Who's Who in the Time of Jesus
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Was Mary Magdalene a prostitute? Why was James the Brother of Jesus airbrushed out of history? Geza Vermes, described as 'the greatest Jesus scholar of his generation', has compiled a handy guide.
Transcript
Transcript
Rachael Kohn: Today there's a cottage industry of books that play fast and loose with the origins of Christianity, as if the New Testament were mere invention.
Hello, I'm Rachael Kohn and this is The Ark on ABC Radio National. In fact, the period surrounding the rise of Jesus was an exciting time of history, where the cut and thrust of politics really was about killing your opponents. After more than 50 years as a scholar of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the historical Jesus, Geza Vermes, of Oxford University, has produced a Who's Who in the Age of Jesus, when priests vied with prophets, like John the Baptist.
Geza Vermes: Well according to the Gospels, John the Baptist was a holy man who lived in the wilderness, practiced extreme asceticism. From this point of view he was not a unique character. One of his contemporaries by the name of ???, also followed a way of life similar to John the Baptist, and he happened to be the teacher of the famous Jewish historian, Flavius Josephus.
Also the Essenes, the famous sect to whom the Dead Sea Scrolls are ascribed, lived in the wilderness, and followed the strict ascetic life and expected the arrival of the Kingdom of God. So John the Baptist fits the picture. He is described in the Gospels as someone who announces the coming of the Kingdom of God, invites Jews to return and subjects them to baptism.
This baptism ritual, bathing, was a very well known phenomenon at the time, so that John the Baptist can be safely accepted as a very well defined 1st century Jewish character who plays his role in introducing Jesus, his pupil, to public life in the Jewish world in around 29AD in the 15th year of the Emperor Tiberius, according to the Gospel of Luke.
Rachael Kohn: Now John the Baptist seems to have had a following. Was there ever any rivalry between Jesus and John?
Geza Vermes: Well it seems that there was, though the Gospels insist that Jesus and John had been always on the best of terms.
John speaks in the highest terms of Jesus and Jesus describes John as the greatest of the prophets. However, there are elements in the New Testament which show that the disciples of Jesus and of John were jealous. The disciples of John considered Jesus as somebody who had no right to work alone without being associated with John the Baptist, and the disciples of Jesus considered the disciples of John as someone who should follow Jesus instead of being attached to the Baptist.
As a matter of fact the issue was soon settled when John lost his head and his disciples no doubt joined those of Jesus, except many in the Diaspora who may not have heard of Jesus, and some of these were encountered by Paul.
Rachael Kohn: Now when you said John the Baptist lost his head, you didn't mean that metaphorically; it was actually Salome who wanted his head on a plate. Why? Why was he murdered?
Geza Vermes: Well there are two different explanations why John was put to death by the ruler of Galilee, Herod Antipas.
According to the New Testament, and particularly the Gospels of Mark and Matthew, it was the second wife of Antipas, Herodius, who was very angry with John the Baptist, because John condemned the marriage between Antipas and Herodius, and used the opportunity of the festivities a propos of the birthday of her husband, at which her daughter, Salome, performed a dance. She was so marvellous that Herod said, 'I will give you whatever you asked me', and Mama, through her daughter, asked for the head of John the Baptist. And although Herod Antipas didn't want to do it, he could not retract, and ordered John to be beheaded. So John was condemned because of his opposition to the marriage between Antipas and his wife.
But according to Josephus, the Jewish historian, John the Baptist was condemned to death because his eloquence was considered by Antipas as dangerous. He might encourage people to rebel and in order to avoid that rebellion, Antipas decided to condemn John the Baptist and he was put to death in the fortress of Makaidas??? in Transjordan. And this is probably the more likely story, although the two, strictly speaking, can be combined.
Rachael Kohn: Well you've mentioned a few people there who appear in your Who's Who, like Herod the Great. He seems to have killed just about anyone who stood in his way. Was that best practice Roman style, or was he just mad?
Geza Vermes: Well at the end of his life he became mad, but he did the killings before this really could be diagnosed.
Herod the Great was an outstanding character really. He was extremely ambitious and he wanted to be admired and loved. And for that reason he did a great deal to please his subjects. His enormous building activity was very popular, he made life in Judea, in the Jewish lands, much better than it was before, and he became a great friend of the Roman rulers and he obtained the goodwill of Rome for Judea.
But at the same time he was extremely jealous, and he suspected conspiracy all the time, and half of the time the conspiracy was supposed to come from his own family. As a result, he put to death his wife, whom he adored, Mariame????, his mother-in-law, the grandfather of his beloved wife, three of his sons, his brother-in-law and the Sanhedrin, the Jewish High Court, he really polished off all those people who he considered as dangerous.
He wanted to ensure that he would be lamented so he decided to murder a large number of Jewish dignitaries. However his sister who was supposed to implement this final outrage, shied off, and this didn't happen.
Rachael Kohn: Fortunately for all those people.
Geza Vermes: Oh, indeed.
Rachael Kohn: You mentioned Josephus, a Jewish historian, who also had close links to the Romans. Was he more Roman than Jewish? And was he a reliable historian?
Geza Vermes: Well Josephus was a Jewish aristocrat belonging to the high priestly families and related to the royal family of the Jews, the Maccabeans, the Hasmonaeans. He was highly educated. He wrote both in Aramaic and in Greek. He was one of the leaders of the Jewish Rebellion against Rome, and was captured by the Romans and then he switched allegiance to the Romans. But probably with a view to being the spokesman of the Jews. So in a way he was a traitor, and in a way he was a diplomat who was trying to help his compatriots.
As historian, you must suspect his reliability when the story revolves about his own role. Well, it happens with all historians, when they are also the heroes of their story. But otherwise Josephus has become much more respected during the last 50 years or so, than he was before. So that in a way without Josephus, and without his two major works, The Jewish Antiquities, and The Jewish War, we would know very little about Jewish history of the 1st century BC and the 1st century AD, but with the help of his works, we have a solid framework into which this history falls and into which add the history of Jesus and the history of early Christianity in Palestine can be placed.
Rachael Kohn: Let's talk about Jesus' brother, James. Now he's mentioned only once in the Gospels and it's not very positive. Where else do we learn about him? Is Josephus a good source for James?
Geza Vermes: Well, Josephus is the only source telling us about the execution of James, the only contemporary source. But otherwise, one of the principal sources about James is Paul, who refers to James as 'the brother of the Lord'. But the same James plays a very important part in the Acts of the Apostles, that is to say in the history of the early Christian movement in Jerusalem.
James was the head of the Jerusalem church, and during that famous meeting of the apostles and Paul, at which it was debated whether non-Jews could be accepted in the church without becoming Jews first, it was James, the brother of the Lord, who dispensed the Gentiles from circumcision and the practice of the Jewish law, in order to be baptised. So in other words, James played an outstanding role. He was the leader of the church in Palestine, and in a way, according to Paul, he may have been considered as more important than Peter. When Paul describes the Three Pillars of the church in Jerusalem, the first of these listed is James, the second is Peter, and the third is John.
Rachael Kohn: Why was James put to death?
Geza Vermes: Well according to Josephus, it was Ananius who was there, the High Priest in AD 62 who during the absence of Roman governors, tried to demonstrate that he really had the political power, and condemned to death a number of leading Jews, among them, James the brother of Jesus, known as the Christ, who was stoned to death by the order of Ananius.
However, even the pious Jews of Jerusalem considered this as an outrage, denounced the High Priest and the Jewish King Agrippa II, who deprived Ananius from his dignity as High Priest. So that even according to Josephus, and according to the pious Jews, James the brother of the Lord was a goodie, was a holy man who should never have been put to death.
Rachael Kohn: Unfortunately, it was the modus operandi of the ancient world. Who's Who in the Age of Jesus is a great resource book by Geza Vermes, who was speaking to me from Oxford.
Next week, the banning of sati, the Hindu practice of burning widows. That's on The Ark, with me, Rachael Kohn.
THEME
Guests
Geza Vermes
was born in Hungary in 1924. He studied in Budapest and in Louvain where he read Oriental history and languages and in 1953 obtained a doctorate in theology with a dissertation on the historical framework of the Dead Sea Scrolls. From 1957 to 1991 he taught in England at the universities of Newcastle-upon-Tyne (1957-65) and Oxford (1965-91). He is now Professor Emeritus of Jewish Studies and Emeritus Fellow of Wolfson College, but continues to teach at the Oriental Institute in Oxford. His many books include The Dead Sea Scrolls: Qumran in Perspective (1977, 1981, 1982, 1994) and recently The Authentic Gospel of Jesus (2004) and The Passion (2005).
Further Information
Providential Accidents
One of the world's great scholars is Geza Vermes. In his 17th century cottage in Oxford, he tells his remarkable life story to Rachael Kohn. The Spirit of Things on ABC Radio National, 29/08/99.
Publications
Title: Who's Who in the Age of Jesus
Author : Geza Vermes
Publisher: Penguin, 2005
