To What Extent Do Toledoth Yeshu and Graetz Agree the Historical Jesus is Not the Jesus of Christology - Literature review Example

Compare and contrast views of Jesus, his nature, how he is portrayed and the nature of his Jewishness in both the text of the Toledoth Yeshu and the writings of Graetz. [1730 words] To what extent do the authors agree that the historical Jesus is not the Jesus of Christology? It has been asserted that: “Jewish writers typically separated Jesus the Jew from the Christianity that incorporated him, approving of the former but disliking the latter….The present generation … Jewish and Christian, distance him from the Christianity that claimed him.”1 This view of Jesus must be relatively recent in Jewish literature since the author of the Toledoth Yeshu (TY) has a very different take on Jesus and Christianity. Jesus is identified as a historical personage but he is not shown as having an interest in developing Christianity – rather he is more concerned with developing a cult of worship around himself: “Yeshu proclaimed, "I am the Messiah; and concerning me Isaiah prophesied and said, Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel." He quoted other messianic texts, insisting, "David my ancestor prophesied concerning me: The Lord said to me, thou art my son, this day have I begotten thee." Graetz holds a more modern view of the relationship between the historical Jesus and Christianity. He says: “High-minded earnestness and spotless moral purity were his undeniable attributes; they stand out in all the authentic accounts of his life that have reached us, and appear even in those garbled teachings which his followers placed in his mouth….” (149) Graetz believes that Jesus initially thought of himself as a preacher following in the footsteps of John the Baptist by reaching out to the abrianim and am ha-arez. Graetz reminds us that Jesus said, .”I am not come to destroy but to fulfill….”2 This leaves open the question of how the TY could be so different in conclusion from Graetz and other writers in this field. The answer may lie in the respective audiences for which the authors were writing: the TY’s medieval audience (c14th century) wished to hear a derogatory account of Jesus and Christianity, whereas Graetz was writing a scholarly history of the Jewish people for the erudite. What evidence is there that Jesus was divine? Both the TY and Graetz are certain that Jesus was not the son of God, and Graetz refers to him as a ‘mortal’. One would have expected the TY to deny that Jesus had divine powers. Instead it says that he did; “Whoever learned the secret of the Name and its use would be able to do whatever he wished…. Yeshu came and learned the letters of the Name; he wrote them upon the parchment which he placed in an open cut on his thigh and then drew the flesh over the parchment….” Graetz takes a more cynical view of miracle making in general, informing us that it was accepted practice to capture the attention of people in this way. Whilst he agrees that Jesus must have had some knowledge beyond the ordinary ken of mankind at the time, he puts much of the awe with which Jesus’ ‘powers’ were greeted to the general lack of knowledge about science at the time amongst the ordinary people. Clearly as far as the TY is concerned learning the letters of the Name is insufficient to make one divine – Judas Iscariot and Paul were allowed to learn the letters in order to bring about the will of the Rabbi. One wonders what our brothers of that age would make of us, with our understanding of how to turn water into wine, to fly, to rouse men from coma and to predict famine without recourse to dreams. Was Jesus a Revolutionary? Jesus brought nothing new to the Jews. He simply argued that the teachers were neglecting their most needy students: the abrianim and am ha-arez. Graetz explains that Jesus was originally an Essene by persuasion and ‘a victim to a misunderstanding’ (165) rather than a revolutionary, although executed as a state criminal by Pilate. Graetz sees Jesus as one of 3 great moralists of that century (the other 2 being Hillel of Babylonia and Philo the Alexandrian). He finds Jesus innocent of much of what has been carried out in his name – particularly by the Church of Rome. The TY however refers to his disciples as ‘insurgents’ and if we take the modern meaning of that term then the author certainly did consider Jesus to be a revolutionary. Further it goes on to describe the rebellion from Judaism of Jesus’ followers in these terms: “The erring followers amongst Israel said: "You have slain the Messiah of the Lord." The Israelites answered: "You have believed in a false prophet." There was endless strife and discord for thirty years.” From the text above it would appear that Jesus was revolting against Judaism. This is augmented by the treatment of the capture and death of Jesus in the TY. The TY clearly does not blame the Romans – there is no hint of treason in its account of Jesus’ behavior: “….Yeshu was taken prisoner to the synagogue of Tiberias, and they bound him to a pillar. To allay his thirst they gave him vinegar to drink. On his head they set a crown of thorn….Yeshu was put to death on the sixth hour on the eve of the Passover and of the Sabbath….” Between the publication of the TY and Graetz’s work the term ‘revolutionary’ has shifted meaning. Today one would not describe Jesus’ point of view as revolutionary, rather one would consider him a religious fundamentalist. There would be no Christian salvation without Jesus/ According to the TY Christians still have not found salvation. The Sanhedrin authorized Paul to learn the ineffable name, carry out miracles and to deceive the gentiles and non-Torah observant Jews that Paul was a disciple of Christ. According to the TY this ‘lie’ is the basis of Christianity. However Graetz argues that Jesus allowed Judaism to fulfill its destiny: ‘The time had come when the fundamental truths of Judaism, till then thoroughly known and rightly appreciated only by profound thinkers, were to burst their shackles and go freely forth among all the people of the earth …. Israel was now to commence in earnest his sacred mission; he was to become the teacher of nations.”3 Like the TY he agrees that it was Paul (aka Saul of Tarsus) who turned the Ebionites into a world religion, but for a different reason. “Without Jesus, Saul would not have made his vast spiritual conquests, but without Saul, Christianity itself would have had no stability.”4 It was Saul who broke with the Torah in the belief that since the Messiah had come the law was no longer in force. This was a sophisticated conceit that would have been lost on the Ebionites who only preached to their fellow Jews. This reasoning allowed Saul to preach to Gentiles and not require them to be Torah-observant. The TY account of the dawn of Christianity is interesting in that it flies in the face of the Gospels and indeed Graetz’s researches. It is a novel explanation, suggesting as it does that Christianity was a Jewish plot to prevent further discord amongst God’s chosen people. However, whether one wishes to accept the TY version or Graetz’s explanation, there is little doubt that had the Jews not rejected Christ, Christianity would have been little more than another faction in Judaism. How reliable are the Toledoth Yeshu (TY) and Graetz as historical sources? It is submitted that neither the TY nor the writings of Graetz are particularly reliable historical sources, particularly when it comes to determining whether the historical Jesus existed. Alan Humm5 remarks on the TY that it is: “…a derogatory version of the life of Jesus, growing out of the response of the Jewish community to Christianity. The tradition presented here is most commonly dated to approximately the 6th century CE. The text it self is closer to the 14th c. There is no scholarly consensus on to what extent the text might be a direct parody of a now lost gospel.” Although the TY appears to have been set in a time some 100 years before the birth of the man we think of as Jesus of Nazareth, it is in the tradition of other writings of that period in undermining the legitimacy of Jesus, his beliefs, his works and more importantly his motivation. From that point of view it is an interesting document, capturing some of the prejudices current at the time, and the manner in which Jesus was being written about and debated by the middle classes of the period. Graetz, a highly respected historian, relies heavily on historical and religious authority including the Talmud and the Torah in his research - - neither of which document can be said to be objective toward Jesus or the early Christians. Interestingly he followed Abraham Geiger (the reformist) and was no doubt familiar with Geiger’s declaration: “The Talmud must go, the Bible, that collection of mostly so beautiful and exalted human books, as a divine work must also go.”6 To a certain extent neither the TY nor Graetz’s observations on Jesus are particularly useful, relying as they do on personal interpretation of actions and motivations. Further, Graetz relies heavily on the Gospels which he acknowledges are unreliable historically. Neither the TY nor Graetz’s work cite any objective 3rd party authority for their viewpoints – one is asked to suspend disbelief and take the word of the respective author that his interpretation of previous authority is correct. Yet clearly both works have an agenda which is not purely the accurate portray of a historical figure. Having said that one could argue that both documents have the same goal -- to undercut any perception of Jesus’ divinity. Whilst the author of the TY seeks to undermine the Christian faith, Graetz is more concerned to document the history of the early Christian church as faithfully as his sources and personal beliefs will allow. This leads both authors to conclude firstly that Jesus did exist and secondly that he was merely mortal. The key difference perhaps is the stage at which each author sees Jesus as seeking to cause a schism in Judaism. The TY views Jesus as being flawed from before birth, whereas Graetz argues that initially Jesus was no more than a preacher. However Graetz points out that Jesus had a fatal flaw – he began to believe his own publicity. Works Cited Geiger, Abraham, 1866, Judaism and Its History, vol. I, Thalmessinger & Cahn, New York: 1866) Gibbon, Edward, 1776, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Modern Library Edition , New York Graetz, Heinrich, 1901, History of the Jews; From the Earliest Times to the Present Day, Vol II, (ed. by & trans. from German original of 1853-1870 by Bella Lowy), London, Jewish Chronicle Hastings, James, 1919, Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, Vol. 8, New York and London: Scribners and T & T Clark Heschel, Susannah, 1998, Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus, The University of Chicago Press Meyer, Michael A, 1988, Response to Modernity: A History of the Reform Movement in Judaism, New York: Oxford University Press Setzer, Claudia, July 17 1995, No 4, Vol 10, p73, Jesus’ Many Faces: The Historical Jesus, Frontline at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/jesus/tikkun.html Read More