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Jesus' Changing Faces: A Response to Geza Vermes


Chris Knights The Expository Times 2002 113: 203 DOI: 10.1177/001452460211300611 The online version of this article can be found at: http://ext.sagepub.com/content/113/6/203.citation

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203

A READERS RESPONSE

Jesus Changing Faces: A Response to Geza Vermes


By REVD DR CHRIS KNIGHTS Whitley Bay, England
read the previous editors warm, but uncritical, review of Geza Vermes The JL Changing Faces of Jesus (Allen Lane, Penguin, zooo) in the September zooo issue of this Journal, I was pleased to obtain a copy of this important book soon after - from the second-hand bookstall of a church fair, of all places! I have always appreciated Vermes writings, and

aving
not

I believe that he has done biblical scholarship a great service in his work on the Dead Sea Scrolls, on the new Schurer, and on the historical Jesus. Indeed, I regard myself as something of an academic grandson of Vermes - my doctoral research on the Rechabites, carried out in Durham in the mid-198os, was supervised by Robert Hayward, who had been one of Vermes research students in Oxford a decade or so earlier. Nevertheless, I believe that some of Vermes arguments in The Changing Faces of Jesus invite a response from a Christian perspective, and I offer such a (personal) response here.I The context in which I read The Changing Faces makes me ask whether it is a book I could recommend to my students. It is certainly a mine of information, written with Vermes characteristic lucidity, but three things, two already noticed by Dr Rodd, limit its use as a text for students. The first of these limitations noticed by Rodd is the lack of an index, which makes finding anything in the book infuriI have to say at the start that I am not a New Testament scholar. My academic training is in Old Testament and early Judaism, and I work as an Anglican Parish Priest. However, my encounter with The Changing Faces occurred at the same time as I switched from teaching Old Testament to part-time candidates for ordained and lay ministry to teaching New Testament - so I have recently been studying the New Testament texts more closely than I have done for years!
I

all the more so since the table of limits itself to the bare chapter headings. If the subheadings had appeared on the contents page, locating discussions of particular issues would have been eased somewhat - but full indexes of subjects and biblical references are also really needed, and I am pleased to say that, in conversation with Dr Rodd, Vermes has indicated that such indexes will be provided as and when the book runs to a reprint. The second limitation, also noted by Rodd, is the occasional inconsistency. Was the Epistle of Jude written by a brother of Jesus or much later and pseudepigraphically? Vermes says both (pp. 100, i 3 2)! Of deeper significance than the authorship of one of the shorter New Testament Epistles is the status of Philippians z:6-i i, which Vermes in one place dismisses as a later insert, not by Paul, but in another calls an already-existing composition, inserted by Paul into Philippians. If the passage is the latter, then it has important consequences for Vermes whole theory of the development of New Testament Christology, for which it is crucial that a passage like Philippians z:6-1 i is late, and hence a distortion. But what if it is earlier than Paul? This fundamental question of the dates and chronological order of the New Testament traditions is one to which I wish to return, but there is a third limitation on The Changing Faces suitability for student use. This is the way in which Vermes refers to the Jewish literature of the inter-testamental and rabbinic periods. I am familiar with this literature, but many an ordinary reader would not be, yet Vermes quotes from it largely without explanation, which again limits the books usefulness for students. This actually raises the whole question of who the book is written for. Is it a popular work, or is it for scholars? Only scholars would be fully familiar

atingly difficult,
contents

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204

with the Jewish literature, but they would want proper referencing, which The Cbanging Faces does not have. Scholarly readers would also no doubt want an approach to Josephus and Philo, and to the Qumran, inter-testamental, and rabbinic literature, that was quite as critical as the approach to the New Testament texts taken by Vermes, but he does not seem to offer this same critical rigour when dealing with Jewish writings. These are not my fundamental misgivings, howWhat most concerns me is Vermes sequencing of the documents (or, rather, traditions) of the New Testament, and his view that the Christologies of Paul and John are late, and hence a distortion. I am also concerned by the fact that Vermes fails to offer any satisfactory explanation for the origin of these
ever.

traditional materiil(P- Sg n. i ). But he then proceeds by way of excluding anything that remotely hints at a high Christology from this traditional material. But on what criteria? Even Mark contains implicit assertions of the divinity of Jesus, not least in 2:112 and 4:35-4 1, passages treated rather lightly by
Vermes

(cf.

p.

i dz). In fact, Vermes

seems to

exonerate

Mark from the charge of misrepresenting the historical Jesus by deifying him (p. 207), but the passages I have just cited both ascribe to Jesus tasks ascribed to God in the Old Testament, and if that is
not

high Christologies.
It is axiomatic for Vermes argument that there is
a

clear, logical and chronological development of

Testament. The Synoptic later than Paul and not without embellishment, represent the earliest stage, followed by Paul and finally by John, writing around

Christology in the New Gospels, despite being

deifying Jesus, what is? It is the age of traditions such as these within the synoptics that is crucial here, for if they are earlier than Paul, say, then they point to a belief in the divinity of Jesus within a couple of decades of the life of Jesus himself. To claim that the synoptic evangelists would have had the cold shivers (p. 46) at Johns claim of the oneness of the Father and the Son seriously downplays the extent to which Matthew, Mark and Luke do contain Christological
statements not so

very far removed


now

from

John.

AD 100.
seems to me, this clear sequencing does do justice to the complexity of the texts themselves. Vermes himself acknowledges (p. 25 ) that there may be items of historical accuracy in Johns Passion narrative, a point already made by Vermes friend and colleague Fergus Millar in P. R. Davies and R. T. White (eds), A Tribute to Geza Vernres (Sheffield, 199, pp. 3 ~ S-384)~ and John Robinson, for instance, in The Priority of Johl1 (London, 198$) has argued for an early date for

But, it

not

John..
So, it already appears that Vermes starting-point
less sure ground than he makes out. What if is John earlier than the turn of the first century? I myself actually do think that a date of 90-100 is most likely for John, but I also think that the traditions John contains must predate this period. This is significant, as Vermes believes that the gap between John and Jesus is large: Since Johns account postdates Jesus by at least seventy years, the chances of hearing the genuine voice of the Galilean master are minimal (p. 38). But I think he overstates his
is
on

case.

Further, Vermes himself concedes that the synoptic Gospels are later in composition than the Pauline letters, but claims that they represent largely

make of Matthews use of Isaiah 7 in his infancy narrative, we have to concede that he was trying to say something about the divine nature of Jesus. The Pauline corpus also contains explicitly Christological statements that may not be original to Paul. This is where Vermes confusion over Philippians 2:~-m (pp. 78, 8z) is so significant, for it fits his case for the hymn to be a post-Pauline composition inserted into Philippians, but if it was a pre-Pauline hymn adopted by Paul himself, then it testifies to a belief in the pre-existence, incarnation and glorification of Jesus again within a few decades of Jesus himself. And that would do Vermes case no good at all! While not as explicit, there are other passages in Paul that do point in the same direction, such as Galatians 4:4-7 and z Corinthians 8:9, that need to be accounted for. For all of this to be dismissed as a distortion sounds to me like special pleading. Vermes is determined to think consecutively, that John is later than Paul is later than Matthew/Mark! Luke - but is it not more likely that the ideas in each were more or less concurrent, perhaps espoused in different places, or perhaps by the same people, who viewed the various traditions as complementary, rather than contradictory? We are dealing with a relatively short length of time here - only seventy
we

Whatever

may

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205
at an absolute maximum. In any case, I have said enough to make the point that there are good arguments for all the Christological traditions of the New Testament being earlier and more connected than Vermes suggests. All this leads us to my second area of concern about Vermes thesis. And that is: if Paul and John and even the Synoptic evangelists tvere so wrong about Jesus, where did they get their ideas from? Vermes argues that the New Testament writers have obliterated the Jesus of History, and that the swiftness of the obliteration was due to a premature

years

dramatically turned round so soon after the Crucifixion, or why the New Testament writers universally attest to the Resurrection of Jesus. If it did not really happen, where would they have got
the idea from? The key to the Christology of the New Testament is what happened on Easter morning. If, as all the New Testament writers assert, Jesus was physically raised from the dead and subsequently glorified, then that offers an adequate explanation of the origins of all the Christological reflections offered by John, Paul and the others - including Matthew, Mark and Luke. In this sense, Paul is quite right in what he says in the opening verses of Romans i: it is the Resurrection, as historical event, that makes Jesus the Christ. Vermes seems to a priori exclude this possibility, but it seems to me that this exclusion, in favour of the impact of Jesus living on in the hearts of the disciples, actually raises more questions than it answers. I cant help recalling Mark Tullys TV series and then book, The Lives of Jesrcs (BBC Books, 1996), and not only because its title is suggestively similar to The Changing Faces of Jesus. Tully is a journalist, and wrote his series and book as a journalist, not as a theologian. Proper journalism and proper historical research are, it seems to me, very close to each other, and Tully concluded that some-thing concrete happened after Jesus death that caused his followers to believe that he was divine. This is the nub of it, and it is here that readers of Vermes (and of the New Testament) have to make their own decision. I know what mine is.

change in cultural perspective (p. ~63 ), from Jewish


Greek. But this view, it seems to me, underestimates the extent to which Palestine was already Hellenised in the time of Jesus, and fails to answer the question why the Jesus message proved so universal. There is no doubt that the historical Jesus was different from the Christ of Faith, proclaimed already by the New Testament writers, but it seems to me that there is actually a very easy explanation for this, one from which Vermes shies
to

away.

The explanation is the Resurrection. Vermes himself recognizes the centrality of the topic of the resurrection of Jesus for the whole of the New Testament, and concedes that the Judaism of Jesus day was unaccustomed to handling the problem of a &dquo;historical&dquo; resurrection (p. 171). But his explanation of the Resurrection on pp. 174f., following Paul Winter, does not offer a sufficiently full reason why either the followers of Jesus were so

Christian Quotations
hose who regularly preach, write or speak in public may like to note the publication j of The ZY~estminster Collectioiz of Christia1l Quotations (compiled by Martin -i~ Manser. Louisville/London/Leiden: Vlestminster/John Knox, 7-ooi. HB. 20. pp. 497. ISBN o--~6q.-zzz58-7~. It is a handsome volume, containing over 6,000 quotations arranged thematically. It is ecumenical in its treatment, drawing from the Bible and all major Christian traditions. Examples taken more or less at random are Caring, Devil, Happiness, Marriage, Neighbours, Righteousness, Women and ~~omanhood. It is not a technical work of scholarship but a highly professional product, beautifully set out, easy to read and fully indexed.

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