Rabbi Jesus: An Intimate Biography - Softcover

Chilton, Bruce

 
9780385497930: Rabbi Jesus: An Intimate Biography
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0385497938 ISBN 13: 9780385497930
Verlag: PRH Christian Publishing, 2002

Inhaltsangabe

Beginning with the Gospels, interpretations of the life of Jesus have flourished for nearly two millennia, yet a clear and coherent picture of Jesus as a man has remained elusive. In Rabbi Jesus, the noted biblical scholar Bruce Chilton places Jesus within the context of his times to present a fresh, historically accurate, and revolutionary examination of the man who founded Christianity.

Drawing on recent archaeological findings and new translations and interpretations of ancient texts, Chilton discusses in enlightening detail the philosophical and psychological foundations of Jesus’ ideas and beliefs. His in-depth investigation also provides evidence that contradicts long-held beliefs about Jesus and the movement he led. Chilton shows, for example, that the High Priest Caiaphas, as well as Pontius Pilate, played a central role in Jesus’ execution. It is, however, Chilton’s description of Jesus’ role as a rabbi, or "master," of Jewish oral traditions, as a teacher of the Cabala, and as a practitioner of a Galilean form of Judaism that emphasized direct communication with God that casts an entirely new light on the origins of Christianity.

Seamlessly merging history and biography, this penetrating, highly readable book uncovers truths lost to the passage of time and reveals a new Jesus for the new millennium.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

BRUCE CHILTON is the Bernard Iddings Bell Professor of Religion at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson and priest at the Free Church of Saint John in Barrytown, New York. He is the author of many scholarly articles and books, including Redeeming Time and A Galilean Rabbi and His Bible.

Von der hinteren Coverseite

Beginning with the Gospels, interpretations of the life of Jesus have flourished for nearly two millennia, yet a clear and coherent picture of Jesus as a man has remained elusive. In" Rabbi Jesus, the noted biblical scholar Bruce Chilton places Jesus within the context of his times to present a fresh, historically accurate, and revolutionary examination of the man who founded Christianity.
Drawing on recent archaeological findings and new translations and interpretations of ancient texts, Chilton discusses in enlightening detail the philosophical and psychological foundations of Jesus' ideas and beliefs. His in-depth investigation also provides evidence that contradicts long-held beliefs about Jesus and the movement he led. Chilton shows, for example, that the High Priest Caiaphas, as well as Pontius Pilate, played a central role in Jesus' execution. It is, however, Chilton's description of Jesus' role as a rabbi, or "master," of Jewish oral traditions, as a teacher of the Cabala, and as a practitioner of a Galilean form of Judaism that emphasized direct communication with God that casts an entirely new light on the origins of Christianity.
Seamlessly merging history and biography, this penetrating, highly readable book uncovers truths lost to the passage of time and reveals a new Jesus for the new millennium.

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One

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 allegedly 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.

That precise statement in Matthew's Gospel explains why, over time, Jesus was considered to be born of fornication by some and the product of a miraculous birth by others. The early pregnancy touched off vicious rumors in Mary's village of Nazareth: perhaps Joseph was not really the child's father. So, for the birth, Joseph had brought Mary to Bethlehem of Galilee, where he had lived with his first wife, to shield her from Nazareth's wagging tongues.

Christmas cards, of course, make Bethlehem of Judea (near Jerusalem) the place of Jesus' birth, instead of the far more logical Bethlehem of Galilee. That is because Matthew's Gospel (2:1-6), written around the year 80 c.e. in Syrian Damascus, relates the nativity to a prediction in the book of the prophet Micah (5:2) regarding the coming of the Messiah from Judean Bethlehem. Matthew fills in details of Jesus' birth by declaring that the events "fulfilled" texts from the...

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Verlag
PRH Christian Publishing
Erscheinungsdatum
2002
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0385497938
ISBN 13 
9780385497930
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
354
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
CMN Printpool Inh. Mathis Neumann
https://www.also.com/ec/cms5/en_6000/6000

Friedrich-Karl-Str. 9
Hamburg
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Deutschland

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