom everyone from the
Lord’s time till our own has named the Just, for there were many Jameses, but this
one was holy from his birth” (Eusebius,
Ecclesiastical History
2.23). This claim is backed up with multiple attestations (see below) and can even
be traced in the letters of Paul and in the book of Acts. However, there are some
traditions in Hegesippus that are confused and downright incorrect, including his
claim that James was allowed to “enter the Sanctuary alone.” If by “Sanctuary” Hegesippus
means the Holy of Holies (and there is some question as to whether that is indeed
what he means), then the statement is patently false; only the high priest could enter
the Holy of Holies. There is also a variant tradition of James’s death in Hegesippus
that contradicts what scholars accept as the more reliable account in Josephus’s
Antiquities
. As recorded in the
Ecclesiastical History
, it was James’s response to the request of the Jews to help dissuade the people from
following Jesus as messiah that ultimately leads to his death: “And [James] answered
with a loud voice: Why do you ask me concerning Jesus, the Son of Man? He himself
sits in heaven at the right hand of the great power, and is about to come upon the
clouds of heaven! So they went up and threw down the just man, and said to each other:
Let us stone James the Just. And they began to stone him, for he was not killed by
the fall; but he turned and knelt down and said: I entreat you, Lord God our father,
forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

What is fascinating about this story is that it seems to be a variant of the story
of Stephen’s martyrdom in the book of Acts, which was itself swiped from Jesus’s response
to the high priest Caiaphas in the gospel of Mark. Note also the parallel between
James’s death speech and that of Jesus’s on the cross in Luke 23:24.

Hegesippus ends the story of James’s martyrdom thus: “And one of them, one of the
fullers, took the club with which he beat out clothes and struck the just man on the
head. And thus he suffered martyrdom. And they buried him on the spot, by the temple,
and his monument still remains by the temple. He became a true witness, both to Jews
and Greeks, that Jesus is the Christ. And immediately Vespasian besieged them” (Eusebius,
Ecclesiastical History
2.23.1–18). Again, while scholars are almost unanimous in preferring Josephus’s account
of James’s death to Hegesippus, it bears mentioning that the latter tradition is echoed
in the work of Clement of Alexandria, who writes: “there were two Jameses, one the
Just, who was thrown down from the parapet [of the Temple] and beaten to death with
the fuller’s club, the other the James [son of Zebedee] who was beheaded” (Clement,
Hypotyposes
, Book 7).

Josephus writes of the wealthy priestly aristocracy seizing the tithes of the lower
priests in
Antiquities
20.180–81: “But as for the high priest, Ananias, he increased in glory every day,
and this to a great degree, and had obtained the favor and esteem of the citizens
in a signal manner; for he was a great hoarder up of money: he therefore cultivated
the friendship of Albinus, and of the high priest [Jesus, son of Danneus], by making
them presents; he also had servants who were very wicked, who joined themselves to
the boldest sort of the people, and went to the thrashing-floors, and took away the
tithes that belonged to the priests by violence, and did not refrain from beating
such as would not give these tithes to them. So the other high priests acted in the
like manner, as did those his servants, without any one being able to prohibit them;
so that [some of the] priests, that of old were wont to be supported with those tithes,
died for want of food.” This Ananias was probably Ananus the Elder, father to the
Ananus who killed James.

Josephus’s account of James’s martyrdom can be found in
Antiquities
20.9.1. Not everyone is convinced that James was executed for being a Christian.
Maurice Goguel, for instance, argues that if the men executed along with James were
also Christians then their names would have been preserved in Christian tradition;
Goguel,
Birth of Christianity
(New York: Macmillan, 1954). Some scholars, myself included, believe that he was
executed for condemning Ananus’s seizure of the tithes meant for the lower-class priests;
see S.G.F. Brandon, “The Death of James the Just: A New Interpretation,”
Studies in Mysticism and Religion
(Jerusalem: Magnus Press, 1967): 57–69.