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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Comments by Michael Calum Jacques, author of '1st Century Radical'., 9 Mar 2009
It has been my pleasure to enjoy punctuated correspondence with Prof Geza Vermes over the past 20 years or so, as well as to attend many of his tutorials and seminars on the Dead Sea Scrolls, Flavius Josephus and related topics, during my student days at Oxford.
Prof Vermes is the author of many books attempting to expound various aspects of the life of the man we now commonly refer to as Jesus Christ. His more influential and better known works include Jesus the Jew (1973), The Authentic Gospel of Jesus (2004), and notably - in the context of this book under review, The Passion (2005); and The Nativity (2006). All that being so, for reasons which will become obvious, it is this reviewer's opinion that Prof Vermes' greatest and most enduring contribution to `Christian' studies will prove to be his translations of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
The aforementioned Jesus the Jew (1973) helped to reconfigure studies in the historical figure of Jesus back into a framework which gave due accord to his undoubted Jewish and Palestinian origins. Despite having abandoned a Christian perspective in the late 1950s, Prof Vermes heralds the resurrection of Christ as constituting "an unparalleled phenomenon in history" and he states that his aim in writing this book is to elucidate the real meaning of the New Testament records and then to build a "tenable hypothesis" of what actually happened to Jesus.
During the first part of the book, the author investigates the views upon resurrection and afterlife held by the Essenes - the likely `authors' or editors of the DDS which are, it is shown, scanty and inconclusive; besides, Josephus and Hippolytus vary on certain details of the sects' beliefs in any case, making staunch assertions unreliable and untenable. Prof Vermes is correct to be cautious here. He then goes on to point out that resurrection was also a more general Jewish idea involving the reunification of a person's spirit with the revivified, but otherwise useless, corpse.
The author is candid about the overall paucity of genuine primary source material on the concept of resurrection - especially that which is likely to be specifically germane to assisting us to decide exactly what, if anything, happened to the man who is now referred to as Jesus. It is perhaps at this point that this reviewer would term some of the Professor's discussions as being effete. More about that later.
Back to the book and the "first definite expression" of belief in the concept of a resurrection of the dead would seem to be found in the the late - largely Aramaic OT book of Daniel (12:1f) and then, far later on, in the pages of the Mishnah, the great Rabbinical commentary on the Torah and related texts and ideas. Prof Vermes then attempts to conscript assistance from the field of Palestinian archaeology including various ossaries (burial jars) and Beth Shearim material. In summary, he considers physical (bodily) resurrection to have been an alien concept to 1st Century `Hellenistic Jews' and much the same to the majority of Palestinian Jews.
Moving on, the author asserts that resurrection is to be carefully distinguished from resuscitation, where the dead are revived only to die again at some later stage. Elijah and Enoch are both summarily disqualified as having been resurrectionists because they did not, in the event, experience actual death. Again, respectfully, this reviewer finds the Professor's reasoning to be wanting in critical orientation at this point.
Vermes perhaps summarizes his own turmoil best during the following section of the book; he points out that the New Testament accounts postulate the resurrection to have been an historical event in real space and time. It is a mainstay of the Christian church or movement that remains with us after two millennia. Vermes openly concedes that this state of affairs is utterly confounding and that "the historian must come to grips with this puzzle"
It is here that I consider the Professor forsook an opportunity to give this work some historical teeth. Once again, we find ourselves drawn away from the hub of Gospel sources into familiar bur decidedly peripheral areas which are impotent in casting any light onto the pivotal question of `what really happened (if anything) at Jesus' resurrection?' By coincidence, this reviewer happens to agree with the bulk of Prof Vermes' conclusions, but this is accidental. That first century thinking was not teeming with references to resurrections has little bearing as to whether this particular Palestinian radical in question, Yeshua-bar-Yosef, actually survived his crucifixion as an insurgent. What is written within pages of remote literature, simply because it is topical, is largely redundant; what the earliest Gospel records say, and whether or not these are feasible, are the issues which should have been addressed here by Prof Vermes.
So Prof Vermes concludes that Jesus was wholly unaware of the notion of resurrection. We agree but, again, this is clear from a simple, careful reading of certain passages in the NT wherein Yeshua (Jesus) arranged to reconvene with the other members of his band (see my book on this) without any need for recourse to any distant theological commentary.
In a nutshell, this reviewer enjoys most of the writings of Geza Vermes but he feels that this one lacks the critical incision of some of his earlier works. The truth or not of the resurrection of the Church's Jesus Christ will remain situated in the domain of faith, but the real life of the 1st Century radical and historical Galilean, Yeshua-bar-Yosef, is yielding to the type of historical scrutiny sadly lacking from these erudite but ineffectual pages!
Michael Calum Jacques
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