The Changing Faces of Jesus

Rating:
Summary: A beautiful, intelligent stimulus for thinking about the NT.
Review: This is a clear, approachable and instructive work that wears its learning quite lightly, wastes few words and keeps within comfortable bounds of length - very English. Penguin provides a useful description of it by Vermes himself, at http://www.penguin.co.uk/Book/BookFrame/0,1007,,00.html?id=0140265244 . The following assumes you have read this.

First, some dates to keep in mind. Jesus died about 30. The authentic epistles of Paul begin early in the 50s and end in the mid-60s. Outside the Pauline domain, all we know of Christianity at the time was centered in Jerusalem and led first by Peter, then by James, Jesus's brother, who was killed in 62. Peter and Paul were executed in Rome in the mid-60s. In 66 an uprising began in Judea which led to the razing of the Second Temple in Jerusalem, in 70. The three synoptic Gospels were written in the 80s and early 90s, Mark first, then Matthew and Luke in debatable order. Around 100 were written the Acts of the Apostles, perhaps by the same hand as Luke. The gospel of John comes later, about 110, and the Revelation later still. All of the NT (New Testament) was written in Greek. Despite the traditional attributions, none of the authors had met Jesus. The author of Luke was not Jewish, and that of John may well not have been. The other writers generally were. All of this is a moderate stretch from, say, the notes in the pre-Vatican-2 Catholic Bible of Jerusalem. Only fundamentalists should be shocked (and they will not read Vermes).

"The changing faces of Jesus", then, are the earlier and earlier pictures of him that emerge when we begin scraping away layers of scriptural overpaint. The Jesus in question is the Galilean charismatic who, according to the synoptics, first acknowledged John the Baptist and probably joined him, then lived for less than a year after John was arrested.

The top layer is the gospel of John, and in the scraping we notice that almost all our christology was in there and in no prior layer. All of the NT prior to John is centered on the Kingdom of God, and none of it treats Jesus as God. John, for whom Jesus is God, only mentions the Kingdom once.

Vermes then jumps to Paul, who is explicit that he did not see Jesus and (not being the most agreeable man on earth) avoids reporting whatever the Christians in Jerusalem may have known. Paul affirms only two beliefs regarding Jesus, first of all redemption (the Cross), second resurrection - the disappearance of Jesus's body and his reappearance in the form of apparitions, the last of which occurred to Paul in Damascus. Paul's doctrine is that the man Jesus became the Redeemer (not God) on the Cross, and will return in Paul's generation as the Messiah at the end of the world, in universal redemption on the basis of faith, not respect for the Jewish Law. This is the Kingdom of God.

Vermes's next layer is the Acts, which he reads as a report on the beliefs of the church of Jerusalem two generations earlier. Those beliefs quite fit with Paul's, except for being explicitly Jewish and respectful of the Law, and for being impelled by Galileans who were with Jesus during his months of public travel. The church of Jerusalem is a group of Law-abiding unlearned Jews who, like Paul, believe in the advent of the Messiah in their generation. What this means for Gentiles is at best obscure. The Acts also show both Paul and the Jerusalem group working many wonders, in continuation with those attributed to Jesus and his disciples by the synoptics. Except for Paul's letters, all of the NT comes well after the end of this miracle-working generation and the fall of the Temple, so its doctrine about eschatology (last things) is much less here-and-now.

This overview of the first half of the book should give you an idea of its flavor. The second half comprises two chapters, one for the synoptics and one for "the real Jesus". Vermes was born in Hungary in 1924. He became a scriptural scholar while a Catholic priest and later returned to the Judaism from which his family had converted during his youth. Nevertheless the entire work is a work of faith. Most readers will value it as a deep and lively review of the foundational texts of Christianity. It matters little whether in the end one is convinced by Vermes's idea of the real Jesus. For my part, I found his analysis conservative to a fault, rather in the Catholic style. There are many passages in the synoptics that Vermes questions or resets, with the best of reasons, but I found it hard to see why he would not apply those reasons to other passages, which instead he follows like a thread to lead back to the real Jesus. His treatment of talmudic legends is even less questioning. Be that as it may, along the way every page feeds reflection. I would enthusiastically recommend the book to all readers who know the NT and are not put off by the survey in my second paragraph.

Rating:
Summary: Powerful but nonpolemical
Review: This is a wonderful book. Although I think Ed Sanders's _The Historical Figure of Jesus_ is probably the best single volume on the "Jesus of history," Geza Vermes is perhaps my favorite writer on the subject.

In the present work he continues his project of reclaiming Jesus as a (solely) human being and a Jew of his own time. Here he tackles a topic he has not treated in his previous three volumes: the Christian New Testament's presentation of Jesus outside of the three synoptic gospels. He also gives the synoptics themselves another look after he has dealt with John and Paul.

His theme here is that Christian understanding(s) of Jesus have been colored heavily by the New Testament's portraits. Vermes wants to recover, as far as possible, the human being behind the theology. The portrait Vermes presents here will hold no surprises for readers of his other works: he regards Jesus as a charismatic Galilean holy man with an emphasis on God as father, a somewhat "individualistic" approach that decentralized the importance (though not the necessity) of the social/communal aspects of Torah observance, and the occasional touch of chauvinism.

There is much to accept in Vermes's portrait, and I am in essential agreement with most of it. My worries are about what he omits; as with his earlier work, I am simply unconvinced by his claim that Jesus was crucified simply for doing the wrong thing in the wrong place at the wrong time, and I also do not see that he has adequately dealt with the possible historicity of Jesus's resurrection. (I would supplement Vermes's account on these points by, respectively, Hyam Maccoby's _Revolution in Judea_ and Rabbi Pinchas Lapide's _The Resurrection of Jesus: A Jewish View_.)

But in its positive aspects, Vermes's portrait is compelling on the whole. And at the end of the volume, he shifts out of "historian" mode to provide a short fantasy about what Jesus might say if he returned today. I will not spoil it by giving away its content, but it's very nicely done. (Okay, I'll give away a _little_ bit. Vermes's Jesus is pleasantly surprised by all the attention he's gotten from non-Jews, especially after the mean things he occasionally said about them. But he suggests that some Christians ought to be a little less devotional and a little more self-reliant.)

Beyond strictly historical interest, it has long been one of Vermes's main concerns to present the figure of Jesus as an offer of hope to those outside the fold of organized religion. His previous works have, I think, been successful in this regard; the present volume is, if anything, more so.


Rating:
Summary: Thorough examination ...
Review: This is the third book I've read on the historical Jesus, beginning with Paula Fredriksen's "From Jesus To Christ," and just recently E.P. Sanders' "The Historical Figure of Jesus."

While I have more titles on my list, I highly recommend the three I've read, especially Geza Vermes more theological study, "The Changing Faces of Jesus."

Vermes begins with the Gospel of John, contrasting the most recently composed "Gospel" of Jesus, written sometime around 100-110 A.D., with the earlier writings of Paul, the Acts of the Apostles, and the image of Jesus consistent with the contents of the the three Synoptic Gospels, beginning with Mark, probably composed sometime after the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 A.D.

The author concludes with two short chapters, "Beneath the Gospels" (The Real Jesus) and most thought-provoking "The Real Jesus at the Dawn of the Third Millennium." These summary essays along with the equally interesting Prologue are important reading for the "thinking" Christian.

Between the Prologue and two concluding Chapters, the author thoroughly examines the "changing/evolving" face of Jesus in the New Testament.

The author, born in Hungary, had a Catholic education and was ordained as a priest shortly after the Second World War. He later returned to his Jewish roots, becoming a Biblical scholar, publishing "The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls" in 1997.

The author's scholarship and research expertise adds to the impact of this historical and theological study.