beginning from jerusalem .

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and the Urgemeinde, or accounted for the gap between Jesus and Paul, or described the differences

between Hebrews and Hellenists, there has been uniform appeal to Easter and the proclamation of Jesus'

vindication and exaltation to the position of Messiah by the Jerusalem Urgemeinde to account for the

origins of Christianity. Nor has this historical and conceptual framework of apocalyptic-kerygmaticorigins been altered in more recent sociological orientations, whether it is a matter of distinguishing a

rural itinerant Palestinian Jesus movement from an urban movement of local churches in the Hellenistic

diaspora (Theissen) or a question of viewing early Christian social history in terms of the survival of aJewish millenarian sect (Gager).5

The role of the Jerusalem church is perhaps less prominent in some recent accounts of the Jesus

movement, or may even be merged in the broader conception of Palestinian Jewish Christianity. For

example, Theissen distinguishes between wandering charismatics and sympathizers who become the coreof local communities (Sociology, 17-23). But this makes little difference with respect to the

conceptualization of the Jerusalem church in an account of the origins of Christianity. More recently,

Theissen has taken up a study of the history of the synoptic tradition by placing form-critical analysis inthe context of political history and concluded that the apocalyptic discourse of Mark 13 as well as the

Markan passion narrative are based on written sources stemming from the Jerusalem church in the wake

of the Caligula crisis in the early forties!6 Thus, whether as mother church or as part of a Palestinian Jesus

movement, the underlying conception is that of an apocalyptic movement of repentance and revitalizationrooted in the radically transforming experience of the resurrection of Jesus.7 Even where different

branches of the Jesus movement in Palestine are recognized, the earliest communities in Jerusalem and

Judea are taken as the source of the seminal apocalyptic and kerygmatic traditions of Christianity. 8In arecent book on Christology, Larry Hurtado calls attention to this common ground of NT scholarship:

Although the impact of Jesus of Nazareth, the man, is not to be left out of consideration, it is commonly

agreed that all Christian reflection on the person and work of Christ flows from the belief in the

resurrection of Jesus in the earliest Christian community. It is also generally accepted that the

resurrection of Jesus was understood by the first Christians as involving two things: (1) the vindicationof the one crucified as a messianic claimant; and (2) his exaltation to a position of heavenly glory. 9

This assessment also appears to be little affected by the picture of the historical Jesus, however different

the picture that is offered. Crossan, for example, presenting a picture of Jesus as a peasant Jewish Cynic,

concludes: "If those who accepted Jesus during his earthly life had not continued to follow, believe, andexperience his continuing presence after the crucifixion, all would have been over. That is the

resurrection, the continuing presence in a continuing community of the past Jesus in a radically new and

transcendental mode of present and future existence" (Jesus, 404). E. P. Sanders, presenting a verydifferent picture of Jesus as an apocalyptic prophet, makes a similar assessment: "Without the

resurrection, would his disciples have endured any longer than the Baptist's? I would guess not" (Jesus,

240). Thus, both Crossan and Sanders appeal to the resurrection as a radically transformative experience

to explain how community in the name of Jesus could take root and be sustained. The Jerusalem churchremains the privileged locus of this scholarly consensus.

The quest for a critical historiography in modern scholarship on Christian origins has not shakenconfidence in the canonical picture of Jesus' fate or its picture of the origins of Christian community. The

speeches and narratives of the early chapters of Acts are still counted on to provide the materials forreconstructing the beginnings of the church in Jerusalem, just as the scenes of the canonical passion

narratives are thought to give sufficient historical access to the circumstances of Jesus' execution, despite

recent skepticism about the existence of a pre-Markan Passion narrative. In combination, the dramaticand transformational pattern of violent death and transcendent vindication occurring at the geographical

and religious center of the Jewish nation holds sway as much in the scholarly as in the popular

imagination. The Jesus of history and the Christ of faith are joined at the origin.
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However, the question of a critical historiography cannot come to rest merely on whether historians can

plausibly account for the execution of Jesus, or on whether the writer of Acts has drawn on traditions that

in some cases may put at our disposal isolated facts. The historian must determine whether it is possible

to identify historical connections between the teaching and activity of Jesus, the death of Jesus, and themovement that continued after his death. The major task of this paper is to expose the problem of making

a connection between the death of Jesus and the existence of the Jerusalem church once these data are

imagined in the canonical form of the execution of Jesus as a messianic pretender followed by theformation of a community announcing its identity and mission in terms of the vindication and exaltation

of Jesus as Messiah. Despite the flood of research on matters pertaining to the death of Jesus and the

beginnings of Christianity, the problem of how to reconcile the execution of Jesus and the establishmentand survival for more than a generation of a Jerusalem church as a messianic movement in that same city

has hardly ever surfaced let alone been adequately addressed.

In the context of this paper, I can only attempt to show that the problem has not been appropriately

identified and that it has important implications for the way Christian origins are imagined. To do this, Ihave chosen to follow the argument of the book by E. P. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism. I have turned to

Sanders' book precisely because it is concerned with the issue of connections between Jesus' teaching, the

reasons for his execution, and the movement that continued after his death (pp. 11-12, 21-22, 57-58).

Sanders is also one of the few scholars who has thought it necessary to raise the question of why theleadership of the Jerusalem community remained essentially unmolested. In the course of the discussion,

I have also turned to the work of other scholars where it bears on the issue at hand.

The Non-Consequences of the Death of Jesus

The crucifixion of Jesus in Jerusalem would appear to be about as close as one can get to bedrockhistorical fact in the perspective of almost all NT scholars. For some, however, that means that the

crucifixion is the datum which most requires explanation, while for others, it is the datum that least

requires explanation. The nearly certain status of the fact, however, operates in both of these judgments.The difference has more to do with estimates of the teaching and activity of Jesus in Galilee and their

likely effect. Thus, according to Sanders, "Whatever sort of teacher he is held to have been, it is difficult

to move from 'Jesus the teacher' to 'Jesus, a Jew who was crucified'... It is difficult to make his teachingoffensive enough to lead to execution" (4). On the other hand, Crossan avers, "Some form ofreligiopolitical execution could surely have been expected. What he was saying and doing was as

unacceptable in the first as in the twentieth century, there, here, or anywhere" (xii).

For Sanders, then, making the connection between Jesus in Galilee and his execution in Jerusalem is not

at all an obvious matter. He also admits that the sayings tradition seems not to support the context ofJewish restoration eschatology that is so central to his overall account of Christian origins:

Yet the sayings material, viewed as a whole, is not what we would expect of a prophet of Jewish

restoration. It is not focused on the nation of Israel. Jesus is not depicted (except in the opening

summaries in the synoptics) as calling all Israel to repent, there is no teaching material about the

reassembled twelve tribes (Matt. 19.28 cannot be considered 'teaching'), and in the material which canreasonably be considered authentic there is no prediction of a general judgment cast in terms of groups

(leaving Matt. 25 out of account as inauthentic). The sayings material is markedly individual in tone, and

when collective terms are used they do not imply 'all Israel': 'little flock', the 'poor', and the 'sinners'.(222)

This does not mean that Sanders thinks Jesus intended to form a sect or that he did not have all Israel in

view, but he secures Jesus' relation to Jewish restoration eschatology by appealing to a connection with

John the Baptist (who did call for general repentance), to Jesus' instituting of the twelve (though, forSanders, this is the least secure of the "almost indisputable facts" about Jesus), and to the symbolic acts of


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entering Jerusalem as a king and destroying the old temple and bringing the new. Nonetheless, he

recognizes the discrepancy in the data:

The discrepancy between two sets of data may be seen also if we contrast Jesus' execution with his

teaching. Jesus was executed by the Romans as would-be king, that is, as a messianic pretender. Not

only the Romans, but probably the 'crowds' and the disciples so saw him. Yet if all we had were hisparables and related sayings, we would not expect this to have been the result of his career. Nothing

about his teaching is adequate to account for his execution on the grounds of implied insurrection. Thecharacterization of the kingdom as including a 'reversal of values' and his inclusion of the sinners might

have been offensive to some of the pious, but they do not explain the Roman execution. The call tofollow him at great cost and to love one's neighbor does not lead us to see him as a threat to the

established order. The forced efforts of some to find in Jesus' teaching the cause of his death show the

point. (223f.)

One part of Sanders' solution to this puzzle is that Jesus may not have had a clear program for addressinghis message to "all Israel" rather than only to "the little flock." In Sanders' words,

We often read that Jesus 'shook the foundations' of Judaism. It is clear, however, that Judaism was notvery severely shaken, although Jesus was probably an irritating presence, as were his followers after his

death. There was, however, at the time of his execution, no rounding up of the disciples, nor was itnecessary to suppress crowds of rioters. It is likely that, during his lifetime, Jesus made a smaller impactthan had John the Baptist. Often people who see themselves as acting for God do not worry much about

numbers or about realistic strategy. (226)

However, this is only part of the answer to the puzzle, according to Sanders. For one thing, Jesus'

symbolic acts in Jerusalem made his impact clear enough "for some to see him as constituting a threat topeace and public order" (227). Moreover, Jesus, having seen that John the Baptist preached repentance to

all Israel and that few responded, may have thought it his special mission "to promise inclusion in the

coming kingdom to outsiders, the wicked, if they heeded his call" (227).

How uneasily the teachings of Jesus as a whole fit the alleged context of Jewish restoration eschatologyis seen in the way Sanders must harness the teachings to "the almost indisputable facts" of Jesus' life. The

teachings themselves can neither account for the execution of Jesus nor for a messianic movement ofJewish restoration after his death. When Sanders starts with these "facts" and identifies the movement of

Jesus' followers after his death as a messianic movement of Jewish restoration, he has in fact begun hishistorical investigation by adopting as history the narrative framework of the canonical gospel story and

the interpretive framework found especially in the preaching of Peter in the early chapters of Acts.

The political execution must be explained and its reasons grasped because on Sanders' view no one

mistakenly took Jesus and his following as a military threat or thought the kingdom to be anything elsethan an otherworldly kingdom. Sanders maintains with emphasis,

Their [the disciples of Jesus] expectation throughout must have been for a miraculous event which would

so transform the world that arms would not be needed in the new kingdom... [and] no one regarded Jesus'

movement as posing an actual military threat. Thus some form of 'otherworldliness' must be attributed toJesus and his disciples even before the crucifixion, and it would appear that neither the Jerusalemaristocracy nor the Romans understood Jesus' hope differently. (231)10

The difficulty is that the movement survived, presumably because it posed no political or military threat,

while Jesus was executed as "king of the Jews," despite the fact that he also posed no serious threat to

Roman and Jewish establishments. For Sanders, this poses the problem of how to account for the death ofJesus. (294) I will argue that the problem should be posed from the opposite direction, i.e., from the

consequences, or rather, the non-consequences of the execution of Jesus. How is it possible to explain

why the execution of Jesus did not have serious effects on the establishment and survival of a movement
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of Jesus' followers in the city where he was executed?

On Sanders' account, the immediate reason for execution must be one that would not have implicated

Jesus and his followers in an obvious way as rebels against Rome and yet could be presented to the

Procurator as meriting death.(301) On the other hand, it could not have been just a matter of predictingthe temple's destruction, since in that case the likely result would have been flogging and release, as in

the case of Jesus ben Hananiah. A physical act was necessary, though the resulting execution could not

have rested only on the action in the temple nor on what Sanders believes was its link with the sayingabout destroying this temple and building another. Though the temple act is essential for explaining theoutcome, the action could not have been more than a symbolic gesture; otherwise, Jesus would have

undoubtedly been seized immediately along with his followers. But the priestly aristocracy was not likely

to feel that its control of the temple was in any jeopardy. What was crucial was "the combination of aphysical action with a noticeable following" (304).

The matter of numbers is important in Sanders' considerations. Had Jesus actually gained a large

following like Theudas or the Egyptian, or had Jesus urged his followers to believe that he would perform

a miracle to inaugurate the kingdom like the miracles of Moses or Joshua of old, the high priests wouldnot have had to urge the Roman authority to take action against Jesus, and the Roman reprisals would

have been directed against his followers as well. But, according to Sanders, the combination of symbolic

demonstration against the temple and noticeable following would have given the chief priests inJerusalem a reasonable basis to propose to Pilate that Jesus be executed. (304f.)

Why was Jesus executed as a king? Sanders cautiously accepts that Jesus had entered Jerusalem as a

king, though again, only as a symbolic gesture which his followers would have understood, but which

would have involved no large public recognition or response. According to Sanders, "It fits into Jesus'last symbolic acts: he entered as 'king', demonstrated the destruction of the present temple, and had a

meal with his disciples which symbolized the coming 'banquet.'" (306f.) The final exposure is provided

by Judas who betrayed to the authorities that Jesus and his small band thought of him as king. That wouldbe important: "It was the final weapon they needed: a specific charge to present to Pilate, more certain to

have fatal effect than the general charge 'troublemaker" (309).

Sanders has managed to leave out very little of the Gospel account. (Formal trials are out, and there issome rearrangement of chronology, and he has taken the "false charge" of threatening the temple'sdestruction and linked it with the temple demonstration as an authentic saying of Jesus.) Not only is little

left out, but the Gospel account also controls Sanders' perspective on the conflict, since he agrees that the

real conflict was between Jesus and his contemporaries in Judaism. "The Romans did not act entirely on

their own initiative... Here, as so often, the facts speak for themselves. The disciples continued as anapolitical group which was persecuted, at least sporadically, by the Jewish leadership and which was

tolerated, perhaps even protected, by the Roman government" (295).11

Following Martin Hengel, Sanders locates Jesus among the leaders of "prophetic-charismatic movements

of an eschatological stamp," which would include John the Baptist, Judas the Galilean, Theudas, and theEgyptian (237f.; cf. Hengel, Leader, 20f.). Jesus is closest to John the Baptist: "He, like John, falls in

between the solitary woe-sayer and the Egyptian. The leader is executed but not the followers. There

were enough followers, however, to make it expedient to kill Jesus, rather than simply flog him as anuisance and release him" (303). Yet, we should note that unlike John, he was killed by Rome at priestly

urging, and unlike all of them, he did not have a mass following (239f.).

Sanders thinks the disciples of Jesus did not actually know why Jesus was executed from the point of

view of the Jewish leaders. It seems to me that Sanders has found it necessary to steer a course that alsoleaves the matter of motivation very unclear. On the one hand, almost every one of the factors that come

into play in the Gospel accounts becomes a necessary consideration in Sanders' explanation: Jesus'
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extraordinary self-claim, his preaching of a kingdom, the entry into Jerusalem, the temple act and the

saying against the temple, the fact that he had a following, the role of Judas in exposing belief in him as a

king, and the religio-political challenge that he presented to the entire Jewish leadership. On the other

hand, the temple demonstration which may have "pulled the trigger" (for execution) was a symbolicgesture that caused no public stir, and perhaps no public notice, as was also true of his entry into

Jerusalem, and both temple leadership and Roman authorities recognized that Jesus posed no real threat

to their control and held no secular political ambitions but spoke of an apocalyptic, supernaturalkingdom. He was not a shaker of foundations, but a minor irritant.

What is one to make of this? Since the threat which Jesus posed is not clear, the motivation for his

execution is also not clear. But Sanders finally seems to settle on the potential threat of public disorder.

He sees that "the priests did not systematically have executed all who claimed to speak for God, nor didthe Romans oblige them by killing everyone who irritated them" (301). But he thinks the Jewish leaders

could reasonably oppose a charismatic leader on the grounds of saving their people from the threat of

direct action by the Romans (288). For their part, "The Romans regarded him [Jesus] as dangerous at onelevel but not at another: dangerous as one who excited the hopes and dreams of Jews, but not as an actual

leader of an insurgent group" (295).

If the concern was for public order, however, would not the reasons for the execution of Jesus apply

many times over to a movement which, under the very noses of those who executed him, proclaims thiscrucified Jesus to have been raised from the dead and vindicated as God's Messiah and announces his

imminent return as the signal for the coming of the kingdom? If the underlying motivation for the

execution of Jesus was the fear of exciting the hopes and dreams of Jews, though it was clear that he wasno insurrectionist, then no movement that continued to preach as vindicated the very hopes which Jesus

excited could have been seen as less of a threat to public order. Indeed, faced with the execution of Jesus

as a messianic pretender, a messianic movement in his name implied that the authorities responsible for

his death were a tyranny.

In the early chapters of Acts, the apostles, under interrogation, make this charge directly against the

authorities (4:10-12; 5:30-31; cf. 2:23-24, 36; 3:13-15; 4:24-31). At one point (5:28) the high priest

reprimands the apostles for their determination to hold the authorities responsible for the execution ofJesus and to spread the teaching throughout Jerusalem. For the implied reader, of course, this shows howmuch the authorities fear the Jerusalem populace. Following Gamaliel's intervention, the apostles are

flogged, charged to cease, and released only to return to proclaiming Jesus as the Messiah daily in the

temple and at home (5:27-42). It is interesting to note that the only time in Acts that the authorities makereference to the execution of Jesus is in response to accusations concerning their own guilt. None of this

is strange for a myth of origins that makes use of the topos of fearless opposition to tyranny in the name

of a higher rule and authority. However, from the perspective of an actual Jerusalem political context, itis obviously hard to believe that the execution of Jesus on a charge of sedition should be a problem for

the authorities, but not for the apostles. In Acts, the resurrection of Jesus occasions controversy only

because of school debate between Sadducees and Pharisees, not because proclaiming it as the vindication

and exaltation of Jesus is an act of defiance against the authority of those who put him to death. Thecrucifixion of Jesus by the Roman and Jewish authority in Judea has, in the perspective of Acts,

theological and historical consequences for the Jews, but no social and political consequences for the

apostles.

Sanders is aware of the need to explain why the leaders of the movement in Jerusalem were left free to goabout their task, as is indicated by the evidence both of Paul's letters and Acts. The question is addressed

in relation to the evidence of sporadic persecution of Jesus' followers as presented in Acts (arrests and

flogging, death of Stephen), in Matthew and Mark (the disciples went to Galilee), and in 1 Thessalonians2:15 (They "drove us out"). Consequently, the distinction which Sanders makes is between individuals


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such as Stephen and Paul accused of speaking or acting against the temple and/or the law and those who

did nothing to make such charges plausible (286).12The persecution of Paul was connected with his

Gentile mission and was not suffered in consequence of preaching faith in a condemned criminal as

Messiah. The latter preaching could not have been the cause of persecution by Jews since, if it were,Christians would have been persecuted everywhere, yet the leading Jerusalem apostles were not.

It has sometimes been held that persecution was directed against the preaching of faith in Jesus, a

condemned criminal, as Messiah... There must be, however, appreciable doubt about this as a ground ofpersecution. If it were, it should follow that Christianity was persecuted and hounded wherever there

were enough Jews to give the followers of Christ a hard time. Yet, to repeat, it is clear from Paul's lettersthat the leading Jerusalem apostles were not persecuted, at least during his career, even though they

believed that Jesus was the Messiah. Their relative immunity indicates that it was not belief in the cross

of Christ which differentiated those persecuted from those not. (283-284).

Sanders is correct when he notes that there is no evidence of a specific charge brought against Christiansto the effect that they are followers of a crucified Messiah. But he does not perceive that this lack of

evidence testifies against the assumption that an eschatological messianism arising out of the experience

of the resurrected Jesus constituted the unitary origin of the Christian community. It is precisely thecanonical picture of Christian origins that conceals the problem of relating the political execution of Jesus

in Jerusalem to the return of Galilean disciples to that city to proclaim him as the Messiah.

The recent comprehensive study of the first one hundred years of relations between Christians and Jews

by Jack T. Sanders shows that the problem of proclaiming a crucified Messiah has not been seen in thisway.13In applying deviance theory to the relations between Christians and Jews, J. T. Sanders maintains

that cultural or theological factors alone cannot provide a comprehensive explanation of these relations.

Social factors must be considered as well. Among the cultural factors often cited as a primary cause of

persecution is christology, but this is rejected: "Mainstream Jews did not normally come into conflictwith early Christians for any reason, as far as I have been able to tell, related to the proclamation of Jesus'

messiahship" (93).

While I agree with this conclusion, it begs the question. If one starts from the "indisputable fact" that

Jesus was executed as a would-be king, the preaching of Jesus as the Messiah whom God raised from thedead would not have constituted merely a strange or "absurd" teaching following his execution, but

precisely a social and political confrontation, i.e., the existence in Jerusalem of a community with its own

leaders announcing in their very ground of existence the tyranny of the ruling classes in Jerusalem.Furthermore, J. T. Sanders maintains that the principle factor in responding to deviance in Jerusalem was

occasioned by the increasing pressure felt among the priestly enforcers of boundaries to maintain a viable

position of authority, so that even needling of the priesthood with charges of impurity and impiety orassociation with groups that welcomed Gentiles was sufficient deviance to be punished (138). 14 But if

sporadic instances of persecution experienced by the followers of Jesus in Jerusalem can be explained on

these grounds, would we not expect the persecution of leaders of the community to have taken a differentcourse altogether had the priestly elite been forced to respond to public proclamation of the messianic

status of Jesus, especially if the initiative to have him executed had come from within their own ranks?Paula Fredriksen has recently argued that the messianic preaching of Christianity constituted the principle

source of tension leading to persecution of followers of Jesus.15 She differs from those who hold the viewthat it was the church's openness to Gentiles that elicited the major hostility from Jews. In her view,

scholars have mistakenly taken the internal church issue with which Paul was faced in the fifties

(circumcision of Gentiles) and retrojected it to earlier decades to account for Paul's persecution of the

followers of Jesus in Damascus. The earliest source of controversy would have been the messianicpreaching of the disciples. According to Fredriksen, however, this preaching would have had a more

dangerous effect in the mixed urban centers of the Western diaspora than in Jerusalem:


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The enthusiastic proclamation of a Messiah executed very recently by Rome as a political troublemaker a crucified Messiah combined with a vision of the approaching End preached also to Gentiles

this was dangerous. News of an impending Messianic kingdom, originating from Palestine, might trickle

out via the ekklesia's Gentiles to the larger urban population... The open dissemination of a Messianic

message, in other words, put the entire Jewish community at risk. (556)

On the other hand, however,

Jerusalem, unlike Damascus or the cities in Paul's eventual itinerary, had a Jewish majority. The socialsituation was accordingly much less volatile. Also, in the course of the four decades until the destruction

of the Second Temple, the Sanhedrin had other noisily apocalyptic popular movements and living

messianic preachers to worry about. (557)

In response to Fredriksen, it should be noted that there is no indication prior to the first Roman-Jewish

war that messianism was the source of persecution of Christians in the cities of the Western diaspora.16

Moreover, I would argue that the term 'Christ' used as a name and the understanding of Christ as a cultic

presence in pre-Pauline and Pauline congregations of the Western diaspora does not focus attention on

popular messianic hopes.17In fact, Paul never writes in his letters that Christ was executed by Romanauthority in Jerusalem as a political troublemaker. This is not meant to overlook the fact that titles of

sovereignty were cultivated in the early Christ congregations nor that these titles and early Christian

worship in these congregations made use of Jewish theocratic notions as well as language from theRoman Imperial cult.18 However, I would suggest that while the function of this language was to establish

Christ as an alternative figure of sovereignty for newly emerging communities, the political implications

of titles of sovereignty were muted precisely by being expressed as devotional piety in the framework of

Jewish theocratic ideals. It seems more likely that Jews of synagogue communities of the mixed Westernurban centers would have reason to fear repercussions because of Christ communities that were

aggressively engaged in uprooting Gentiles from idolatrous practices, i.e., from longstanding social,

economic and cultural traditions.19

On the other hand, I cannot imagine that preaching messianic claims for Jesus in the Jerusalem where hewas executed would have constituted a less volatile situation. We should remember that it was Rome that

"took care" with dispatch of popular apocalyptic movements and living messianic preachers. For theirpart, the Jewish ruling classes would have had both means and reason to take more forceful action thanthey did against Galileans now established in Jerusalem who claimed to be founded upon a sovereignty

that had been vindicated by God against the judgment and position of authority of the ruling priests.

The issue of Roman involvement is crucial for E. P. Sanders inJesus and Judaism because his search for

an explanation of the situation of the Jerusalem apostles really turns on his perception of Romanintervention. According to Sanders,

the passages in the synoptics sometimes mention Gentiles and their rulers (Matt. 10.18; Mark 13.9; Luke21.12); but, at least in Judea, the Romans played no role in the persecution of the movement after the

death of Jesus. The evidence from Josephus confirms the view of Acts. The results point in the same

direction: had the Romans wished to eliminate all the leaders of the new movement, Peter, John andJames could not have remained active in Jerusalem. (285)

In other words, the Jewish leaders could not carry out a systematic persecution without Roman support.

So Sanders concludes, "But mass execution could not be justified to the Romans, and the Christian

leaders who did not themselves break the law or speak against the temple were allowed to continue theirwork unmolested" (286).

This explanation reminds one of the argument that Sanders has already rejected, namely, that Jesus was

executed by the Roman authority for being something he was not and that the Romans subsequently came

to realize this. But the opposite would seem far more likely: with the successful establishment of a
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movement that aroused the same sort of hopes (or illusions) of Jewish restoration eschatology in the

name of one who had been removed as a potential troublemaker with delusions of kingship and who was

now being proclaimed as a royal figure raised from the dead with this in view, the Romans should

have thought the execution of Jesus justified, been alert to the potential undermining of the authority ofthe Jerusalem aristocracy, and open to requests from the chief priests at least to drive out the movement's

leaders.20 Sanders is of course correct that there is no evidence of Roman intervention or requests for

Roman intervention; nor is there evidence that the chief priests sought from Rome authority to act againstthe movement in Jerusalem or Judea. But that ought to raise serious doubts about the messianic

orientation of the community in Jerusalem, i.e., the public proclamation of Jesus as a divinely appointed

ruler nullifying the actions of Roman and Jewish authorities against him and demonstrating theirillegitimacy. It should also make one far less inclined to suppose that the Gospel Passion narratives

constitute sources from which one can extract and reconstruct the historical circumstances and reasons

for the death of Jesus.21

Contrary to Sanders, I do not see how the notion that the leaders of the movement in Jerusalem did not doany symbolic acts against the temple or speak against the temple can supply an answer to the problem

that Sanders himself sees. For the followers of Jesus to claim that Jesus was vindicated and that he was to

exercise supernatural authority as the Messiah would surely implicate them in anything for which he had

been executed. The execution of a Galilean peasant in Jerusalem on grounds of being a would-be kingand therefore a threat to public order hardly seems propitious circumstances for Galileans to establish in

Jerusalem a messianic movement in his name. Of course, this is no problem for the author of Acts who

wishes to demonstrate the unitary origins of the movement proclaiming the name of Jesus Christ (2:38) atthe center of the Jewish nation a movement that is guided by the Holy Spirit and whose claims and

continual advance therefore cannot be successfully resisted.

John the Baptist was executed and a movement associated with his activity survived, but it did not

attempt to establish itself at Herod's residence. The Teacher of Righteousness was put to death, but hiscommunity established itself in the Judean desert. The fate of the followers of the Samaritan prophet, the

followers of Theudas and those of the Egyptian prophet are known. It is not certain what the fate of Judas

the Galilean was, but he does not seem to have established a movement with continuous leadership in

Jerusalem.22 Josephus records that two of his sons were crucified by order of the Procurator, TiberiusAlexander, at the time that the entire country came under direct Roman rule. 23 I do not find in any of this

grounds to explain the relationship between the violent fate of Jesus in Jerusalem and the relativefreedom of the leaders of a Jesus movement in the same city.

In my judgment, Sanders' efforts to establish the connections between Jesus in Galilee, his execution in

Jerusalem, and the subsequent movement in Jerusalem within the framework of Jewish restoration

eschatology do not succeed. Consequently, his methodological point of departure "We should beginour study [of the death of Jesus] with two firm facts before us: Jesus was executed by the Romans as

would-be 'king of the Jews', and his disciples subsequently formed a messianic movement" (Jesus, 294)

loses conviction.

On the other hand, neither do those who have stressed far more than Sanders the social and politicalchallenge that Jesus' message and mission posed to Roman imperial authority and Jewish second temple

institutions appear to have addressed the problem of explaining the continuous existence in Jerusalem for

decades of a movement in the name of Jesus. This is surprising, since the challenge Jesus is thought to

have posed would seem to beg the question. Thus, when Crossan stresses that Jesus' teaching andprogram in Galilee were in deep conflict, at the religious and political level, with all for which the temple

in Jerusalem stood, making his execution predictable, one must ask how his disciples managed to

establish themselves and continue in Jerusalem, and why they would care to do so? 24

In a number of writings, Richard Horsley has carefully distinguished between "little" and "great"
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traditions and has undertaken to describe the concrete social phenomena of different types of popular

movements in Palestine in the first century: popular messianic movements led by figures acclaimed as

kings, popular prophetic movements with large followings and intense apocalyptic expectations of

imminent divine deliverance, and oracular prophets like Jesus ben Hananiah and John the Baptist whostood in the tradition of Israelite oracular prophecy. Where does Jesus and the Jesus movement belong in

this typology of popular Palestinian figures and movements? It would appear that Horsley thinks of Jesus

as belonging to the category of oracular prophet, at least with respect to awareness in these movements ofconcrete political-power relations in Roman Palestine. In contrast to the popular prophetic movements,

"the popular oracular prophets would appear to have been more aware of the concrete political situation,

being sharply critical in their pronouncement of judgment, but not taking collective actions which wouldinevitably have invited outright destruction by a threatened ruler" (Prophets, 462).25

This classification of Jesus is confirmed in Horsley's analysis of the temple demonstration, but with a

difference. (Violence: 297-300).26 He thinks the Gospel writers have toned down the degree of

disruptiveness occasioned by Jesus' action in the temple. It should be viewed as a prophetic symbolic actof destruction "symbolizing God's imminent judgmental destruction, not just of the building, but of the

Temple system" (300). In fact, it escalated beyond the older biblical precedents, for it involved "some

violence against property if not persons" (300). But Horsley cannot quite accept his own initial

suggestion that Jesus attempted a direct takeover of the temple by force in the manner of a popularmessianic claimant. While that would fit his arrest and execution as a revolutionary leader, it would make

Jesus' actions "naive and abortive" (298).27

On the other hand, Horsley cannot quite resist setting Jesus and his followers in the category of popularmessianic movements led by figures acclaimed as kings on the model of Saul and David of old.

(Messianic Figures).28 Discussing the dramatic appearance of Simon bar Giora in the apparel of a king at

the time of his surrender of the city to the Romans, Horsley states,

Whatever Simon's purpose in his dramatic surrender, the Romans did indeed execute him as the enemy

general or head of state, as part of the triumphal procession and celebration of the great Roman victoryover the rebellious Jewish nation... Simon... was ceremonially paraded (appropriately robed, judging

from War7.138), scourged, and executed as the leader (perhaps explicitly as 'king') of the Jews as one ofthe principal events in the triumphal celebration in Rome. It is clear that Pontius Pilate was neither the

last nor the first Roman imperial official to deal with a popular Palestinian Jewish leader recognized as aking of the Jews. (290)

It seems that Horsley has concluded that Jesus of Nazareth, though belonging in some ways to the

category of oracular prophet, was also recognized as a king of the Jews, though he had no army. If we are

to take this comparison with any seriousness, can we believe that followers of Jesus in Jerusalem,whether as a particular community, or as a movement among the people as Horsley would have it, could

have continued to preach over the course of decades the destruction of the temple system in the name of

Jesus as a vindicated messiah figure?29 If we want to set the dramatic humiliation of Jesus' execution inJerusalem in historical perspective, we should ask what the author of Mark was doing, not what Jesus

was doing. After all, the author of Mark wrote at the time of Simon bar Giora not at the time of Jesus ofNazareth. As a social artifact, the Markan Passion narrative will be concerned with the social conflicts of

the Evangelist's own time. After the destruction of the temple one could heighten the blame of anauthority that no longer existed and thereby conceal the real source of conflict in one's own time. Once a

coalition of Roman authority and Jewish ruling class had broken down, the portrayal of Jesus as a popular

Messiah entering Jerusalem who fell victim to that coalition would be tempting and entail little risk.30 Onthe other hand, if we labor under the historicity of a messianic confrontation in Jerusalem that led to the

execution of Jesus as a rebel and imagine his followers in Jerusalem subsequently proclaiming him the

Messiah, we are faced with the historical problem of relating these two "facts" and having to account for


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the absence of evidence to suggest that Jewish or Roman authorities ever tried to destroy the movement

or even force its leaders out of the city.

Re-examining the Conception of Unitary Origins

In this paper I have argued that modern scholarship has followed the canonical lead on unitary origins but

ignored any actual political implications of the canonical account of the execution of Jesus and thecanonical account of the origin and identity of the Jerusalem church. Surprisingly, this holds true

especially for those who wish to take the political context of Christian origins most seriously into

consideration. In the remainder of this paper, I want to raise as matters for an agenda several otherreasons why the scholarly consensus on the unitary origins of Christianity needs to be re-examined.

First, it leaves out of account studies that are important because they do not support and may prove to be

incompatible with the dominant paradigm of Christian origins. Recent studies on the genre and literary

history of Q, on apocryphal Gospels, especially the Gospel of Thomas, and on pre-Markan gospeltraditions have shown that there are early Jesus traditions that cannot be accommodated within the Easter

kerygma and which do not evidence an apocalyptic context or persuasion.31 However, this is only a

minimal statement of the significance of this recent work. An alternative picture of Christian origins has

already been argued on the basis of it, namely, that Christian communities were at first formed in the

name of Jesus as a founder-teacher.32

The teacher-sage was invested with the authority of Wisdom'senvoy to enhance the significance of the teaching as various Jesus movements confronted challenges and

sought a place in the social landscape of Galilee and southern Syria. Along these lines, a continuingwisdom trajectory can be traced into second century Christian gnosticism. 33 On this view, the resurrection

of Jesus is not the common center of all expressions of early Christianity. Moreover, the communities

whose foundation myth was the kerygma of Jesus' saving death and resurrection do not represent thedominant basis of association from the beginning and arose in circumstances different from those of the

Jesus movements. These are the pre-Pauline and Pauline congregations of the Christ located at first in

northern Syria and Asia Minor.34

As a consequence of this recent work, it is now possible to pursue the question of community formationin Jerusalem by followers of Jesus without assuming the model of the kerygma-oriented Christ

congregations as the only possible model. It may be as necessary to distinguish the group in Jerusalemfrom Jesus movements in Galilee and southern Syria. As possible points of departure in rethinking the"Jerusalem church," one might consider what appear to have been competing claims of authority by

Galileans to shape a community ethos appropriate to Jerusalem, including the claim of a 'vision' of Jesus,

the claim of family connection to Jesus and of superior personal piety ("the poor"), along with

consideration of the social ambitions that the Jerusalem locale itself might invite. 36

Another reason for reassessment has to do with the sources of our picture of this community and its

leaders. As scholars know, the sources that depict the foundational revelation and the role and status of

Jerusalem arise out of and are the products of an effort to preach the gospel to Gentiles and to establish

communities among them. Despite the many studies devoted to relating information from Paul's lettersand the book of Acts, including more recent sociological studies, I do not believe that the implications of

our dependence on these sources have been fully appreciated or systematically assessed. 36 On the

contrary, it is remarkable how easy it is to forget this.

The priority of the Jerusalem church is thought to have legal consequences that account for its relation tothe Antioch church, its role in the Gentile mission, and its authority in matters concerning conditions of

membership for Gentiles and mixed table fellowship. Holmberg reflects the view of many scholars when

he writes,

The Antiochene Christians saw in Jerusalem the salvation-historical centre of the Church, which
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obviously had certain legal consequences. This seems to have been the common opinion among the firstChristians, that Jerusalem was the centre of the rapidly growing Church. This was owing to its role as the

Holy City and theologico-juridical centre of Judaism, and to the fact that this was the place where Christ

had died and risen, where the Spirit had been effused, and where the Apostles of Christ resided, they

being the guardians of the divine Word, that tradition of and from Jesus which had gone out fromJerusalem.37

According to Holmberg, Paul was no exception to this view. Following Stuhlmacher, Holmberg states,"The role of the Jerusalem apostolate as the highest doctrinal court of the Church is part and parcel of

Paul's salvation-historical conception of his own apostolate."38

What is assumed in these views is that conceptions of Jerusalem that serve the agenda of the writer ofActs around the turn of the century or that represent Paul's conception of his apostolate in the late forties

and the decade of the fifties are actually rooted in the history of Christian origins in Jerusalem. The

strength of this assumption is evident in a series of rhetorical questions put by J.T. Sanders in his book onJewish-Christian relations. Commenting on Burton Mack's claim that only Paul and later Acts present

Jerusalem and the resurrection as the font of Christianity, Sanders asks, "But if Jerusalem was not the

recognized center of Christianity, why did Paul labor so to take the collection there? And if it was therecognized center, then it must have been, as we learn from Paul's letters, because those entrusted with

the foundational revelation were there; and what could that foundational revelation have been if not theresurrection?"39

I would suggest a different working assumption. Conceptions of the messianic orientation of theJerusalem church based on the foundational revelation of Jesus' resurrection, as well as conceptions of the

role, authority and positions of its leading members are likely to reflect the internal disputes and

competing claims for legitimation of individuals and communities engaged in a mission to Gentiles

beginning in the late forties and the decade of the fifties. The writer of Acts was not the first to see theimportance of Jerusalem for the scheme of a Christian salvation history that had as its goal the

legitimation of a Gentile mission. But the actualization of such a mission, its conceptualization,

contestation and legitimation in mixed communities outside Palestine is surely the context of our"knowledge" of the Jerusalem church, as far as our canonical sources are concerned. This is not to say

there was no actual appeal to Jerusalem, nor any response in Jerusalem to issues and developments

occurring elsewhere that may have affected both the status and the self-presentation of the community inJerusalem. But to see that would be to discern a particular juncture of mythmaking and social history

rather than to imagine that such conceptions were already in place and represented the common

foundation of Christianity. This view of a foundational revelation to the leaders of the community inJerusalem ascribing to them a superior authority and status may turn out to be in large part a diaspora

version of beginnings in the homeland designed to support a mission to Gentiles among different factions

of Jewish and Gentile Christians in the Hellenistic cities of the diaspora.40

A third reason for re-examining the consensus on unitary origins is the problem of locating the origins ofa messianic conception of Jesus. Such conceptions do not appear to have their roots in the sayings

traditions. On the other hand, the use of the term "Christ" in connection with the kerygma of Jesus' savingdeath and resurrection already presupposes a Christian transformation of Jewish messianic ideas which

were themselves fluid and synthetic constructs. In the recent volume from the first Princeton symposiumon Judaism and Christian origins, N. A. Dahl acknowledges that a genuine historical problem is raised by

the absence of the word Christos and messianic ideas in some writings and types of texts: "With few

exceptions and most of them secondary Christos does not occur in the sayings of Jesus andcollections of such sayings. This observation calls for an explanation" (Messianic Ideas: 396) .41 The

explanation Dahl offers is that disciples quoted sayings of Jesus during his ministry and later tradition

retained this style of discourse, thus preserving Jesus' own mode of self-reference (which was not that of


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Messiah) in the traditions of Jesus' sayings. This solution of continuity in the sayings tradition allows

Dahl to draw a conclusion about what could then be supposed concerning the circles in which Jesus'

sayings were transmitted: "Collections of sayings of Jesus may well have emerged in communities that

were familiar with and shared the faith in the crucified and risen Christ" (397).

This appears to be a rather typical appeal to the faithful transmission of Jesus tradition as a solution to a

fundamental problem of early Christian history concerning the relationship of the tradition of Jesus'

sayings to the kerygma of Christ's death and resurrection. But Dahl is actually making a different point.He sees that the sayings tradition cannot be the source of an early Christian confession of Jesus asMessiah, and since he also sees that resurrection experiences, post-mortem appearances, an empty tomb,

and assumption to heaven were not aspects of messianic ideology, he concludes that early Christian

confession must be closely related to the crucifixion of Jesus as an alleged royal Messiah. (390f., 398)Yet, in spite of this appeal to the fate of Jesus as the origin ofChristos in the church, Dahl has called

attention to the real locus of the problem: "The problem of the relationship between the Jesus-tradition

and the gospel of the crucified and risen Christ is a problem within the early church and not simply to besubsumed under the question 'the historical Jesus and the kerygmatic Christ.'" (398)

But clearly, for Dahl, this problem of church history concerns only the later vicissitudes of sayings and

kerygmatic traditions. The source of the problem lies in the ministry and fate of Jesus. In effect, the

problem of church history is resolved in the life of Jesus. Dahl appeals to what he sees as the combinationof royal messianic and prophetic categories in all four canonical Gospels and returns to the conclusion he

had already expressed: "This indicates that the combination of royal messianic categories with prophetic

categories is due to historical events (viz., the public ministry of Jesus as a sage and prophet and hiscrucifixion as king of the Jews) and only secondarily to a given set of messianic or other ideas" (399). By

appealing to the relationship between Jesus' teachings and his fate, Dahl can avoid the conclusion which

otherwise is highlighted in the data he surveys, namely, that the origin of the problem is precisely in the

history of early Christianity. From this latter perspective a quite reasonable explanation can be offered.There existed different ways in which the characterization, authority, and status of Jesus were enhanced,

i.e., different myths of Jesus emerged in different locales and communities and partial merger of myths

took place in the course of a continuing social history.42

Dahl's central observation, however, retains its importance. Neither the sayings tradition nor the kerygmacan easily be said to account for the messianic identity of earliest Christianity and the community in

Jerusalem. Yet, as we have seen, that identity, thought to be rooted in the primitive confession of Jesus'

resurrection from the dead, is virtually taken as self-evident in standard accounts of Christian origins. Wehave observed that Dahl resolves the issue by appealing to Jesus' condemnation as a messianic pretender.

The central aim of this paper, however, has been to show why such a resolution is doubtful and to point

out why it is unlikely that either the death of Jesus or the identity of the group of followers in Jerusalemrevolved around messianic confrontations, claims, or titles.43

Return to Home Page

Basic Works Referred to in Discussion

Cameron, Ron. "The History of Early Christianity and the Acts of the Apostles," in idem, The Unknown

Paul: Essays on Luke-Acts and Early Christian History (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1984)

Cameron, Ron. "Alternate Beginnings Different Ends: Eusebius, Thomas, and the Construction ofChristian Origins," inReligious Propaganda and Missionary Competition in the New Testament World:

Essays Honoring Dieter Georgi, Lukas Bormann, et. al. eds., (Leiden: Brill, 1994) 512-514.

Crossan, John Dominic. The Historical Jesus (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1991)
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Dahl, N. A. (revised by D.H. Juel). "Messianic Ideas and the Crucifixion of Jesus," in The Messiah,

edited by James H. Charlesworth (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992).

Dunn, D. G. Unity and Diversity in the New Testament. London: SCM Press/Philadelphia: Trinity Press

International, 19902.

Fredriksen, Paula. "Judaism, the Circumcision of Gentiles, and Apocalyptic Hope: Another Look atGalatians 1 and 2,"JTS42 (1991) 532-564.

Gager, John.Kingdom and Community (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1975).

Hengel, Martin. The Charismatic Leader and His Followers (Edinburgh, 1981).

Holmberg, Bengt.Paul and Power(Lund: CWK Gleerup, 1978)

Horsley, Richard.Jesus and ther Spiral of Violence. Popular Jewish Resistance in Roman Palestine

(Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993).

Horsley, Richard. "'Like One of the Prophets of Old': Two Types of Popular Prophets at the Time ofJesus," CBQ 47 (1985), 435-463.

Horsley, Richard. "'Messianic' Figures and Movements in First-Century Palestine," in The Messiah,

edited by James H. Charlesworth (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992) 276-295.

Mack, Burton.Myth of Innocence. Mark and Christian Origins ((Philadelphia: Fortress, 1988)

Sanders, E. P.Jesus and Judaism (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985)

Sanders, Jack T. Schismatics, Sectarians, Dissidents, Deviants: The First Hundred Years of Jewish-Christian Relations (Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International, 1993).

Schille, G. "Christianity: Early Jewish Christianity,"ABD 1: 937

Theissen, Gerd. Sociology of Early Palestinian Christianity (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1978)

White, L. Michael. "Christianity: Early Social Life and Organization,"ABD 1: 927-929.

Return to Home Page

Notes

1 "Christology (NT)," ABD 1: 979-991.

2 Unity and Diversity in the New Testament (London: SCM Press/Philadelphia: Trinity Press

International, 19902).

3 Ron Cameron has recently written, "Biblical scholars continue to follow the example of Eusebius in'using the Acts of the Apostles as the main source' and model for writing 'the history of early Christianity'

[citing Jacob Jervell, "The History of Early Christianity and the Acts of the Apostles," in idem, The

Unknown Paul: Essays on Luke-Acts and Early Christian History (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress,1984), 13] even though they admit that Acts is tendentious. This scholarly proclivity is clear no matterwhat perspective a person has or methods are employed to determine the origins of Christianity, whether

one is engaged in biblical theology, social description, historical criticism, feminist analysis, apologetic

historiography, experiential hermeneutics, literary studies, or church history" ("Alternate Beginnings Different Ends: Eusebius, Thomas, and the Construction of Christian Origins," inReligious Propaganda

and Missionary Competition in the New Testament World: Essays Honoring Dieter Georgi , Lukas

Bormann, et. al. eds., (Leiden: Brill, 1994) 512-514. Cameron's footnotes, which cite R. Bultmann, E.A.Judge, H. Koester, E. Schssler Fiorenza, M. Hengel, Luke T. Johnson, D. Aune, and H. Chadwick, give
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stunning support to the statement above, see nn. 56-63, pp. 512-515.

For a recent discussion of the historical value of Acts, see Gerd Ldemann, Early Christianity

according to the Traditions in Acts, translated by John Bowden, (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1989)

1-18. On Luke as historian, see Eckhard Plmacher, "Luke as Historian," ABD 4:398-402. For a briefhistory of research on the speeches in Acts, see now Marion L. Soards, The Speeches in Acts (Louisville,

KY: Westminster/John Knox, 1994) 1-11.

4 E. P. Sanders,Jesus and Judaism (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985); Paula Fredriksen,From Jesus toChrist(New Haven: Yale University, 1988); John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus (San

Francisco: Harper-Collins, 1991); Richard A. Horsley,Jesus and the Spiral of Violence (San Francisco:

Harper & Row, 1987); F.C. Baur, "Die Christuspartei in der korinthischen Gemeinde, der Gegensatz despetrinischen und paulinischen Christenthums in der alten Kirche, der Apostel Petrus in Rom," TZTh

(1831) 61-206 = F.C. Baur,Ausgewahlte Werke in Einzelausgaben, Vol. 1,Historisch-kritische

Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament(Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt, 1963) 1-146; Wilhelm Bousset,KYRIOS CHRISTOS(Nashville: Abingdon, 1970).

5 Gerd Theissen, Sociology of Early Palestinian Christianity (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1978); John

Gager,Kingdom and Community (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1975).

6 Gerd Theissen, The Gospels in Context(Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991), 125-199. Cf. G. Schille,

"Christianity: Early Jewish Christianity,"ABD 1: 937.

7 Cf. L. Michael White, "Christianity: Early Social Life and Organization," ABD 1: 927-929.

8 See Schille, "Early Jewish Christianity," 935-938.

9 Larry W. Hurtado, One God One Lord(Philadelphia: Fortress, 1989), 94.

10 Sanders rejects the view of Hengel that Jesus was executed because his intention was misunderstood,ibid., 224-225; see Martin Hengel, The Charismatic Leader and His Followers (Edinburgh, 1981), 59.

11 It should be noted that on the matter of internal conflict Sanders is prepared to qualify the 'apolitical'

character of Jesus' message and intent: "I have used the term 'apolitical' to mean 'not involving a plan to

liberate and restore Israel by defeating the Romans and establishing an autonomous government'. If Jesusclaimed that those who followed him, even though sinners by the standard of the law, would be first in

the kingdom, and demonstrated the nearness of a new order by his gesture against the temple, he would

have been seen as presenting a challenge to the rest of Judaism in a way that cannot be called just'religious' or 'political'. If he claimed, in effect, that he, rather than the acknowledged leaders of Israel,

spoke for God, he challenged the leadership in all respects. A blow against the temple, even if a

physically minor one, was a blow against the basic religio-political entity: Israel," 296. This is exactly the

view of the Gospels and Acts, which includes, of course, the idea of the Romans as reluctant participantsand even protectors of the church later.

12 Sanders remarks that Stephen was killed because he "carried on Jesus' attack against the temple," ibid.If this is accepted as historical fact, we should also note that he performed no symbolic act. One would

suppose that the execution of Jesus would come into play here as a precedent, yet in Acts the death of

Jesus constitutesin a way that we have noted is quite typicala ground of accusation against the

members of the council whom Stephen addresses in his speech (7:52). On the death of Stephen and thepersecution of the "Hellenists" in Acts, see most recently, Craig C. Hill,Hellenists and Hebrews:

Reappraising Division within the Earliest Church (Minneapolis: Augsburg/Fortress, 1992) 19-101. Hill's

main thesis is that there is no justification in the story of Stephen for seeing in the Hebrews andHellenists two different theologies. Hill also wants to demonstrate the substantial unity of the early


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Church by pointing to a common fate suffered which he believes is to be traced ultimately to the self-

claim of Jesus. But Hill has simply harmonized what may be quite different situations. It is not clear at all

that priestly aristocracy were involved in the Stephen affair or in the death of James (the brother of John)

and the subsequent arrest of Peter. There is no indication that the death of James, the brother of Jesus, isfor the same reason as the death of James, the brother of John, let alone that either is to be accounted for

in the same way as the death of Paul. Sanders distinguishes the case of James, the brother of Jesus, from

those of Stephen and Paul. The reaction of those strict with regard to the law probably indicates that thehigh priest had "trumped up" the charges, see Jos.Ant. 20. 200-203. On the reasons for the execution of

James, see Wilhelm Pratscher,Der Herrenbruder Jakobus und die Jakobustradition (Gottingen:

Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1987) 255-260. Pratscher also denies that the execution was for transgressionof the Law, but when he includes among the reasons for the execution that James was the brother of Jesus

who was executed as politically dangerous and that he was head of a messianic sect which included

members not unsympathetic to Zealot activities, one wonders how James was able to continue withoutinterference for a generation and why any high priest would have had to wait to act against him in the

absence of the Roman procurator rather than enlisting Roman authority, if not for execution, at least for

expulsion from the city.

13 Jack T. Sanders, Schismatics, Sectarians, Dissidents, Deviants: The First Hundred Years of Jewish-

Christian Relations (Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International, 1993).

14 On the charges of impurity and impiety against the chief priests by the James party in Jerusalem, see

ibid., 19-27. On the deteriorating status of the Jewish ruling class, see Martin Goodman, The RulingClass of Judaea (Cambridge: University Press, 1987. For a somewhat different position on the question

of continuing popular support of the Jewish ruling classes and on continuing recourse to negotiation in

dealings with Roman authority throughout the period, see James S. McLaren,Power and Politics inPalestine: The Jews and the Governing of their Land 100 BC - AD 70 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1991).

15 Paula Fredriksen, "Judaism, the Circumcision of Gentiles, and Apocalyptic Hope: Another Look at

Galatians 1 and 2,"JTS42 (1991), 532-564.

16 On Jews who confessed Jesus to be the Messiah in the Gospel of John, see J.T. Sanders, Schismatics,40-47, 92-95; on anti-Christian policy during the reign of Trajan and its connection to Christian

messianic claims, see ibid., 57-58, 61-67, 202-203.

17 See Merrill P. Miller, "How Jesus Became Christ: Probing a Thesis," Continuum 2:2-3 (1993) 257-

265.

18 See Helmut Koester, "Jesus the Victim,"JBL 111 (1992) 3-15; Dieter Georgi, Theocracy in Paul's

Praxis and Theology (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1991); David Seeley, "The Background of thePhilippians Hymn (2:6-11)," The Journal of Higher Criticism 1 (1994) 49-72.

19 1 Thess. 1:9-10; 1 Cor. 10:14-21 and see, David P. Gooch,Dangerous Food: 1 Corinthians 8-10 in its

Context(Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1993). For recent discussion of thediversity of relationships between Jews and Gentiles in late antiquity, see Shaye J.D. Cohen, "Respect for

Judaism by Gentiles according to Josephus,"HTR 80 (1987) 409-430; idem., "Crossing the Boundary and

Becoming a Jew,"HTR 82 (1989) 13-33.

20 Theissen thinks that the absence of Roman intervention against the church in Jerusalem explains why

the Sanhedrin receives a greater share of the blame in the death of Jesus, The Gospels in Context, 172.

But if Roman responsibility is to be given more weight in the case of Jesus, the absence of Roman

involvement with a community of followers in Jerusalem is harder to explain.


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21 It is often the Temple act that carries the burden of primary provocation in the execution of Jesus. In

Sanders' view it could be regarded as a necessary but not a sufficient cause. Accompanying factors, suchas having a noticeable following and the role of Judas in exposing royal claims, must come into play to

account for his execution as "king of the Jews." For recent negative conclusions about the historicity of

the temple demonstration and discussion of the literature, see R.J. Miller, "The (A)historicity of Jesus'

Temple Demonstration: A Test Case in Methodology," SBL 1991 Seminar Papers (Atlanta: Scholars

Press, 1991) 235-252; David Seeley, "Jesus' Temple Act," CBQ 55 (1993) 263-283. For a view of Jesus'temple act in the context of a broader discussion of sacrifice, see Bruce Chilton, The Temple of Jesus:

His Sacrificial Program Within a Cultural History of Sacrifice (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania StateUniversity, 1992) esp. 91-111. Chilton believes that after an unsuccessful attempt to reform sacrificial

practice in the temple, Jesus used his meals with disciples as a more acceptable form of sacrifice than the

routine of the temple. "The authorities in Jerusalem were correctly informed [by Judas] that the teacherwho had demanded a new view of purity in the Temple was acting in a way that set up an alternative cult,

and he was found guilty of blasphemy," 153-154. Chilton does not say how we ought to imagine the

successful establishment of a movement in Jerusalem of disciples of a Jesus executed on the charge of

having instituted an alternative cult.

22 Josephus does not tell us what his fate was (cf. Acts 5:37), but the resistance was clearly ineffective;

cf. David Rhoads,Israel in Revolution: 6-74 C.E. (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1976) 59.

23Jewish Antiquities 20.100-102.

24 The thesis of S. G. F. Brandon that associated Jesus and his followers in Palestine with Jewish

nationalism and deliverance from Roman occupation was predicated not only on the continuous existence

and activity of a Zealot movement in the first century but also on the necessity of being able to accountfor the Roman execution of Jesus: "Ironic though it be, the most certain thing known about Jesus of

Nazareth is that he was crucified by the Romans as a rebel against their government in Judaea,"Jesus

and the Zealots (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1967), 1. In an earlier book Brandon had written,

"Whatever may have been the degree to which Jesus had become involved in the cause of Jewishfreedom, it is certain that the movement connected with him had at least sufficient semblance of sedition

to cause the Roman authorities both to regard him as a possible revolutionary and, after trial, to execute

him as guilty on such a charge," The Fall of Jerusalem and the Christian Church (London: SPCK, 1951),102. Yet, in spite of this, Brandon never seems troubled by the fact that the author of Acts "gives no hint

whatsoever that its [the Jerusalem church's] existence was ever seriously jeopardized by official

repressive action on the part of either the Jewish or the Roman authorities." (90-91)

25 Richard Horsley, "'Like One of the Prophets of Old': Two Types of Popular Prophets at the Time of

Jesus," CBQ 47 (1985), 435-463.

26 Richard Horsley,Jesus and the Spiral of Violence (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1987).

27 To be sure, it is not clear which popular Jewish royal claimant of the first century sought to destroy the

temple system. Brandon had also concluded that the Markan account had Jesus acting alone in an

idealistic manner and that the event must have been different: "An attack on this business was tantamountto an attack on the property and authority of these magnates; it was, moreover, calculated to cause a

fracas in which many of Jesus' supporters and others were likely to join, occasioning violence and

pillage,"Jesus and the Zealots, 9. But for Brandon the temple always remained the effective symbol ofJewish nationalism; he hardly thought of Jesus and his followers in Jerusalem as seeking to destroy the

temple system.

28 Richard Horsley, "'Messianic' Figures and Movements in First-Century Palestine," in The Messiah,


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edited by James H. Charlesworth (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992) 276-295.

29While Horsley denies that there is clear evidence to support the view that the apostles in Jerusalem

worshipped and offered sacrifice in the temple, he seems to accept the picture of the apostles in Actsspreading the word in the temple: "Other passages early in Acts . . . indicate that the apostles were in the

Temple mainly to spread the word about the fulfillment of history that they believed had begun with

Jesus' actions, crucifixion and vindication, to do healings and exorcisms, and generally to expand their

movement," Ibid., 292.

30For a full and detailed exposition of this view of the Markan Passion narrative, see Burton Mack, A

Myth of Innocence (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1988) 249-349; cf. Theissen's hypothesis that the Markan

Passion narrative was composed in Jerusalem in the years 40-50, The Gospels in Context, 166-199. Is itreally convincing when Theissen argues that the absence of the name of the high priest in the Markan

account reflects care and concern in formulating traditions that are circulated in the continuing sphere of

influence of Caiaphas when he is arguing at the same time that the Sanhedrin receives greater blame inthe death of Jesus because of the conflict the Jerusalem church experienced with the high priesthood?

(171-173).

31These studies are to a large degree the work of scholars who have been influenced and set in newdirections by the work of James M. Robinson and Helmut Koester, see Trajectories through Early

Christianity (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971). To name only some of the major studies, editions of

primary sources, multi-authored volumes and particular essays: John Kloppenborg, The Formation of Q:Trajectories in Ancient Wisdom Collections (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987); Helmut Koester,

Ancient Christian Gospels (Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1990); Ron Cameron (ed.), The

Other Gospels (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1982); idem., The Apocryphal Jesus and Christian Origins,

Semeia 49 (l990); idem., "Alternate Beginnings--Different Ends"; idem., "The Gospel of Thomas andChristian Origins," in The Future of Early Christianity: Essays in Honor of Helmut Koester, edited by

Birger A. Pearson (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1991) 381-392; J. Dominic Crossan,Four Other

Gospels (Minneapolis: Winston Press, 1985); John Kloppenborg and Leif Vaage (eds.),EarlyChristianity, Q and Jesus, Semeia 55 (1991); Burton Mack,A Myth of Innocence; idem., The Lost

Gospel: The Book of Q and Christian Origins (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1993); idem., "A Myth of

Innocence at Sea," Continuum 1 (1991) 140-157; David Seeley, The Noble Death (Sheffield: JSOT Press,1990); idem.,Deconstructing the New Testament(Leiden: Brill, 1994).

32Mack,A Myth of Innocence.

33For a broader view of the place of Jewish wisdom in the development of Christology, see Mack, "TheChrist and Jewish Wisdom," in The Messiah, ed. James H. Charlesworth (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992),

192-221.

34Mack,A Myth of Innocence, 98-123.

35

On this preliminary suggestion, see Mack,Myth of Innocence, 88-91.36See, for example, Bengt Holmberg,Paul and Power(Lund: CWK Gleerup, 1978); Nicholas Taylor,

Paul, Antioch and Jerusalem (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1992); F. B. Watson,Paul, Judaism and the

Gentiles (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986).

37Holmberg,Paul and Power, 19.

38Ibid., 28; see Peter Stuhlmacher,Das paulinische Evangelium I. Vorgeschichte (Gottingen, 1968) 87f.

39J. T. Sanders, Schismatics, 265, n. 48. The reference to Mack is inMyth of Innocence, 88.


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40There is less tendency today to rely exclusively on Paul's letters to assess his relationship with Antioch

and Jerusalem and his own claims. The need for a strong corrective to Paul's anachronistic interpretationof events recounted in Gal. 1:11-2:14 is insisted on in the recent study of Nicholas Taylor, Paul, Antioch

and Jerusalem. Material in Acts plays an important role in Taylor's reassessment of Paul's account in Gal.

1-2. Partly as a result of this, assumptions concerning the foundational status of the Jerusalem church, the

nature and historical basis of its authority, remain in place.

41N. A. Dahl (revised by D.H. Juel), "Messianic Ideas and the Crucifixion of Jesus," The Messiah, ed.,

James H. Charlesworth (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992). Dahl regards Christos in Mk. 9:41 and "Jesus

Christ" in Jn. 17:3 as redactional. Christos was absent from sayings common to Matthew and Luke, fromthe Johannine rhemata-tradition, and from sayings peculiar to Matthew and Luke. Christos is not found

in the Gospel of Thomas nor in sayings collections in theDialogue of the Savior. It is absent from the

dialogues between the risen Christ and some of his disciples, e.g., theApocryphon of James. theBook ofThomas the Contender, theFirst and Second Apocalypse of James. Paul refers to sayings of the Lord.Christos is found once in Didache (9:4). Dahl notes that Justin is the first to make fairly frequent use of

formulas like, "Christ, our teacher, said." The presence ofChristos in connection with miracle stories in

the Gospels is probably due to the evangelists, according to Dahl (see Matt. 11:2; Lk. 4:41; Jn. 7:31;9:22; possibly 11:27), 396-397.

42On the origins of the term "Christ," see Miller, "How Jesus Became Christ," 257-265. In that article, I

have argued that the distribution and uses of the term in Paul's genuine letters and the other epistolaryliterature of the NT, on the one hand, and in the Gospels and Acts, on the other, can be more adequately

explained on the assumption that the term originated in the Christian circles of northern Syria with which

Paul was familiar where it became very quickly a royal name for Jesus, while the titular, messianic usethat is more common in the Gospels and Acts should be seen as a later development in the Jesus

movements. I have also suggested that Christian use of the term did not originate in connection with

apocalyptic conceptions of Jesus' resurrection, nor in the kerygma of a martyr's death and vindication, norin connection with popular conceptions of messianic heroes. Rather, the royal name expressed an

idealized royal ethos and legitimated a community set apart from local synagogues, while also having the

advantage in Greek of being politically innocuous.43Professors Ron Cameron, Barry Crawford, and Burton Mack commented on an earlier draft of thispaper. I wish to thank them for their helpful suggestions and criticisms. Financial support to defray part

of the costs for the research and writing of this paper came from a Faculty and Research Development

Grant of Pembroke State University. I wish to thank the Office of Academic Affairs of the University andthe Faculty Research and Development Committee for this support.

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