A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus: The Roots of the Problem and the Person, Vol. 1

Features

• Cover Type: Hard Cover with 496 pages
• Published by: Anchor Bible November 1, 1991
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0385264259
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0385264259
• Book Dimensions: 9.7 x 6.2 x 1.6 inches
• Weighs: 1.6 pounds

From Library Journal
This study inaugurates a new series that seeks to examine various topics (e.g., anthropology, archaeology, literature, philosophy, theology) as they relate to the Bible. The series is intended for the general reader as well as for scholars. Here, Meier (New Testament studies, Catholic Univ. of America) adopts a two-tier approach: he shows up-to-date research on the Jesus of history with discussions geared toward well-read general readers, and in his extensive notes he discusses technical matters of interest to doctoral students and scholars. Meier explains issues of method, definitions and sources, and then turns to the birth, years of development, and cultural background of Jesus. He distinguishes between "what I know about Jesus by research and what I hold by faith." His study is a necessary purchase for academic libraries.
- Cynthia Widmer, Downingtown, Pa.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
Meier (Religion/Catholic Univ. of America), a Catholic priest, offers a vigorously honest, skeptical, and scholarly attempt to discover the historical Jesus. The author poses an intriguing hypothetical: ``suppose that a Catholic, a Protestant, a Jew, and an agnostichammered out a consensus document on who Jesus of Nazareth was.'' Meier tries to create such a ``consensus document'' by looking at the fundamental facts of Jesus' life (while excluding those aspects of Jesus' biography that are premised on tenets of Christian belief, like the Resurrection). In this, the first volume of a two-part work, Meier carefully conducts an exegesis of the ``Roots of the Problem'' (the New Testament texts, which are not primarily historical works; the apocryphal gospels; and the fleeting references in the works of Josephus, Tacitus, and other pagan and Jewish writers that constitute the entire historical record of Jesus), and an analysis of the ``Roots of the Person'' (in which Meier brings hermeneutic tools to bear on the birth, development, and early years of Jesus). Meier points out Jesus' historical ``marginality''--his peripheral involvement in the society, history, and culture of his age--that ironically underscores the central position he has occupied in Western culture in the centuries since he died. Rife with scholarly terminology, and thus slow going for the nonspecialist--but, still, a superb examination of a fascinating historical problem. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Reader Reviews
John Meier's "A Marginal Jew" is the leading study of the historical Jesus of our time. Notwithstanding three sizeable volumes the work is still incomplete, but this reputation is clearly well-deserved. The first volume only deals with the basic contours of his life, but it is the most intelligent discussion of these questions available. Meier, a Catholic priest, reminds us that the historical Jesus is not the real Jesus. For a start we have a radical shortage of information of information about all but a few people in classical times, and Jesus is not one of those lucky few. What he has presented is what a spectrum of theologians and historians would conclude about Jesus if they were forced to provide a basic consensus. So Meier starts with the sources for Jesus' life, which basically consists of the Gospels. There is a long, thorough discussion of the reference to Jesus in Josephus, from which Meier agrees with most scholars is mostly genuine, with several obvious Christian interpolations. He then discusses other sources, which reveal a very meagre crop. There is Tacitus' reference to Christians, nothing of value in the Talmud, as well as a thorough deflation of the Coptic Gospel of Thomas. Thomas consists of sayings, many of which resemble those in the Gospels. But Thomas' sayings are simpler, and many have concluded that they are more primitive and therefore earlier than the canonical gospels. Meier disagrees. He points that one reason Thomas' order of sayings does not resemble the synoptic gospels is because many of them were remembered orally, not because they proceeded them. He also points out one reason Thomas' sayings appear simpler is because the Gnostic concerns of the author/editor has pared away those elements of the original Gospel saying that were too clear or too eschatological for the author's taste. We then get a discussion of the criteria for deciding what comes from Jesus; embarrassment, discontinuity, multiple attestation and providing a motive for Jesus' execution. We then turn to Jesus' actual life himself. We start off with a discussion of his name, and then we have a discussion of the infancy narratives. Notwithstanding the fact that Meier is a Catholic priest, by the time he is finished there is not much left of them, or the doctrine of Jesus' virginal conception. The narratives are inaccurate about precisely those childbirth rituals that Mary, the presumed source, would have to know. Both Matthew and Luke use questionable historical elements (the Massacre of the Innocents in Matthew, unattested to by any other source, the census in Luke that could not have happened at the time Luke gives) and give clearly different routes of Joseph and Mary to and from Nazareth and Bethlehem. Even more disconcerting is Meier's later discussion of Jesus' siblings, of which there were at least four brothers and two sisters. For centuries Catholics, seeking to preserve both the eternal virginity of Joseph and Mary, have sought to argue that the references in the gospels to brothers are really to his cousins. This is based on the idea that Hebrew does not distinguish between the two terms. Of course the gospels were written in Greek, which does distinguish the two. Nor were the authors of the New Testament woodenly translating Jesus' Aramaic into Greek. After all Paul refers to brother(s) of the Lord in both Galatians and Corinthians, where he is writing originally in Greek. Josephus refers to James the brother of Jesus, even though he could and did distinguished between brother and cousin. Moreover statements by Jesus such as "Whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother," (Matt 12:50) lose their force if the term for sibling is replaced by cousin. The safest assumption is that Jesus' siblings were Mary's children. (It has been argued that they were actually her stepchildren, being Joseph's from a previous marriage. Elsewhere Meier has written while this is not impossible, it is not supported by the gospels--where there is no clear use of the term "stepbrother"--and it is based on a late source, the second century Protoevangelium of James which is patently inaccurate about many Jewish rituals. What is gratuitously asserted can be gratuitously denied.) Was Jesus illegitimate, as some scholars have speculated? No, the simplest explanation for references to Jesus as "Mary's son," was because the speaker wished to assert Jesus' ordinariness by referring to his ordinary parents. Mary was right near by and Joseph was presumably already dead. Was he married? No again, since while it was unusual, it was not unprecedented, as we can see from the examples of Jeremiah, the Essenes and John the Baptist. What language did Jesus speak? Almost certainly Aramaic, says Meier. If a cosmopolitan author like Josephus had trouble with Greek, it is not likely that the Greek of a marginal villager like Jesus was likely to be any better. Archaeological evidence has confirmed this sceptical attitude towards mass hellenization, as helpfully summarized in James Dunn's "Jesus Remembered." Jesus was probably literate and he was probably a layman. When did Jesus die? Most likely on April 7, thirty CE. He was executed on the eve of Passover. Meier is thorough on all matters but he is especially illuminating on why John, the most mystical Gospel is more accurate on this point than the synoptics. For they claim Jesus was executed on Passover. The answer is that the passage on Mark is a later addition, which we can see by comparison with the surrounding passage, and which Luke and Matthew unfortunately copied. Such is the conclusion to Meier's first volume, the beginning of a most scrupulous, scholarly and well-read journey indeed.