171920 Resource 169992 1 170084 1180843200000 1203028756849 Controlled Geza Vermes: Left Behind in the Study of Jesus

Notable scholar highlights difficulty of keeping up with research

Book reviews can often tell as much about the reviewer as about the book being reviewed. A case in point is <a title="Geza Vermes’ May 19 review" href="http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/non-fiction/article1807640.ece" target="_blank">Geza Vermes’ May 19 review</a>, published in the Times (London), of Pope Benedict XVI’s book Jesus of Nazareth. The review aside, Vermes highlights how much the study of Jesus has moved on since he made his own definitive contribution. It in fact portrays the problems of being left behind in one’s own field.Some 30 years ago, Vermes added greatly to the study of the historical Jesus Christ with his book Jesus the Jew, published in 1973. Although his conclusions have since been superseded, the book promoted scholarly consideration of Jesus of Nazareth as a Jew within a Jewish context rather than the theological context in which He had been placed in the early 20th century. Vermes continued to publish in this field with Jesus in the World of Judaism and The Religion of Jesus the Jew. He then supplemented the trilogy with a fourth book, The Changing Faces of Jesus, published in 2000.Although Vermes has written several books since that time, they amount to popularized versions of his earlier scholarly works. He is now an emeritus professor at Oxford, and his review of Benedict’s book reveals when he ceased to be actively involved in expanding the study of Jesus. As part of his Times review, he outlines the progress of study into the historical Jesus throughout the 20th century, but he finishes in the 1980s—17 years ago at a minimum. Much has happened since then.To be fair to Vermes, it doesn’t really matter in terms of Benedict’s thesis. He shows that the pope is not willing to accept and apply the scholarly methods of critical analysis to the New Testament texts. And he takes Benedict to task for not accepting his ideas of Jesus as “the Galilean itinerant healer, exorcist and preacher.”As mentioned, however, several things have changed since Vermes last published a scholarly work on this subject. First, the labels he uses to define work on the historical Jesus were reevaluated in the 1990s. Second, the period during which he claims there was “no quest” for the historical Jesus has now been reconsidered, so that some of the 20th century’s most important material on the subject now falls within that time frame. Hardly a “no quest” period! Third, the identification of Jesus within his Jewish milieu continues unabated in academic circles, with new and constructive volumes appearing all the time. Amy-Jill Levine’s The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus, published in November 2006, is an example of current scholarship made available for a general audience.Finally, this research has had a spin-off effect in church history. If Jesus and His disciples were so Jewish, how and why did the church separate itself from Judaism? The question of the separation of the church from the synagogue has become as large an issue as the historical Jesus. That is perhaps even more challenging, not only to Vermes but to the pope, as the answers of the past are no longer accepted.If Vermes really appreciated these facts, his challenge to the pontiff’s writing could have been more robust still. 10 application/xml false Benedict XVI Galilee Geza Vermes Historical Jesus Jesus Christ Jewish milieu Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0; SLCC1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.04506) 127.0.0.1 127.0.0.1 pnathan 66.125.198.98 false true false false true 188838 false false true false false false true 169992 blog blogsite/FirstFollowers/web