Jesus the Jew. Geza Vermes
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brief, for the Pharisees and the rabbis of the first and early second century AD the Galileans were on the whole boors. Moreover, the epithet ‘am ha-areẓ, ‘peasant’, which as Adolph Büchler has shown was generally applied to them,71 carried, in addition to the expected implication, the stigma of a religiously uneducated person. Though obviously overstatements, the following Talmudic quotations reflect the sentiments prevailing between the ‘orthodox’ and the ‘am ha-areẓ.
No man may marry the daughter of the ‘am ha-areẓ, for they are like unclean animals, and their wives like reptiles, and it is concerning their daughters that Scripture says:
‘Cursed be he who lies with any kind of beast’ (Deut. 27: 21 (RSV)).
Greater is the hatred of the ‘am ha-areẓ for the learned than the hatred of the Gentiles for Israel; but the hatred of their wives is even greater.72
Strangely enough, the clearest echo of the antagonism between Galileans and Judeans reported in rabbinic writings is to be found in the Fourth Gospel in the New Testament. For motives which are not historical but doctrinal, this late work offers seemingly reliable evidence that attitudes definitely attested in the late first and the second century AD are traceable to the age of Jesus.73
According to the same evangelist also, when the Jerusalem crowds proclaim Jesus as the expected prophet, or the Messiah, doubts are voiced:
‘Surely the Messiah is not to come from Galilee?’74
The subsequent episode of the return of the Temple police to the chief priests is even more characteristic. Asked why they have not brought Jesus, they reply: ‘No man ever spoke as this man speaks.’ The Pharisees then counter:
‘Have you too been misled? Is there a single one of our rulers who has believed in him, or of the Pharisees? As for this rabble, which cares nothing for the Law, a curse is on them.’
When Nicodemus, himself a Pharisee, takes up Jesus’ cause, he is silenced by the humiliating question:
‘Are you a Galilean too?’75
As in the rabbinic quotations, the qualification ‘Galilean’ is synonymous with a cursed, lawless rabble.
Returning to the evangelists, or simply to the outline of the Gospels given in the preceding chapter, it is obvious that Jesus could have been found guilty of the charge of religious impropriety levelled at the Galileans in general. He surrounded himself with publicans and whores. He accepted the hospitality of people unlikely to have observed all the regulations concerning levitical cleanness and tithing. He took no steps to avoid defilement through contact with a corpse. He was more concerned to keep business dealings out of the precincts of the sanctuary than with the quality of sacrificial victims or the type of currency used for Temple donations. A clash with the Pharisees was, in the circumstances, only to be expected therefore, not because they were obsessed with trivialities, but because for them the trivial was an essential part of a life of holiness, every small detail of which was meant to be invested with religious significance.
The crucial question is: who were these Pharisees with whom Jesus came into conflict? Were they themselves Galileans? They are described at least twice in the Gospels as visitors from Jerusalem.76 Can it be assumed that they were locals when the contrary is not stated? The answer depends on whether it is accepted that the Pharisees were in fact Galilee’s moral rulers in the time of Jesus.
Josephus, in any case, gives no grounds for supposing this to have been so. The only Pharisees in Galilee whom he mentions are members of a deputation from Jerusalem sent by Simeon ben Gamaliel, the chief Pharisee in the capital, with a view to engineering his downfall.77
The testimony of rabbinic literature is equivocal. Presidents of the Pharisaic party, Gamaliel the Elder and his son Simeon, are purported to have sent epistolary instructions to the two Galilees,78 but it is not said how they were received. A recent author claims that the Pharisaic school of the disciples of Shammai, Hillel’s opponent at the turn of the eras, was influential in Galilee, and even that Shammai himself was a Galilean; but this brave assertion is backed by no serious evidence.79
Fragments from rabbinic literature, on the other hand, point towards a sporadic Pharisee presence in Galilee and an absence of impact during the first century AD. Yohanan ben Zakkai, the leader of Jewish restoration after the destruction of Jerusalem, spent some time in the town of Arab, possibly before AD 50;80 two of his legal rulings concerning the observance of the Sabbath were enacted there. Yet according to a third-century AD tradition, on realizing that despite eighteen years of effort he had failed to make any mark, he exclaimed:
Galilee, Galilee, you hate the Torah!81
Whether these words are genuine or not, they show that the Galileans had the reputation of being unprepared to concern themselves overmuch with Pharisaic scruples. If Hanina ben Dosa, a figure to be discussed in the next chapter, is to be recognized as a rabbi and a Pharisee at all, he represented a Galilean blend. Apart from him, the only other first-century AD teacher to be known as a Northerner is Rabbi Yose ‘the Galilean’. Bearing in mind that Yose was one of the commonest of names, surely the very fact that he was distinguished by his country of origin, instead of being given the ordinary patronymic designation of ‘son of so-and-so’, is evidence of his unusual standing in a Southern academy of Pharisaic scholarship.
The long and short of this argument is that Pharisaic opposition to Jesus in Galilee was mostly foreign and not local. Even assuming that the Pharisees had acquired some foothold in one or two Galilean cities – their influence was especially felt among town-dwellers according to Josephus82 – their authority was little noticed in rural Galilee, the main field of Jesus’ ministry and success.
Jesus became a political suspect in the eyes of the rulers of Jerusalem because he was a Galilean. Moreover, if present-day estimates of Jewish historians concerning Galilean lack of education and unorthodoxy are accepted,83 his same Galilean descent made him a religious suspect also. Should, however, this view of the Galilean character be found tendentious, rabbinic antipathy towards the Galileans and the Pharisees’ hostility towards Jesus might justifiably be ascribed, not so much to an aversion to unorthodoxy and lack of education, but simply, as the Israeli scholar, Gedalyahu Alon, insinuates, to a sentiment of superiority on the part of the intellectual élite of the metropolis towards unsophisticated provincials.84
3
Jesus and charismatic Judaism
‘Today and tomorrow I shall be casting out devils and working cures; on the third day I reach my goal.’1
According to Luke, Jesus himself defined his essential ministry in terms of exorcism and healing, but even if these words are not Jesus’ own, but the evangelist’s, they reflect the firm and unanimous testimony of the whole Synoptic tradition. His mission as he saw it was to the sick: to the physically, mentally and spiritually diseased, all these illnesses being then considered to go hand in hand, as will be shown presently. He was the healer, the physician par excellence.
‘It is not the healthy that need a doctor, but the sick; I did not come to invite virtuous people, but sinners.’2
In consequence, if his religious personality is to be reconstructed and his affinities with the spiritual trends of his time determined, the three fundamental aspects of his function must be examined in their natural setting. His roles, that is to say, as healer of the physically ill, exorciser of the possessed, and dispenser of forgiveness to sinners, must be seen in the context to which they belong, namely charismatic Judaism. It is not until he is placed within that stream, in the company of other religious personalities with affiliations to diverse movements and groups, that his work and personality can be seen in true perspective and proportion.
The Physician
What is the relationship in biblical and inter-Testamental Judaism between sickness, sin and the devil? Inversely, how is the