I would like to present a slight change of perspective on the historical Jesus from the one reflected in Bart Ehrman’s works:
In the dichotomy Jesus/Barabbas, Ehrman questions the historicity of the latter and argues that the figure of Barabbas was created to shift the blame for Jesus’ execution from the Romans to the Jews. In a recent blog post that I wrote, I take this argument and put it in the context of the early conflict between Jewish Christianity (led by James, the brother of Jesus) and Gentile Christianity (led by Paul the Apostle). The fact that Jesus was likely more similar to James than Paul and that he probably used an Aramaic title (Barabbas means “Son of the Father” in Aramaic) and not a Greek one (Christ is the Greek word for Messiah) leads me to reverse Ehrman’s argument and suggest that it is in fact Barabbas who more closely reflects the historical Jesus. The allegorical figure of Christ, on the other hand, could have been added later by Gentile Christians in a way that distanced the character from the original Jewish patriotic leader.
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Thanks Robert. I guess the contribution I am trying to make to this discussion is the fact that the duality between Jesus Barabbas (as referred to in an early version of the Gospel of Matthew quoted by Origens) and Jesus Christ may stem from the duality between the two opposing sides in early Christianity: Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians. The conflict between them played a key role in shaping the new religion around the time that Paul was going on his missionary trips. With the Gentile side taking over and controlling the narrative, Ehrman’s point is that the story of Barabbas could have emerged as a fiction created to blame the Jews. I suggest that given what we know about James the Lord’s brother (who was Christian before Paul was), and the references to Jesus as “King of the Jews”, the figure of Barabbas is actually more aligned with the historical context than that of Christ. And that in turn indeed supports the notion of Jesus being an insurrectionist
Welcome Jordi!
…the notion of Jesus being an insurrectionist
That the Jewish revolts took place at all was testimony that some Jews thought God needed assistance ushering in the kingdom. The problem including Jesus in that number is that the quietism and pacifism seem embedded very early in the tradition. Early Christians drew the ire of both Jews and pagans by their refusal to fulfill civic functions like participating in the military. With a few exceptions this state of affairs seems to have lasted up until Constantine had his armies baptized en masse .
One common scholarly interpretation of the Barabbas episode is that Mark is directly commenting on the First Jewish Revolt and the choice of political violence over preparing for the kingdom by personal piety.
Thanks Stephen! The fact that Paul’s letters are the earliest extant documents that refer to Jesus and that Gentile Christianity spread all over the Mediterranean while Jewish Christianity went extinct (and we have no bona fide written sources from them) means that we only get to look at early Christianity through the lens of Paul and his followers. The quietism and pacifism in that tradition is pervasive in Paul’s letters, but we have no way to tell if that is his creation or if it came from Jesus and his Jewish entourage. The same way Paul discusses extensively about how faith provides the path to salvation, which tacitly invalidates the Mosaic law and removes the requirement for circumcision, but we are quite certain that this was his interpretation and not Jesus’ stance. Going back to Robert’s point above, while I agree that Robert Eisenman’s description of James is speculative and controversial, his point that “who and whatever James was, so was Jesus” most likely stands. And we know quite a bit about James from the Gospels, Acts, Paul’s letters and Josephus: he was a devout Jew who stood his ground to defend Jewish traditions. It is not very far-fetched to think that he (and his brother, especially in light of the “INRI” designation) opposed Roman occupation and their offenses towards sacred principles.
…the implicitly violent ideology of Jewish apocalyptic Christianity…”
Everybody agreed that the forces of evil would be destroyed. The axe is at the root! Quietism and pacifism seem a perfectly natural response to oppression – if you’re a weak marginalized group who believe that God is going to make things right next Tues after lunch. It’s a “hunker down wait it out” strategy.
Jesus would certainly have believed that the forces of evil were going to be destroyed. But looking at the material, where can you find, really, Jesus the Insurrectionist in the NT?
The author of Paul’s letters conceived of his hero as a very complicated person. Paul is both Jewish and non-Jewish at the same time. Paul is just himself and to classify him in some way ethnic, cultural, religious is his impoverishment.
Paul prefers a prayer customs on the Hellenic pattern of 1 Cor 11:4, he reads Scripture in Greek from the Septuagint or even Theodotion (Verhoef), he quotes Manander in 1 Cor 15:33, he uses the term barbarian in 1 Cor 14:11.
He is generally like a great salesman approaching his client to win him over. 1 Cor 9:20.
Here I will mention a certain John who, when he sold me a Chevrolet Lumina, claimed to have Polish roots. Then, when he saw an Arab client, he took a subha prayer rope from the drawer and twisted the beads as if he came from the Levant. Master Level Salesman.
Rebel Jesus is drawn from Josephus, from various stories about rebels and apocalyptic prophets like Ben Ananias. In the NT, only confirmations of assumptions based on Josephus are sought. Another evidence is the fashionable trend of the so-called the “original” negative TF about the “historical” Jesus.
Fernando Bermejo Rubio continues this line of research set out by SGF Brandon. Reza Aslan is treated by some scholars as Brandon’s plagiarist.
Rabbi Mazeh said, “The Trotskys make the revolution and the Bronsteins pay for it.” Trotsky is Bronstein’s new name. The actions of the Red Army led by Trotsky led to pogroms in Ukraine in 1918-1920, the victims of which were about 100,000 religious Jews. Trotsky is said to have replied, “I am not a Jew. I am a social democrat.”
Paul says the same thing – I’m not a Jew, I’m a follower of the risen Christ.
In the achievements of the movement represented by Paul, there was only the resurrected Christ in the revelations and exegeses of the LXX. It didn’t sell well in its own community. Hence Paul’s perverse generosity in leaving the circumcised to Cephas and James to discourage Paul’s target group from the Jewish apostles.
Thanks Robert for these quotes. I am not writing that Trotsky rejected his personal past, his family. He has taken a new path and a new identification. The communist movement was non-Jewish in mass, but it was led by people of Jewish descent. Dzierżyński was a Polish nobleman from a patriotic family, and he became the head of the communist apparatus of repression. Both of them joined forces. until..
The considerations of Paul Jew and non-Jew make no sense. 1 Cor 1:23. The opportunity to operate in a numerically much larger Pagan market and initial successes led Paul to choose a new path. Do the Gentiles.
There is no historical Jesus in Paul’s Christianity. By definition, there would never be a gospel of historical Jezus. Letters a the only Gospel. No one dared to invent the biography of Jesus in this environment.
Until … And then what does Paul do? He learns about the life of Jesus from eyewitnesses on his first visit. And nothing, nothing to share. After the second visit after 14 years, same thing. There is nothing to communicate. What is more important is that the disciples of the Lord want to circumcise the Greeks as if they are crazy.
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