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A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus
A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, Volume III - Companions and Competitors
No man is an island, not even Jesus, as John Meier writes in Companions and Competitors , the third installment of his four-part series, A Marginal Rethinking the Historical Jesus . The first volume, an overview of Jesus' background, chronology, and early years, was followed by a second that analyzed Jesus' most important messages and deeds. Here, Meier explains his conviction that "No human being is adequately understood if he or she is considered in isolation from other human beings." He leads readers through the concentric circles of companions (including the followers who became his disciples and apostles) and competitors (such as Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, Samaritans) that shaped Jesus' life in first-century Palestine. Meier, a priest and New Testament scholar at Notre Dame, writes in the engaging, methodical style of an astringently avuncular chapters are carefully outlined, with straightforward headings such as "Points of Comparison and Contrast," "Caveats on Comparisons," and "The Sheer Oddness of Jesus"). His findings, particularly his explanation of "the essentially Jewish nature" of Jesus' relationships, are a valuable addition to the field of Historical Jesus scholarship.
720 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2001
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About the author
John P. Meier
33 books31 followersJohn Paul Meier is a Biblical scholar and Catholic priest. He attended St. Joseph's Seminary and College (B.A., 1964), Gregorian University [Rome] (S.T.L, 1968), and the Biblical Institute [Rome] (S.S.D., 1976).
Meier is the author of nine books and more than 60 scholarly articles. He was editor of The Catholic Biblical Quarterly and president of the Catholic Biblical Association.
Meier is Professor of New Testament in the Department of Theology at the University of Notre Dame. Before coming to Notre Dame, he was Professor at The Catholic University of America.
Meier is the author of nine books and more than 60 scholarly articles. He was editor of The Catholic Biblical Quarterly and president of the Catholic Biblical Association.
Meier is Professor of New Testament in the Department of Theology at the University of Notre Dame. Before coming to Notre Dame, he was Professor at The Catholic University of America.
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May 30, 2024
THE LONG-AWAITED THIRD VOLUME OF THIS SERIES
Catholic priest and biblical scholar John P. Meier wrote in the “Acknowledgements” section of this 2001 book, “thanks must go first of all to the patient readers who have waited so long for this third installment of the series. Right after them must come the various doctors and surgeons who have seen me through a number of serious illnesses and operations that were a major reason why the appearance of this volume has been so long delayed. To the doctors who … performed major surgery on my back I owe a special debt of gratitude. That I can sit at my computer and type these words in comfort is all their doing.”
He adds in the introduction, “The first two volumes of ‘A Marginal Jew’ sought to lay the groundwork for this pivotal examination of Jesus the Jew and his Jewish relationships… Only at the end of these two volumes… can we now begin to widen the spotlight to include the Jewish individuals and groups that were interacting with him as he traveled around Galilee and Judea proclaiming his message on the kingdom and faith-healing. As the spotlight widens, many interrelated questions emerge: Who traveled with Jesus on these journeys?... was there some relatively stable group of core adherents such as the Twelve?... was he interested in forming a relatively closed, sectarian group, in some ways not unlike Qumran?... These are the types … of questions that Volume Three will seek to answer in order to make ‘Jesus the Jew’ something more than a politically correct slogan.” (Pg. 4-5)
He continues, “The goal of this work is a reasonably reliable sketch of the historical Jesus… the ‘historical Jesus’ is that Jesus whom we can recover or reconstruct by using the scientific tools of modern historical research. The ‘historical Jesus… coincides only partially with the real Jesus of Nazareth… If the historical Jesus is not the real Jesus, neither is he the ‘theological Jesus’ investigated by theologians according to their own proper methods and criteria… the quest for the historical Jesus must be carefully distinguished from Christology…” (Pg. 9)
He observes, “In later rabbinic literature, one hears of students ‘following’… their rabbi, but not in the sense applied to Jesus’ disciples in the Gospels… Jesus peremptory call to follow was open-ended not only geographically but also temporally. It did not set any time limit on the obligation to follow him. There was no course of studies, the completion of which would release a disciple from constant attendance upon Jesus. Becoming a disciple of Jesus was not a temporary appointment, after which the disciple could hope to be promoted to equality with Jesus as a younger colleague.” (Pg. 54-55)
He notes, “in the first Christian generation there was a tradition that the family of Jesus did not believe in his mission during his public ministry. In Mark 3:31-35… the mother and brothers of Jesus come to see Jesus only to be rebuffed… He proclaims that the attentive crowd around him is his true family… Mark himself makes this scene even more negative … where he depicts [3:21] the family of Jesus setting out to seize him because they think he has gone mad.” (Pg. 69)
He points out, “Luke’s picture in 8:1-3 of unchaperoned women sharing the preaching tours of a celibate male teacher is discontinuous with both the Judaism of the time and with what Luke presents… of the first-generation Christian mission. It seems that Luke… preserves a valuable historical memory in 8:1-3: certain devoted women followers accompanied Jesus on his journeys around Galilee and finally up to Jerusalem and actually supported him and his entourage with their own money, food, or property.” (Pg. 76)
He states, “That I should have to argue that there was a special group of twelve followers around Jesus during the public ministry make strike some readers as strange… Far from variations in the lists of the Twelve disproving the group’s existence during Jesus’ lifetime, the Synoptists’ disagreements within the basic agreement of their lists argue for a primitive oral tradition that underwent some changes before the Gospels were written. Actually… there is only one basic difference in the names: for the ‘Thaddeus’ … in Mark and Matthew, Luke… has ‘Jude [or Judas] of James’… Otherwise… even the basic order of the names is the same.” (Pg. 128-130) Later, however, he rejects the identification of the toll collector ‘Levi’ in Mark and Luke with the ‘Matthew’ in the Matthean Gospel.” (Pg. 201)
He adds, “The reasons for the swift disappearance or total absence of the Twelve from most of the NT are unclear. Perhaps some members of the Twelve…died in the first decade after the crucifixion; and no attempt was made to replenish a foundational group that was not viewed as ongoing in the church. Once this happened… it made little sense to continue to speak of the Twelve in regard to the present situation of the church.” (Pg. 147)
He suggests, “It is within this overarching hope for the regathering in the end of time of ALL Israel, all twelve tribes, that Jesus’ choice of an inner circle of twelve disciples must be understood… Jesus was consciously performing such a power-laden, prophetic act when he constituted the Twelve.” (Pg. 153)
He suggests, “If Jesus’ hobnobbing with toll collectors and sinners upset the stringently pious, Jesus’ traveling entourage of women followers … probably disturbed them even more---especially since some, if not all, of the women apparently followed Jesus without benefit of husbands as chaperons. Strangely, these women … are never explicitly called ‘disciples’ by the evangelists… the women proved themselves disciples in deed if not in word not only by the economic support they gave Jesus during his journeys but also by their following him even to the cross, after the male disciples had betrayed, denied, or abandoned him.” (Pg. 247)
He acknowledges, “The basic fact that the historical Jesus claimed to work miracles and that certain actions performed by him were hailed by his followers as miracles during his lifetime is easily established by the criteria of historicity. But to move beyond that global affirmation to discern which individual miracle stories may actually go back to startling actions performed by Jesus is extremely difficulty… with a certain number of miracle stories falling into the limbo of … ’not clear’…” (Pg. 336)
He states, “to claim that Jesus never spoke of the general resurrection is to … miss a subtle but important point. To be sure, at the heart of Jesus’ proclamation was the kingdom of God… Jesus’ thought and action aimed squarely at convincing and converting those who were … at risk of final condemnation… This main goal of this mission, and not speculation about the fate of the long-since departed, naturally occupied most of his attention and preaching… In contrast, the idea of a general resurrection, by definition involved the dead, not the living… Accordingly, the resurrection would be a matter for God, not Jesus, to take care of.” (Pg. 438)
He points out, “At Qumran, we meet with various rules that take a strongly puritanical stance toward sexual activity… We do not hear the same detailed regulations coming from Jesus. As a matter of fact, detailed regulations on moral and legal matters do not loom large in the sayings of the historical Jesus. Even more remarkably, apart from the two special cases of divorce and celibacy… relatively little of the Gospel material … deals with sexual matters… Perhaps one reason … is that, apart from the two special cases of divorce and celibacy, where he diverged from mainstream Judaism, his views WERE those of mainstream Judaism.” (Pg. 503)
He summarizes, “A Jewish layman from Nazareth layman from Nazareth… a woodworker with no professional education as … a student of the Law… he harked back to the ancient tradition of the oral prophets of Israel rather than to the more recent tradition of learned scribes … Jesus seems to have combined in his ministry a number of different religious roles: an eschatological, miracle-working prophet…a religious guru who gathered male and female disciples around him and had them follow him on his itinerant ministry… a wisdom teacher and spinner of parables who taught the common people, and… a prophet who made at least implicit claims about being the Messiah. Such claims may have led to his execution … under the accusation of trying to make himself ‘the King of the Jews.’” (Pg. 523-524)
Later, he asserts, “it is hopelessly anachronistic to talk about Jesus being a Zealot or even about his being sympathetic to the Zealots…” (Pg. 565) He adds, “all too often Jesus is portrayed as an angry social rebel emerging from a seething cauldron of intolerable social and economic injustice. Such a portrait… gives the historical Jesus a type of social conscience and political concern for which there is precious little proof in the Gospels.” (Pg. 629)
This book will be “must reading” for anyone seriously studying the historical Jesus.
Catholic priest and biblical scholar John P. Meier wrote in the “Acknowledgements” section of this 2001 book, “thanks must go first of all to the patient readers who have waited so long for this third installment of the series. Right after them must come the various doctors and surgeons who have seen me through a number of serious illnesses and operations that were a major reason why the appearance of this volume has been so long delayed. To the doctors who … performed major surgery on my back I owe a special debt of gratitude. That I can sit at my computer and type these words in comfort is all their doing.”
He adds in the introduction, “The first two volumes of ‘A Marginal Jew’ sought to lay the groundwork for this pivotal examination of Jesus the Jew and his Jewish relationships… Only at the end of these two volumes… can we now begin to widen the spotlight to include the Jewish individuals and groups that were interacting with him as he traveled around Galilee and Judea proclaiming his message on the kingdom and faith-healing. As the spotlight widens, many interrelated questions emerge: Who traveled with Jesus on these journeys?... was there some relatively stable group of core adherents such as the Twelve?... was he interested in forming a relatively closed, sectarian group, in some ways not unlike Qumran?... These are the types … of questions that Volume Three will seek to answer in order to make ‘Jesus the Jew’ something more than a politically correct slogan.” (Pg. 4-5)
He continues, “The goal of this work is a reasonably reliable sketch of the historical Jesus… the ‘historical Jesus’ is that Jesus whom we can recover or reconstruct by using the scientific tools of modern historical research. The ‘historical Jesus… coincides only partially with the real Jesus of Nazareth… If the historical Jesus is not the real Jesus, neither is he the ‘theological Jesus’ investigated by theologians according to their own proper methods and criteria… the quest for the historical Jesus must be carefully distinguished from Christology…” (Pg. 9)
He observes, “In later rabbinic literature, one hears of students ‘following’… their rabbi, but not in the sense applied to Jesus’ disciples in the Gospels… Jesus peremptory call to follow was open-ended not only geographically but also temporally. It did not set any time limit on the obligation to follow him. There was no course of studies, the completion of which would release a disciple from constant attendance upon Jesus. Becoming a disciple of Jesus was not a temporary appointment, after which the disciple could hope to be promoted to equality with Jesus as a younger colleague.” (Pg. 54-55)
He notes, “in the first Christian generation there was a tradition that the family of Jesus did not believe in his mission during his public ministry. In Mark 3:31-35… the mother and brothers of Jesus come to see Jesus only to be rebuffed… He proclaims that the attentive crowd around him is his true family… Mark himself makes this scene even more negative … where he depicts [3:21] the family of Jesus setting out to seize him because they think he has gone mad.” (Pg. 69)
He points out, “Luke’s picture in 8:1-3 of unchaperoned women sharing the preaching tours of a celibate male teacher is discontinuous with both the Judaism of the time and with what Luke presents… of the first-generation Christian mission. It seems that Luke… preserves a valuable historical memory in 8:1-3: certain devoted women followers accompanied Jesus on his journeys around Galilee and finally up to Jerusalem and actually supported him and his entourage with their own money, food, or property.” (Pg. 76)
He states, “That I should have to argue that there was a special group of twelve followers around Jesus during the public ministry make strike some readers as strange… Far from variations in the lists of the Twelve disproving the group’s existence during Jesus’ lifetime, the Synoptists’ disagreements within the basic agreement of their lists argue for a primitive oral tradition that underwent some changes before the Gospels were written. Actually… there is only one basic difference in the names: for the ‘Thaddeus’ … in Mark and Matthew, Luke… has ‘Jude [or Judas] of James’… Otherwise… even the basic order of the names is the same.” (Pg. 128-130) Later, however, he rejects the identification of the toll collector ‘Levi’ in Mark and Luke with the ‘Matthew’ in the Matthean Gospel.” (Pg. 201)
He adds, “The reasons for the swift disappearance or total absence of the Twelve from most of the NT are unclear. Perhaps some members of the Twelve…died in the first decade after the crucifixion; and no attempt was made to replenish a foundational group that was not viewed as ongoing in the church. Once this happened… it made little sense to continue to speak of the Twelve in regard to the present situation of the church.” (Pg. 147)
He suggests, “It is within this overarching hope for the regathering in the end of time of ALL Israel, all twelve tribes, that Jesus’ choice of an inner circle of twelve disciples must be understood… Jesus was consciously performing such a power-laden, prophetic act when he constituted the Twelve.” (Pg. 153)
He suggests, “If Jesus’ hobnobbing with toll collectors and sinners upset the stringently pious, Jesus’ traveling entourage of women followers … probably disturbed them even more---especially since some, if not all, of the women apparently followed Jesus without benefit of husbands as chaperons. Strangely, these women … are never explicitly called ‘disciples’ by the evangelists… the women proved themselves disciples in deed if not in word not only by the economic support they gave Jesus during his journeys but also by their following him even to the cross, after the male disciples had betrayed, denied, or abandoned him.” (Pg. 247)
He acknowledges, “The basic fact that the historical Jesus claimed to work miracles and that certain actions performed by him were hailed by his followers as miracles during his lifetime is easily established by the criteria of historicity. But to move beyond that global affirmation to discern which individual miracle stories may actually go back to startling actions performed by Jesus is extremely difficulty… with a certain number of miracle stories falling into the limbo of … ’not clear’…” (Pg. 336)
He states, “to claim that Jesus never spoke of the general resurrection is to … miss a subtle but important point. To be sure, at the heart of Jesus’ proclamation was the kingdom of God… Jesus’ thought and action aimed squarely at convincing and converting those who were … at risk of final condemnation… This main goal of this mission, and not speculation about the fate of the long-since departed, naturally occupied most of his attention and preaching… In contrast, the idea of a general resurrection, by definition involved the dead, not the living… Accordingly, the resurrection would be a matter for God, not Jesus, to take care of.” (Pg. 438)
He points out, “At Qumran, we meet with various rules that take a strongly puritanical stance toward sexual activity… We do not hear the same detailed regulations coming from Jesus. As a matter of fact, detailed regulations on moral and legal matters do not loom large in the sayings of the historical Jesus. Even more remarkably, apart from the two special cases of divorce and celibacy… relatively little of the Gospel material … deals with sexual matters… Perhaps one reason … is that, apart from the two special cases of divorce and celibacy, where he diverged from mainstream Judaism, his views WERE those of mainstream Judaism.” (Pg. 503)
He summarizes, “A Jewish layman from Nazareth layman from Nazareth… a woodworker with no professional education as … a student of the Law… he harked back to the ancient tradition of the oral prophets of Israel rather than to the more recent tradition of learned scribes … Jesus seems to have combined in his ministry a number of different religious roles: an eschatological, miracle-working prophet…a religious guru who gathered male and female disciples around him and had them follow him on his itinerant ministry… a wisdom teacher and spinner of parables who taught the common people, and… a prophet who made at least implicit claims about being the Messiah. Such claims may have led to his execution … under the accusation of trying to make himself ‘the King of the Jews.’” (Pg. 523-524)
Later, he asserts, “it is hopelessly anachronistic to talk about Jesus being a Zealot or even about his being sympathetic to the Zealots…” (Pg. 565) He adds, “all too often Jesus is portrayed as an angry social rebel emerging from a seething cauldron of intolerable social and economic injustice. Such a portrait… gives the historical Jesus a type of social conscience and political concern for which there is precious little proof in the Gospels.” (Pg. 629)
This book will be “must reading” for anyone seriously studying the historical Jesus.
August 13, 2016
Meier's third installment into his very thorough and wide ranging survey into the historical Jesus continues with his methodological rigor and attention to detail, not holding back to challenge certain passages and accept others using his method. Personally this work had several very interesting bits to it, but not as interesting as his previous two works. Meier divides his work into two sections: the followers of Jesus (crowds, disciples, the 12) and his competitors (religious leaders and sects - pharisees, sadducees, essenes, samaritans, zealots, scribes, herodians, etc.). The two emphases Meier gives throughout the work is Jewishness of Jesus through his relationships with these two broad groups. This plants Meier firmly into the third quest. The book is interesting in discussing these groups, however perhaps I simply missed the focus on Jesus himself as I read this work that was so firmly repeated in the previous works. I very much look forward to the next volume!
October 16, 2023
Meier turns his methodological eye onto the companions and competitors of Jesus. This is a somewhat illuminating book on the various groups in Judaism in first century Palestine, but there's not much new that Meier brings to the table. This is basically a condensation of recent scholarship on the matter. Nothing much new is illumined in the way of Jesus. Still, a good book to read and a worthy entry into his series (although this is definitely the black sheep of the family)
September 3, 2014
Meier's series continues as he takes a look at the groups surrounding Jesus's ministry. The Pharisees, Saducees, Essenes, Zealots, scribes, etc. all go through his clearly stated rubric of determining historical circumstances. Looking forward to vol. 4.
March 11, 2017
Una buena exposición que permite identificar de mejor manera los grupos sociales y religiosos con los que Jesús estuvo o podría haber esta relacionado.
Se puntualizan algunas ideas sobre coincidencias y diferencias que surgen en otras obras que no tienen suficiente rigor.
Se puntualizan algunas ideas sobre coincidencias y diferencias que surgen en otras obras que no tienen suficiente rigor.
February 21, 2014
This was an okay volume. Easily the weakest of the four.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews