Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

FAITH AND THE HISTORICAL JESUS §5.5
nism, 122 the recognition that the portrayals of rabbinic Judaism in Mishnah and
Talmud may not simply be projected backwards into the first century, 123 the renewed
interest in the rich range of apocryphal and pseudepigraphical Jewish
literature as further testimony to the diversity of Second Temple Judaism, 124
and the increasing sophistication in evaluating the steadily mounting archaeological
data from the Israel (particularly Galilee) of Jesus' time. 125 In short, it
is no exaggeration to say that scholarship is in a stronger position than ever before
to sketch a clearer and sharper picture of Judaism in the land of Israel at
the time of Jesus and as the context of Jesus' ministry. As Nils Dahl observes:
'Everything that enlarges our knowledge of this environment of Jesus (Palestinian
Judaism) indirectly extends our knowledge of the historical Jesus himself'.
126
Not least of importance is the fact that the New Testament documents
themselves can and should be counted as part of the evidence for the character
and diversity of first-century Jewish literature. Paul is the only Pharisee from
whom we have first-hand documentation from before 70 CE. And if the letters of
Paul have to be counted as Jewish literature in an important sense, 127 then how
much more the Gospels. Even if one or more of the Gospels has to be attributed
to a Gentile author, the traditions which they contain (we need only reckon with
the Synoptic Gospels at this point) can hardly fail to be classified as 'Jewish'. 128
The most significant attempts to portray Jesus within late Second Temple
Judaism in this renewed (third) quest thus far have been those of Sanders and
122. M. Hengel, Judentum und Hellenismus (WUNT 10; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck,
3 1988); ET Judaism and Hellenism (London: SCM, 2 vols., 1974).
123. The many works of J. Neusner have been important here; see particularly The Rabbinic
Traditions about the Pharisees before AD 70 (Leiden: Brill, 1971); also From Politics to
Piety: The Emergence of Rabbinic Judaism (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1973); also Judaism:
The Evidence of the Mishnah (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1981); see also on the one
hand P. S. Alexander, 'Rabbinic Judaism and the New Testament', ZNW 74 (1983) 237-46, and
on the other C. A. Evans, 'Early Rabbinic Sources and Jesus Research' in B. Chilton and C. A.
Evans, Jesus in Context: Temple, Purity and Restoration (Leiden: Brill, 1997) 27-57.
124. See below, chapter 9, n. 11.
125. See particularly J. H. Charlesworth, Jesus within Judaism: New Light from Exciting
Archaeological Discoveries (New York: Doubleday, 1988); also Jesus and Archaeology (Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, forthcoming); J. L. Reed, Archaeology and the Galilean Jesus (Harrisburg:
Trinity, 2000); see further below, §§9.6-7.
126. N. A. Dahl, 'The Problem of the Historical Jesus' (1962), Jesus the Christ: The
Historical Origins of Christological Doctrine (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991) 81-111 (here 96).
127. So, e.g., A. F. Segal, Paul the Convert: The Apostolate and Apostasy of Saul the
Pharisee (New Haven: Yale University, 1990): 'Paul should be treated as a major source in the
study of first-century Judaism' (xi).
128. Cf., e.g., the remarks of C. G. Montefiore, The Synoptic Gospels (London:
Macmillan, 1909, 2 1927) cxxxiv-cxlv.
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