The following quote is taken from Is Jesus the Only Savior? by James R. Edwards pages 29-30
John Crossan believes that Jesus was illiterate. This, of course, contradicts the New Testament, for there we are told that Jesus read from Isaiah before preaching in the synagogue of Nazareth (Luke 4:16-20). Crossan puts forth the following argument for his conclusion: He begins by saying that according to Mark 6:3, Jesus was a tekton. The most common English rendering of tekton is "builder," or "carpenter," but Crossan takes the term not as a description of a trade, but as a description of a group of low-caste peasant expendables. He then states that 95-96% of Jews in first-century Palestine were illiterate; hardly any of the remaining 4-5% would have come from this low class. Here, then, is his conclusion: "[The stories that Jesus was literate] must be seen clearly for what they are: Lukan propaganda rephrasing Jesus' oral challenge and charisma in terms of scribal literacy and exegesis."12 I argue that Crossan is wrong on this point, and here are my reasons why: All Greek-English lexicons render tekton as "carpenter," a reference to a trade, not to a social class.13Moreover, we know that manual labor was not a derogatory distinction in Jewish Palestine, in contrast to Crossan's insinuation that it was. The Mishnah, for example, places the teaching of a manual trade to one's son on a par with teaching him Torah.14 Obviously, in the Jewish world anything analogous to Torah was clearly honorable. Now, it is hard for me to imagine that the commandment to teach one's son Torah would result in a 95% illiteracy rate among the Jewish population. Consider the Jewish literature produced by the Roman period: not only the entire Old Testament, but also the New Testament, Apocrypha, Pseudepigrapha, the Dead Sea Scrolls, Josephus, the Bar Kokhba literature, the Mishnah, and the Oxyrhynchus Papyri. These are immense bodies of literature; in the last, the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, some fifty thousand documents exist! Would a literary achievement so extensive have been produced for a 3-5% reading population? Further, if Crossan were right about Jesus' illiteracy, why would Luke have intentionally lied about it? After all, if 95% of the population were illiterate, there would be no reason to make Jesus literate.15 FOOTNOTES: 12. [OMITTED] 13. [OMITTED] 14. "A man should always teach his son a cleanly craft" (Qiddushin 4:14); "At five years old [one is fit] for the Scripture, at ten years for the Mishnah" (Aboth 5:21); "Above all we pride ourselves on the education of our children, and regard as the most essential task in life the observance of our laws..." (Josephus, Against Apion 1.60); "[The Law] orders that [children] be taught to read, and shall learn both the laws and the deeds of the forefathers..." (Josephus, Against Apion 2.204). 15.See A. Millard, "Literacy in the Time of Jesus," Biblical Archaeology Review 29/4 (2003): 37-45, who concludes that "writing and reading were widely practiced in the Palestine of Jesus' day." Further, G. Dalman, Jesus—Jeshua: Studies in the Gospels, trans. P. Levertoff (New York: KTAV, 1971), 36-37, leaves virtually no doubt that Jesus was literate.
Christian (and Jewish Messianic Believer in Jesus) Dr. Michael L. Brown, wrote
Interestingly, Dr. Benjamin Sommer, a professor in Bible and ancient
Near Eastern languages at the Jewish Theological Seminary (that’s right,
the Jewish Theological Seminary), came to similar conclusions in his
recent book, The Bodies of God. He wrote: “Some Jews regard
Christianity’s claim to be a monotheistic religion with grave suspicion,
both because of the doctrine of the trinity (how can three equal one?)
and because of Christianity’s core belief that God took bodily form. . .
. No Jew sensitive to Judaism’s own classical sources, however, can
fault the theological model Christianity employs when it avows belief in
a God who has an earthly body as well as a Holy Spirit and a heavenly
manifestation, for that model, we have seen, is a perfectly Jewish one. A
religion whose scripture contains the fluidity traditions [referring to
God appearing in bodily form in the Tanakh], whose teachings emphasize
the multiplicity of the shekhinah, and whose thinkers speak of the
sephirot does not differ in its theological essentials from a religion
that adores the triune God.”
So, it appears that there are Jewish scholars who do not believe in
Yeshua who can see what my dear friend Rabbi Blumenthal cannot. Let’s
continue to pray for Rabbi Blumenthal!
In a book review of Dr. Sommer's book The Bodies of God and the World of Ancient Israel
someone
named J. Todd Hibbard, (University of Tennessee at Chattanooga)
acknowledges that Dr. Sommer believes the Christian conception of the
Trinity is not incompatible with various traditions within Judaism. It
doesn't matter if Hibbard is a Christian or not. I quote him only to
further corroborate Dr. Brown's interpretation of Dr. Sommer.
The
final chapter finds Sommer donning his theologian hat in order to answer the
question, “What do the Hebrew Bible's fluidity traditions teach a modern
religious Jew?” (p. 126). After noting that the antifluidity traditions in P
and D dominate the final form of the Hebrew Bible, he notes that fluidity
traditions found elsewhere (notably in JE) are still present. He briefly
explores the development of these traditions in the postbiblical rabbinic
literature, the kabbalah and early Christianity. With respect to the latter,
Sommer insists that core Christian assertions—the trinity and incarnation—are
not theologically impermissible within the world of Judaism, but rather are
faithful to the fluidity model of divinity found in ancient Israel. For modern
Jews, Sommer demonstrates how biblical notions of fluidity and antifluidity
pose challenges for both liberal and conservative Jews, though not in the same
way. He concludes by insisting that, contrary to customary positions, it is the
fluidity model that offers the strongest statement of monotheism consistent
with the personhood of God.
In another book review, Esther J Hamori says the following:
In
chapter 6, Sommer traces the fluidity model into later Judaism and
Christianity. He points to the continuation of these concepts—the
fluidity of the divine self and multiplicity of embodiment, the rejection
of these notions, and various implications for sacred space—in rabbinic
literature and kabbalah, addressing what this all might mean for those
reading the Hebrew Bible as scripture today. He then frames the
concept of incarnation in the New Testament in terms of the fluidity
model and discusses the impact this has had on later Christianity. It is
fascinating to see some of this unfold, for instance, as he traces the
ways in which Protestantism and Catholicism prioritize different voices
among the fluidity and antifluidity traditions. One of his laudable goals
here is to demonstrate ways in which much of Christian theology is not
so foreign to Judaism. He concludes, “No Jew sensitive to Judaism’s
own classical sources, however, can fault the theological model
Christianity employs when it avows belief in a God who has an earthly
body as well as a Holy Spirit and a heavenly manifestation, for that
model, we have seen, is a perfectly Jewish one. A religion whose
scriptures contains the fluidity traditions, whose teachings emphasize
the multiplicity of the shekhinah, and whose thinkers speak of the
sephirot does not differ in its theological essentials from a religion
that adores a triune God” (135). The similarities of the Christian
concept of the simultaneous presence of God in heaven and God on earth
to the older fluidity model are striking, and it will be fruitful to
consider Christian theology in light of this. At the same time,
there are also important differences between these types of embodiment,
and at a certain point the similarity may be a bit overdrawn. Sommer’s
view does not take into account the difference between theophany and
incarnation, between temporary manifestation and full human identity and
life, as claimed in Christian theology. Perhaps more significantly,
while the concept of the Trinity may be seen to reflect the multiplicity
of embodiment as in the older fluidity traditions, it does not seem
particularly fluid. Finally, Sommer concludes that this fluidity in
Judaism and Christianity allows God both immanence and transcendence,
and that it shows that the divine is not bound to any one place. (Or, as
I have argued in regard to some biblical texts, even the embodiment of
God demonstrates divine freedom, rather than limitation.)
“When the New Testament talks about Jesus
as being some sort of small scale human manifestation of God, it sounds
to Jews so utterly pagan, but what I’m suggesting is perhaps the
radical idea for us Jews that in fact, it’s not so pagan. That in fact,
there was a monotheistic version of this that existed already in the
Tanakh. And that the Christian idea, that Jesus, or ‘The Logos’, The
Word, as the Gospel of John describes it in it’s opening verses, that
the presence of The Word or Jesus in fleshly form – in a human body on
the planet earth – is actually God making God self accessible to
humanity in a kind of avatar. This is what we were seeing in the ‘J’ and
‘E’ texts [differing Hebrew manuscripts]. This is much less radical
than it sounds. Or when the Gospel of John describes God’s Self as
coming down and overlapping with Jesus – which is a famous passage early
in the Gospel of John – that is actually a fairly old ancient near
eastern idea of the reality, or self, of one deity overlapping with some
other being. So, this is not just Greek paganism sort of just smoothed
on to a Jewish mold, which is a way that a lot of Jews tend to view
Christianity. This is actually an old ancient near eastern idea, that is
an old semitic idea, that is popping up again among those Jews who were
the founders of Christianity. We Jews have always tended to sort of
make fun of the trinity. ‘Oh how can there be three that is one? If
they’ve got this three part God, even if they call it a triune God, a
God that is three yet one, really, really, they are pagans. They are not
really monotheists like we Jews are or like the Muslims are. Those
Christians are really pagan.’ But I think what we are seeing in the idea
of the trinity that there is this one God who manifests Itself in three
different ways, that’s actually an old ancient near eastern idea that
could function in a polytheistic context as it did for the Babylonians
and Canaanites, but it can also function in a monotheistic context as it
does I think in the ‘J’ and ‘E’ texts. In fact, to say that three is
one, heck, Kabbala [Jewish mysticism] is going to go further than that.
They say ten is one. The Zohar says ten is one. Actually certain parts
of Kabbala say that within each of the ten spherote has ten spherote
within them so that there is a hundred spherote, we are taking this much
further than the Christians did. One of the conclusions that I came to,
to my shock, when I finished this book [The Bodies of God and The World
of Ancient Israel], is that we Jews have no theological objection to
the trinity. We Jews for centuries have objected to the trinity, have
labeled it pagan, have said: ‘Well, that’s clear. There you can see that
the core of Christianity doesn’t come out of the Hebrew Bible, the
Tanakh, what they call the Old Testament. Really, they are being
disloyal to the monotheism of the Old Testament.’ Actually, I think
that’s not true. To my surprise, I came to the conclusion, somewhat to
my dismay, I came to the conclusion that we Jews have no theological
right to object to the trinity. Theologically, I think that the model of
the trinity is an old ancient near eastern idea that shows up in the
Tanakh and in a different way shows up in Jewish mysticism as well.” The article also has a link to the mp3 audio lecture from which the quote is from. Here's the direct link (for as long as it lasts). If the link dies, I'm willing to send a copy of the audio to anyone who requests it from me.
