A. Jordan, Jesus the Nazarene: The Talmud and the Founder of Christianity
Wipf & Stock, Eugene Oregon. 2023: 173 pp.
The prior post presented the views of the linguist, A. Jordan, regarding The Talmudic “Jesus.” Like me, Jordan sees the Jesus of the Talmud—generally called Yeshu ha-Notsri in Jewish records (never “Jesus of Nazareth”)—as being the “real” Jesus. The Talmudic Jesus lived in the early decades of the first century before the common era and had a completely different biography than Jesus of Nazareth, though some elements seem to have survived in the Christian gospels: the radical nature of the prophet’s teachings, his opposition to the Pharisees, success in gaining converts, trial, and execution by crucifixion.
In this post we look especially at problems encountered when attempting to fuse the figures of Yeshu ha-Notsri and Jesus of Nazareth, as Jordan does in his book. This is an important point, for anyone embarking upon a study of Yeshu ha-Notsri must decide how to deal with the dramatic, narrative, and (pseudo-)historical elements reported in the four gospels.
One or two Jesuses?
This question is a source of great confusion for the author of Jesus the Nazarene. Jordan mines the Christian gospels for historical data about Jesus, while at the same time writing (p. 87) that “the Gospels are mostly not historical documents and meant to give a historical context to Paul’s gospel” (emphasis added). This follows Tom Dykstra, who viewed the Gospel of Mark as an apology, in narrative form, for Paul’s theology. In addition to the gospels not being reliable as history, however, a second problem presents: No historical justification apparently exists for applying data from the 4G to Yeshu ha-Notsri, who lived in a completely different era—one in which the Romans had not yet conquered Israel.
Jordan perceives the difficulty. He admits that the extant chronologies for Jesus of Nazareth and Yeshu ha-Notsri “are vastly different and imply a completely different context for the life and teaching of Jesus” (p. 2). Note the singular “Jesus.” Jordan does not maintain there were two prophets who lived a century apart. For him, there was one prophet—an “amalgam” of Jesus of Nazareth and Yeshu ha-Notsri.
This is not very helpful historically, for the chronological problem persists. One cannot simply compound two very different biographies and suppose that the product will be historically accurate. The data presented by the Talmud describes a prophet who lived in the early first century BCE, one “close to the government,” and a student of Yehoshua ben Perachia, the head of the Sanhedrin. The canonical gospels, on the other hand, describe a prophet who lived in the early first century CE, who came from a small Galilean settlement called “Nazareth,” and who had nothing to do with the Jewish “government”—for that government no longer existed.
Obviously, a prophet cannot have lived in both early I BCE and in early I CE. Hence, one of the two historical settings must be false. Jordan never crosses this conceptual bridge, which requires the rejection of one or the other tradition / historical setting. As a result, his compound Yeshu-Jesus figure hovers indeterminately around the turn of the era with no historical anchor. The reader is left wondering whether Jordan is talking about Jesus of Nazareth, about Yeshu ha-Notsri, or about some prophet of his own invention whom he simply denominates “Jesus.”
It’s as if a cook had one recipe for pizza, and another recipe for bread. Instead of making either pizza or bread, the cook puts all the ingredients (including yeast!) into a single pot and sees what comes out. This is analogous to what Jordan does in Jesus the Nazarene. Of course, no cook (or historian) would do this. Jordan’s Jesus struts about the Galilee raising the dead, curing a blind man with spittle, receiving disciples from John the Baptist, and cavorting with Peter, James, and John. This same Jesus flees to Egypt as a student of Perachiah, is excommunicated by the same, and executed at Lod by the Sanhedrin—in the time of Janneus and Salome Alexandra. This makes no apparent historical sense, but the unwary reader may not realize the hocus-pocus because Jordan calls everybody “Jesus.”
The overriding lesson I learned from Jordan’s book is that Jesus of Nazareth and Yeshu ha-Notsri cannot be merged. One of the two figures needs to be jettisoned as fictive. The decision, “Which one?” should be easy. Consider: Jesus of Nazareth has no independent confirmation either in Roman or in Jewish records (this has been demonstrated by Detering and others). No contemporary records at all exist for that figure. Additionally, my research has signaled that Nazareth did not exist “in the time of Jesus.” For these (and other) reasons, we must approach the figure of Jesus of Nazareth with great suspicion.
On the other hand, Yeshu ha-Notsri is mentioned many times in the Talmud, which is a corpus independent of the Christian tradition. My research also reveals that contemporary records (the Dead Sea Scrolls) probably refer to Yeshu ha-Notsri, and that Samaritan documents seem to have some things to say about him. These records are also independent of the Christian tradition. Taken together, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Talmud, and Samaritan records constitute critical checks on the Christian version of history. Whatever we conclude regarding the life and theology of the prophet, these records from different traditions show (at a minimum) that a historical figure, later given the name Yeshu/Jesus, did exist in the early decades of the first century BCE and seeded the religion we call Christianity.
At the same time, the evangelists had many reasons to invent their gospel Jesus: (a) they needed a miracle working prophet to impress the world; (b) they needed a coterie of apostles to found a church; and (c) they needed a blockbuster story to explicate their Pauline theology of a world savior. In contrast, no obvious reason exists for the rabbis to invent a renegade prophet in the time of Janneus, to make him a student of Perahiah, to have him flee to Egypt, and so on, as is reported in the Talmud. So, for the historian, the decision should be easy: the figure Jesus of Nazareth must be jettisoned, while the figure Yeshu ha-Notsri must be historically respected.
It is high time for historians to take up the gauntlet and incorporate the reports from various non-Christian traditions into their analyses of Christian origins.