F

or anyone who is looking for the opportunity to learn more about the Jewishness of Jesus, I would like to introduce you to three of my favorite teachers. Click on the pictures to go directly to their websites.

Beyond their wonderful web teaching, you can look into their DVD resources and books, which can all be found at their websites.

Dwight Pryor

Lois Tverberg

Ray Vander Laan

In His dust,
Johnny

How much can we really know about the Jewishness of Jesus? That’s a pretty fundamental question, since the goal of this website is to understand the Jewish background of Christianity. I’ve found some pretty important news in my recent reading, and wanted to share it here.

A common approach to studying Jesus is to use two major Jewish sources that are from slightly after his time.* The Mishnah is a record of the oral debates and decisions of the rabbinic teachers that was written down around 200 AD, but supposedly preserves sayings back to 200 BC. The Talmud (in two editions) contains the Mishnah along with an expansive commentary that was published between 200-300 years later. Many who write about Jesus’ Jewish context quote the Mishnah and the Talmud extensively. Their assumption is that oral traditions from Jesus’ day were very long lived, and that even though they were written down later, they are still useful.

Others have protested for quite good reason, because the documents came along much after Jesus’ time. Can they be used? For several decades since the 1960s, the answer of many scholars was a resounding “no.” This was especially the feeling in the mid 1970’s, when a well known scholar, Jacob Neusner, put forth the theory that Judaism completely reinvented itself after the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD. He suggested that everything written in the Mishnah was very late—all the quotes from rabbinic teachers who were supposed to have lived before the time of Jesus, like Hillel and Shammai, were fabricated later. Any scholar who tried to publish something that compared Jesus to other Jewish teachers was laughed out the door.

But in the past decades more and more research has been done to ask the question, how trustworthy is the Mishnah? Can it tell us about Jesus’ time period? And more and more are saying that with care, it actually is. In fact, Neusner himself is one of the researchers who says so. Some parts seem to be very early and very reliable, and some things appear to be added or edited later. For instance, moral tales about the rabbis contain some fanciful elaborations, but sayings attributed to them are thought to be fairly reliable. Since we know when rabbinic teachers lived, we can determine the date of a saying.

This can be really interesting. For instance, one saying that you might have heard is, “Let your house be a meeting place for the sages, cover yourself with the dust of their feet, and drink in their words thirstily.” (Mishnah, Pirke Avot 1:4) It’s attributed to a sage named Yose ben Yoezer, who lived about 200 years before Jesus’ time. If you’ve ever heard Ray Vander Laan or Rob Bell talk about “walking in your rabbi’s dust,” this is where that line comes from. It describes the tradition of teachers wandering the land, staying in people’s homes, and having disciples follow after them and sit at their feet when they taught.

In the 1970’s, scholars would say, “You can’t trust that saying — it’s from 200 AD. That describes the rabbis of then, not Jesus’ time.” (Even though it sounds a lot like what we read in the gospels.) Now, they are concluding that this saying is really from the time of the sage to whom it is attributed — 200 years before Jesus’ ministry. The conclusion is now quite different — that Jesus was taking part in a tradition known for generations before his time. This makes all the difference in the world in terms of painting the Jewish reality around him.

Another thing that scholars have decided are fairly reliable in the Mishnah are the debates between the disciples of Shammai and the disciples of Hillel, which date to sometime between 10 and 70 AD. This is also quite interesting, because their debates come up in Jesus’ ministry. The question Jesus was asked about divorce was about which side he took between the camp of Shammai and Hillel. Their debates over Sabbath observance and making vows are also recorded, and Jesus took a side on these issues too. Often the Mishnah is very helpful in understanding Jesus’ context.

This might be too scholarly of a subject for some readers, but it really is fundamental to the study of Jesus’ Jewishness. And it is true that you have to be very careful about your dating, and not assume something said hundreds of years later describes Jesus’ reality. It’s really not a good idea to assume Jesus and Rashi, who lived a thousand years later, had much in common. Or even to quote the Babylonian Talmud (500 AD) and assume it is what Jesus knew. Unfortunately, plenty of people have done that.

My reference for this is Traditions of the Rabbis from the Era of the New Testament, by David Instone-Brewer, published by Eerdmans in 2004. It’s the first in a series of six volumes that will seek to date saying from the Mishnah and some other early Jewish writings that are relevant to the New Testament era. Dr. Instone-Brewer also wrote a book called Divorce and Remarriage in the Bible: The Social and Literary Context. It examines Jesus’ words on the subject in light of the debates between Hillel and Shammai. He makes some interesting conclusions on how to interpret Jesus’ words about divorce based on his Jewish context.

*It should be said that there are other good sources for studying first-century Judaism, like the Dead Sea Scrolls and the writings of Josephus. My discussion here is just whether the Mishnah and Talmud, the traditional texts of Judaism, are admissible in discussions about Jesus.

© 2009 Lois A. Tverberg, Our Rabbi Jesus: His Jewish Life and Teaching , all rights reserved.

Is it all right to speak of Jesus as a “rabbi”? Some have suggested that the term may be from after Jesus’ time, so to apply it to Jesus isn’t appropriate. Others have said that Jesus rejected the title because he refused to associated with the religious teachers of his day. What is going on here?

The simplest answer is to look at the gospels themselves. In the text of the gospels, Greek letters are used to spell out the Hebrew word “rabbi” as ραββι rather than translating it into a Greek equivalent in 15 places (see Matt. 23:7, 8; Mark 9:5; John 1:38, 49, and elsewhere). In these passages, Jesus was called rabbi mainly by disciples - namely Peter, Nathaniel, and Judas, and some would-be disciples, including Nicodemus. John the Baptist’s disciples called him “rabbi” too (John 3:26).

Here’s one passage where ραββι is found: “When the two disciples heard him say this, they followed Jesus. Turning around, Jesus saw them following and asked, ‘What do you want?’ They said, ‘Rabbi’ [ραββι] (which means Teacher), ‘where are you staying?’” (John 1:37) Here John explains that his use of “rabbi” is the equivalent of the Greek word didaskalos, which means “teacher.” It’s reasonable to assume, then, that when we see Jesus addressed as “teacher” in English translations, the Gospel writers are using it to translate the word rabbi.

But there’s more going on here. Right around the time of Jesus, there was a change in how the word “rabbi” was used. The word was not used as a title of a religious teacher in Jesus’ time, but only became so after 70 AD. Jewish teachers who lived a few decades before his time, like Hillel and Shammai, were not called “Rabbi Hillel” and “Rabbi Shammai,” even though they had numerous disciples. They simply went by their name with no title, like Jesus did. It was only after 70 AD that we find numerous religious teachers who had the title of “rabbi,” like “Rabbi Akiva” or “Rabbi Eliezar.”

Because of this, modern day scholars refer to the era after 70 AD as “the rabbinic period” and speak of teachers in this period as “the rabbis.” Religious teachers who gathered disciples prior to 70 AD are termed “sages,” so Jesus was a “sage” rather than a “rabbi” by modern definition. In the minds of academics, calling Jesus a “rabbi” sounds as if he lived a few decades later than he did.

It is very important not to transplant Jesus from his own time into another. But if we disassociate him entirely from the Jewish teachers that lived slightly after him, it is misleading as well. It’s important to remember that Jesus lived in the critical period of Judaism that formed the nucleus of later rabbinic thought. The disciples of Hillel and Shammai were debating in his day, and their opinions became the focus of much of the discussion that is preserved in the Mishnah and Talmud. Jesus appeared to be commenting on their debates in some places, for instance, on divorce (Mt 19:3-9). Even if Jesus didn’t interact with them directly, knowing what they believed is critical for understanding his Jewish world.

So what word would Jesus’ disciples have used to refer to him? Rabbi. But in a different sense. It was traditional, even before Jesus was born, for disciples to address their teacher as rav, meaning “master” or “great one.” You can see this in quotations from the earliest sages in the Mishnah, which spoke of the relationship between a talmid (disciple) and his rav (master). (For instance, Pirke Avot 1:6, from the 2nd cent BC.) The word for “teacher,” moreh, referred to a teacher of children.

“Rav” was the same word that a slave would use to address his owner, displaying an attitude of humility. An “i” added to the end meant “my,” so a disciple would address his teacher as rav-i, “my master,” or rabbi. (In Hebrew, b and v are often interchangeable.) In the decades after Jesus’ time, the word for “my master” gradually became the title of a Jewish religious teacher. This is very analogous to how clergy were once honored with the phrase, “the most reverend so-and-so,” but later “reverend” became a professional title.

The gospels yield clues that Jesus’ disciples called him rav-i in this older sense of the word. In Luke’s gospel especially, we see Jesus being referred to as “master.” (See Luke 5:5, 8:24, 8:45 and elsewhere.) We also hear Jesus saying, “A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a slave above his master. It is enough for the disciple that he become like his teacher, and the slave like his master.” (Matthew 10:24-25) The reason Jesus made this comparison was likely because the disciples were calling him rav, and addressing him each time they spoke to him as rav-i, “my master.” The fact that John translates the word rabbi as didaskalos shows that the word was also understood to mean “teacher” as well.

This sheds light on Matthew 23: “Everything they do is done for men to see… they love to be greeted in the marketplaces and to have men call them ‘Rabbi.’ [ραββι] But you are not to be called ‘Rabbi,’ for you have only one Master and you are all brothers.” (vs. 5,7-8, NIV) Jesus’ was objecting to his disciples demanding others pay them obeisance and competing for honor with each other. But he did not object when his disciples used rav-i to refer to him. Rather, he expected that if they honored him with a special title, it should be accompanied by obedience: “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord’ and not do what I say?” (Luke 6:46)

To sum up, many modern scholars do not refer to Jesus as a “rabbi” because the boundaries have been set to define him as slightly before the rabbinic era. But the gospels themselves explicitly spell out the word “rabbi” in reference to him. And Jesus himself speaks as if he expects that we as his followers would think of him as our “master.” It seems very appropriate, then, that if we are his disciples, we should speak of him as our “rabbi.”

© 2009 Lois A. Tverberg, Our Rabbi Jesus: His Jewish Life and Teaching , all rights reserved.