The writings of Paul tell us practically nothing about the real Jesus, only about the Jesus Paul invented for himself. Did Jesus know the Old Testament? We do not know if he could read. The gospels, later of course, tell us he knew a good deal about the OT but that means only that the gospel writers wanted us to believe that. Even some of the gospel statements attributed to Jesus indicate some differences between him and normative Judaism, perhaps based on personal experience about fasting and the Sabbath, perhaps owing to some ignorance.
Some of the gospel writers like Luke read the Greek OT which was not identical with the Hebrew. The orthodoxy of the church also used the Greek OT. Jesus knew no Greek OT and even literary Hebrew may have been foreign to him. Aramaic versions, if he could read, might have been available to him.
Well if Jesus could not read he almost certainly heard the Torah read by others. There’s nothing radical about to the idea that he may have been a prodigy prone to visionary experiences. Apparently these sorts of folks sprouted in Second Temple Judaism likes leaves of grass. Also we should be leery about the idea of “normative Judaism” in these times. It seems clear that many of the controversies between Jesus and his opponents in the gospels reflect a later post-Revolt milieu projected backwards. Second Temple Judaism was funky and rather than being an outlier the historical Jesus probably fit right in to what was apparently a complex and varied mix saturated with apocalypticism.
BDEhrman
FreedomBen
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Robert
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