Rabbi Jesus : An Intimate Biography; the Jewish Life and Teaching That Inspired Christianity

by CHILTON, BRUCE

• ISBN13: 9780385497923
• ISBN10: 038549792X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-10-01
• Publisher: Doubleday

Summary

Interpretations of the life of Jesus have flourished for nearly two millennia--from the Gospels to scholarly investigations by theologians and historians, to fictional portraits by novelists like Nikos Kazantzakis and Norman Mailer. Despite this long history, a clear and coherent picture of Jesus as a man and a teacher has remained elusive. Now, Bruce Chilton puts the pieces of the puzzle together in an extraordinary biography that sweeps readers into first-century Palestine and re-creates the world as Jesus knew it. Chilton draws on recent archaeological findings to paint a vivid portrait of the social customs, political forces, and religious beliefs and practices of the period. Examining new translations and interpretations of ancient texts against this fresh, historically accurate background, he offers a revolutionary look at Jesus' early life and the philosophical and psychological foundations of the ideas he promulgated as a young man. Chilton provides evidence that contradicts long-held beliefs about Jesus and the movement he led. He shows, for example, that Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Galilee, not Nazareth or Bethlehem of Judea, and that the High Priest Caiaphas, not Pontius Pilate, played the central role in Jesus' execution. It is his description of Jesus' role as a rabbi, or "master," of Jewish oral traditions, a teacher of the Kabbalah, and a practitioner of a Galilean form of Judaism that emphasized direct communication with God, however, that casts an entirely new light on the origins of Christianity. By placing Jesus within the context of his times, Chilton uncovers truths lost to history and reveals a new Jesus for the new millennium.

Author Biography

Bruce Chilton is Bell Professor of Religion at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson and priest at the Free Church of St. John the Evangelist in Barrytown, New York. He is the author of many scholarly articles and books, including <b>Jewish-Christian</b> Debates and <b>A Galilean Rabbi</b> and <b>His Bible</b>.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	ix
Map of the Mediterranean Basin in the First Century, from Italy to Parthia	x
Timeline	xiii
Foreword	xvii
A Mamzer from Nazareth	3	(20)
Pilgrimage to Jerusalem	23	(18)
The Talmid of John	41	(23)
The Prodigal Returns	64	(19)
The Spirit Chaser	83	(20)
Chasid in the Holy City	103	(21)
Capernaum's Prophet	124	(26)
Beyond the Pale	150	(24)
Three Huts	174	(23)
The Sword of Rome	197	(16)
``A Cave of Thugs''	213	(18)
At the Tomb of the Dead	231	(17)
King of the Jews	248	(21)
The Kabbalah of Crucifixion	269	(21)
Epilogue	290	(3)
Notes	293	(17)
Acknowledgments	310	(3)
Index	313

Excerpts

A Mamzer from Nazareth

Jesus' life in Judaism opened with his berith, the ritual of circumcision mandated by the Torah for every male child of Israel. As required in the book of Genesis (17:9-14), he was eight days old when the foreskin of his penis was cut. In the small, poor village where Jesus was born, communal rituals often occurred in the open village center, near the wine press, olive vats, and pottery kiln. Circumcision, however, especially during cold weather, required shelter to help ward off the infant's shock, which is why I think Jesus' berith would have taken place in his family's courtyard.

Guests gathered for the ceremony, probably in the early morning, when blood clots more easily. "Shelama!" they greeted each other. Shelama is the Aramaic equivalent of shalom, "peace," in Hebrew. Aramaic, not Hebrew, was the language most commonly used by the Jews of Galilee, Judea, and Syria at the dawn of the Common Era. Standing in relation to Hebrew something like Italian does to French, Aramaic is a Semitic tongue, one of the world's oldest continuously spoken languages. Once as widespread in the Near East as Arabic is today, it is now nearly extinct, except as kept alive by a few native speakers in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Turkey, and Azerbaijan.

The shelama greeting in the Galileans' own tongue celebrated Jewish survival in a land under foreign dominance by reminding Jews of God's enduring covenant with Abraham--the very covenant put into practice in Jesus' circumcision. Even his name in Aramaic, Yeshua, conjured up the memory of Joshua, the heroic successor of Moses. Those gathered in the little village must have been keenly aware that they were a tiny, powerless group in an occupied province of the Roman Empire whose Jewish identity was under siege.

Galilean Jews were indentured but not defeated. They burned with pride in a living memory of themselves as the people called Israel, descended from the patriarch Jacob, grandson of Abraham. They had tilled this soil and called this land theirs for more than a thousand years, fighting war after war, enduring defeat, genocide, and exile at the hands of foreigners, later suffering the prejudice and dominance of the wealthier Jews of Judea to the south. Their identity as Jews was bound up in the land and the covenant that made the land theirs. The covenant was their last defense against Rome, a cultural fortress that stood long after the political and military institutions of Israel had failed.

Their understanding of the covenant came not from the written Torah and Prophets in Hebrew, which few could read, but from their oral targum (Aramaic for "translation"). A targum was more than a verbatim translation of the Hebrew text: whole paragraphs were added and long sections loosely paraphrased by the meturgeman, a "translator" who handed on the local tradition of rendering Scripture. (Just as a local rabbi designed ethical norms for living the Torah, a meturgeman memorized and recited the oral Scripture). These renderings vivified the Torah and the Prophets in a visionary language detailing Israel's coming supremacy over other nations and emphasizing the promises God had made to an oppressed, indentured people. One day, these Scriptural renderings promised, God's Kingdom (Malkhuta) would supersede every other form of rule. That was the fervent hope of the Galilean Jews who filled the courtyard to witness Jesus' circumcision; the cutting of the infant's foreskin brought them one small step closer to the Kingdom where God would rule, not Rome. God himself would reestablish the glory of Israel and vindicate the chosen people.

Mary and Joseph were seeking their own vindication as they held the infant ready to have the covenant with Israel marked in his flesh. Jesus had been conceived before they were married, and doubts about his paternity were the result: "His mother Miriam was contracted in marriage to Yosef; before they were together she was found pregnant from holy spirit" (Matthew 1:18, in my own translation). His parents must have hoped the circumcision would reduce the stigma of his birth.

Controversy about whether God, Joseph, or some other man impregnated Mary has been intense and long-standing. Churches have viewed departure from established doctrine in these matters as heresy, and the penalties for such heresy have sometimes been extreme and violent. Even today, there are instances of Catholic and Protestant clergy being silenced or excommunicated for denying Mary's virginity, even in the Anglican church of which I am a priest. Perhaps that is why scholarship has shied away from resolving crucial questions of fact about the nativity. Although we can never recover all the details of Jesus' birth, I do think it is possible to construct a credible overall picture.

The charge that he was illicitly conceived plagued Jesus all his life. Even far from his home, during disputes in Jerusalem after he had become a famous teacher, Jesus was mocked for being born as the result of "fornication" (John 8:41). The people of his own village called him "Mary's son," not Joseph's (Mark 6:3). Scholarship should explain both why Jesus was insulted for his illegedly irregular birth and why the legend developed that he was born of a virgin. By examining the ancient Jewish commitment to the maintenance of family lineage--which was the cultural context of Jesus' birth--we can explain the charge of illicit conception and discover one of the most profound influences on Jesus' personal development.

Miriam, Mary as we now know her, was some thirteen years old--the age Jewish maidens of that time married--when Jesus' father, the widower Joseph, came to her village of Nazareth, in all likelihood to repair the house of her parents. Joseph was a journeyman from nearby Bethlehem, a roofer, stonemason, and rough carpenter. It makes sense that he  met Mary in the early spring. Although heavy rains made travel difficult then, he could ply his trade before he was needed at home to tend his fields of wheat and barley. Legend--bowing to the imperial Roman feast of Sol Invictus, the invincible sun, which was widely celebrated during the third century c.e.--has Jesus born on December 25. But reckoned from his parents' likely time of meeting, his birth was earlier, probably in the late autumn.

The attraction between Joseph and Mary must have been immediate; they broke with custom and slept together soon after meeting and well before their marriage was publicly recognized. Mary's family had agreed to a contract of marriage with Joseph, but the couple was not yet living together when her pregnancy became obvious. The wording of the New Testament itself, although written many years after the events and richly laced with legends concerning Jesus' birth, attests to this simple fact in Matthew 1:18: before they resided together Mary was obviously pregnant.

---

Excerpted from Rabbi Jesus: An Intimate Biography; the Jewish Life and Teaching That Inspired Christianity by Bruce Chilton
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.