A marginal Mediterranean Jewish peasant
Johnson, Luke Timothy
MEIER & CROSSAN ON THE HISTORICAL JESUS A marginal Mediterranean Jewish peasant has always refused to remain simply a historical figure. This represented a satisfactory state of affairs for...
...f Meier tries to provide a consensus view, Crossan's reading of the evidence is unabashedly personal...
...The new search had reasons to hope for a better outcome...
...Recent archeological discoveries instruct us more accurately about the firstcentury world, and the tools of social analysis aid us in extrapolating from fragmentary evidence...
...Both authors are methodologically aware, and make clear to their readers from the beginning their presuppositions and procedures...
...One of the most literate of contemporary New Testament scholars, Crossan is always a delight to read, and always finds ways to surprise the reader...
...But Meier's is the first of two volumes, with the second—containing the critical discussions of Jesus' ministry and death—yet to appear...
...confidence in Mark's Gospel as a neutral and reliable source for the facts about Jesus...
...It is worth noting, however, that this portrayal is not wildly at odds with that developed at greater length by Crossan, even though Meier's choice of sources is...
...The religious impulses of the Reformation had something to do with desiring a Jesus defined solely by the gospel rather than dogma...
...The Enlightenment's ideal of a history shed of supernatural explanations had even more to do with it...
...Crossan takes it as self-evident that gospel criticism has denied us the possibility of tracing Jesus' actions in sequence, but does enable us to winnow out Jesus' characteristic deeds and sayings...
...By placing such deeds and words in the social-historical world reconstructed with the help of ancient extra-Christian sources and crosscultural comparisons, we can begin to approximate and appreciate the character of Jesus' brief active mission...
...Yet for all their surface similarities, a close comparison between the works is difficult...
...First-century Judaism is better known to us than ever, not only because of the discoveries at Qumran and other sites, but also because older sources like the historian Josephus, the intertestamental Jewish literature (especially apocalyptic), the Mishnah and Talmud, are subjected to far more critical scrutiny...
...Such at least was the presupposition for the centuries preceding the "Quest of the Historical Jesus" recounted by Albert Schweitzer's book of that title (1906...
...Meier makes a number of fascinating observations, including possible inferences to be drawn from the naming of children in Jesus' family—they suggest a conscious allegiance to the ancestral traditions—and from the potential challenge to the established priestly powers presented by a wonderworking celibate layman...
...because he came from a socioeconomic level that was "marginal...
...Both Meier and Crossan wryly note the bewildering array of portraits: "From Jesus the violent revolutionary to Jesus the gay magician, from Jesus the apocalyptic fanatic to Jesus the wisdom teacher or cynic philosopher unconcerned about eschatology," writes Meier (compare Crossan, pp...
...because he ended his life as an executed criminal...
...In contrast, Crossan deliberately cites only those authors that agree with him, candidly acknowledging that the reading of the evidence is his own...
...Literary analysis of the Gospels enables a more sophisticated sifting of the evidence...
...xxvii-xxviii...
...Crossan 's volume is truly a magnum opus, bringing to a climax the work he began as early as 1973 (with In Parables), and intensified in his Four Other Gospels: Shadows on the Contours of the Canon (1985), and The Cross that Spoke: The Origins of the Passion Narrative (1988...
...His Faith's Freedom: A Classic Spirituality for Contemporary Christians is published by Fortress Press...
...Otherwise, his book seems to be accomplishing its goal of providing the ecumenical and educated reader with a safe and reliable guide through the maze of questions concerning the historical Jesus...
...He then surveys all the available sources concerning Jesus, Jewish and Greco-Roman as well as Christian...
...First, each author's approach to 24: 24 April 1992 Commonweal scholarship is distinctive...
...Here he opens with a complete selection of "the Gospel according to Jesus," a gathering of the sayings which Crossan considers Jesus' own...
...The first volume concludes with a detailed discussion of the chronology of Jesus' life...
...But scholars did not share Schweitzer's LUKE TIMOTHY JOHNSON is professor ofNew Testament and Christian Origins at Indiana University...
...Not only the Nag-Hammadi writings but also many other apocryphal gospels previously known but inadequately studied now enter the discussion...
...In this section Meier uses cross-cultural insights selectively but effectively...
...because his teachings were not entirely within the mainstream even of a widely diverse Judaism...
...The only thing that is distinctively "Catholic" in Meier's early discussions is his extended treatment of the questions concerning the virgin birth and the brothers of Jesus...
...Schweitzer's survey of the successive reconstructions of Jesus showed that a resolution to be "critically historical" did not prevent each generation of searchers from finding a reflection of their own ideals in the mirror of Jesus...
...His approach is invariably irenic, discriminating, and fair...
...apart from some confirming evidence on one point or another, the historian is still ultimately dependent on the canonical Gospels...
...Crossan's remarkably early dating for apocryphal materials and his correspondingly late dating for many canonical materials, together with his frequent assertion that the extracanonical sources are unaffected by the "intracanonical tradition" (and therefore have independent evidenciary worth) rest on little more than a series of judgments made by scholars already committed to that position...
...He begins with a helpful distinction between the "Real Jesus" and the "Historical Jesus," in order to remind readers that the latter can never be more than a partial reconstruction based on the available evidence...
...Crossan's is a finished piece, with the strengths and vulnerabilities that go with that accomplishment...
...Such judgments are made so frequently and with so few evident controls that the reader's head sometimes spins from the rapid circularity of argument...
...Meier concludes with a sensible discussion of the various criteria used by scholars for determining materials that go back to Jesus...
...At first, the inclusion of such material suggests methodological rigor: every strand of tradition must prove itself...
...Second, the two works are not at equal stages of completion...
...Both authors are motivated by the desire to correct the slipshod methods enabling such apparently irreconcilable readings from the same evidence...
...Each work, furthermore, is the fruit of long labor...
...But closer examination suggests the game is rigged...
...In contrast to Crossan, he is determinedly skeptical concerning the value of the apocryphal writings...
...No longer is one Gospel selected as the exclusive source...
...Most of all, the new quest is carried out in an academic environment far removed from the religious polemics that characterized earlier attempts, and is able at last to deal with Jesus in truly "historical" terms...
...Part 2, "Roots of the Person," reconstructs what we can determine concerning Jesus' origins, family, language, and social status...
...Like his succinct discussion of his social-scientific and textual-stratification strategies, his opening ploy suggests Crossan's overall approach to his subject...
...Now not just a dogmatically purged Jesus but one freed even of the encumbrances of faith was sought behind the pages of narratives irrevocably suffused with faith perceptions...
...Meier deliberately sets himself the task of providing a consensus view...
...By placing all the individual pericopes in competition, furthermore, Crossan is freed to establish his own lines of dependence and development...
...While the body of his text tries to work out a definite position on disputed points, his end-notes provide a running commentary on the complex debates that form the context for his decisions...
...In part 1, crosscultural studies are used to locate the distinctive character of the first-century Mediterranean world, an empire with a stratified system of patronage operating within a symbolic framework of honor and shame...
...His understanding of the key term "marginal," for example, is complex: Jesus is marginal because he is not, within the greater Mediterranean world, a recognizably "important" figure...
...These two studies represent a conscious coming of age in the second quest for the historical Jesus...
...Meier began his work on the question in 1984 with an article for the Jerome Biblical Commentary, and developed his analysis through a series of studies...
...For all of Crossan's genuinely impressive learning and brilliance, his work is most obviously vulnerable because of an approach to gospel criticism that moves in the opposite direction from Meier's...
...It has been an embarrassment, therefore, that the many books generated by the new quest are no less divergent in their portrayal of Jesus...
...This represented a satisfactory state of affairs for Christians who considered his continuing presence among them through the Holy Spirit much better both for Jesus and for them than his short and painful visitation in the flesh...
...All he asks of those who disagree with him is an engagement with the material as intense, and a use of method as scrupulous as his...
...rather, materials from all the Gospels are sorted into levels of tradition and tested for possible derivation from Jesus...
...After Schweitzer, a mood of historical skepticism reached across the period of both World Wars— when "biblical theology" appeared a far more pertinent subject for a world in crisis— ending only with the start of a "New Search for the Historical Jesus" in the 1960s that continues to the present day...
...The alternative to his reconstruction, he insisted, was absolute skepticism...
...Schweitzer thought that he had ended the quest by discovering once for all a Jesus who was truly different from his own age, a Jesus defined utterly by ancient eschatological dreams...
...How Meier will fill out this sketch, of course, remains to be seen...
...From this beginning, some hints of Meier's overall understanding of the historical Jesus can be gleaned...
...because he acted in a way that generated reaction and repression from established authorities within Judaism...
...For Crossan (and the colleagues he faithfully acknowledges), the apocryphal Gospels are as important, perhaps even more important, for reconstructing the historical Jesus as are the canonical Gospels...
...Meier devotes the first part of his book to the "Roots of the Problem...
...He opens with the fantasy of a Jewish, Protestant, Catholic, and agnostic scholar being locked in the Harvard Divinity School library until they come to a compromise agreement on the historical Jesus...
...Crossan's book unfolds according to the parts of its subtitle: "The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant...
...This collection he calls a "score to be played and a program to be enacted...
...They regarded Mark also as a theologically motivated writing...
...The naive Christian assumption that Jesus was in fact just what the Creed declared gave way to the critical historical premise that Jesus could turn out to be just about anything except what the Creed declared...
...Crossan demonstrates the quality of life within the strata of that world by Commonweal 24 April 1992: 25...
...Both books are also responsive to the vast literature on every aspect of Jesus research that has preceded them...
Vol. 119 • April 1992 • No. 8
