Summary: Historical Jesus Research and Jewish-Christian Relations 

Participating this year were: Regina Boisclair, Gerald Caron, Patrick Castles, Emilio Chavez, John Clabeaux, Phil Cunningham, Asher Finkel, John Gilchrist, Dan Harrington, Dennis Hamm, Judette Kolasny, Amy-Jill Levine, Ken Morman, Kellie O’Brien, James Polich, Richard Sklba, Gerard Sloyan, Linda Taggart, and Anthony Tambasco.

To enter the wide-ranging topic of historical Jesus research and Jewish-Christian relations, the co-conveners had decided to focus on: (1) how reconstructions of the “cleansing of the Temple” disclosed Jesus’ attitude toward the Temple, its rituals, or its leaders; and (2) how scholarly opinions on Jesus and purity portrayed Jesus’ relationship to late Second Temple Judaism.

As the seminar commenced, participants were first asked to express their preferred description or category within which to situate Jesus in late Second Temple Judaism.  The characterizations of wisdom teacher, eschatological prophet, or reconfigurer of many strands of contemporary Judaism were voiced, often in various combinations, with observant Jew in harmony with Hillel, reformer/restorer of Israel , and prophet like Jeremiah also suggested. Several participants found single characterizations inappropriate; others questioned the category of ‘reformer/restorer’ (that is, reforming what? restoring what?). A few rejected N.T. Wright’s categorizing of Israel as ‘in exile’ and Jesus as ending the exile.

The Incident in the Temple

We considered the Temple incident in Mark 11:15-19 and parallels. The discussion noted unique features of each of the four gospel accounts and a wide variety of other scriptural texts were cited. There was widespread agreement that some historical event lay behind the gospel narratives, but there were several proposals for how to understand Jesus’ purposes. These included: insisting on the purity of the Temple (no mammon in the sacred space), critiquing Temple leadership or operations, and demonstrating the imminent judgment or destruction of the Temple as the Reign of God arrived.  To sustain these conclusions, speakers made certain choices about how to date or locate the incident (e.g. prefer the Johannine or synoptic chronology; decide where in the Temple precincts the incident occurred) and about the relevance of other biblical or extra-biblical texts as charted in the attached diagram. (Note: this diagram has  been revised in the light of the seminar’s discussion.) Additionally it appeared that people’s estimation of the significance of the Temple incident closely related to how they understood the overall nature of Jesus’ ministry.

There was general agreement that in Mark’s presentation the incident served to express the obsolescence of the Temple in the Marcan community. This conclusion does not impact questions about the original event.

The possibility that Jesus’ action was a protest, possibly a specifically Galilean objection, to a decision by Caiaphas to relocate previously more distant animal merchants and money changers to much nearer the Temple proper appealed to many participants (see Bruce Chilton, “Caiaphas” in the Anchor Bible Dictionary as well as his A Galilean Rabbi and His Bible).  

No one in the seminar expressed the idea that Jesus’ action denoted a repudiation of the sacrificial system, still less of “Judaism.” A stress on the action’s eschatological significance was more evident.

Ritual Purity

This topic has become prominent in recent years among some scholars, some associated with the Jesus Seminar, who depict Jesus as liberating his contemporaries from allegedly denigrating or even dehumanizing purity customs. An overarching question to be addressed, therefore, was what is the fundamental purpose of purity regulations?

The discussion began by considering Mark 7:1-23 (concerning hand-washing, purity, and kashrut) in the light of the question: “Did the historical Jesus observe or disregard ritual purity?”  The following key points were raised:

• Purity is primarily a means to prepare people spiritually, physically, and mentally for an encounter with the divine presence. It also could serve to set a boundary between the religious community and the rest of the world.

• The Catholic practice of fasting before receiving the Eucharist is an example of a purity ritual. Likewise the practice of “churching” women who had given birth.

• Among other things, purity is concerned with bodily functions connected with life and death. Touching a corpse or a leper makes someone “impure” (i.e., unfit to enter the divine presence).

• Certain forms of impurity are contagious.

• A state of ritual purity was commanded only of those Jews entering into the divine presence in the Temple . Gentiles entering the Temple also had to be in a ritually pure state, and most if not all temples in antiquity had purity regulations attached.  Some Jews voluntarily (Qumranites, Pharisees) observed ritual purity in their fellowship meals and other aspects of their lives, but this was not a universal practice.

• Ritual purity was likely a daily concern both in Judea and the Galilee , as we see through numerous miqva’ot (ritual baths), the lack of pig bones, and the presence of stone jars.

• Being impure must not be equated with being in a state of sin.

• For example, burying the dead, which of course involves touching the corpse, far from being a sinful action, is a virtuous and charitable deed. After performing this respectful act, the burier would simply need to be purified if he wanted to enter the sacred space of the Temple .

• Even the high priest is commanded to bury a body found on the road (Mishna Nazir 7.1), and Tobit is remembered for burying the corpses of fellow Jews.

• Having an emission of semen renders a man impure, but of course this is required in order to fulfill the first commandment, “be fruitful and multiply.”

• Touching the Torah renders someone ritually impure, not because the Torah is sinful (!), but because it is sacred.

• One could (re-) enter into a state of purity by engaging in prescribed washings.

• Conversely, being pure should not be equated with being without sin. Both the Pharisee and the tax collector who pray in the Temple are in ritually pure states.

• Thus, for Jesus to touch a leper to heal him or her would make Jesus (temporarily) unclean. He would need to be purified to enter the Temple or perhaps share in table fellowship with a group of Pharisees. His willingness to touch the leper is not a dismissal of the purity system.

• It is important to distinguish purity from other aspects of halakhah. Despite the conflation of Mark 7, purity, hand-washing, and kashrut are distinct topics. Mark 7 is not really about “purity,” but morality and reflects a much later situation than Jesus’ ministry: the customs being observed in the Marcan church.

• That Jesus practiced purity has defined in the Mishnah cannot be demonstrated from the New Testament, Qumran , etc., but that doesn’t mean that he didn’t observe purity according to acceptable standards of the first-century.

• In the scholarly literature, a negative treatment of Jewish purity concerns sometimes masks an anti-Catholic attitude (just as a negative treatment of “law” [vs. “grace”] does.

To the question, “Did the historical Jesus observe or disregard ritual purity?” some participants felt that there was no New Testament evidence to justify concluding that Jesus dismissed or opposed the purity system per se, although there is also no evidence that he practiced ritual purity at his own fellowship meals. In this he would have been like most of his Jewish contemporaries. The evidence suggests that he would have purified himself before entering the Temple .

Some participants felt that Jesus’ eschatological fervor included the idea of restoring creation to its initial purity, thereby relativizing the importance of Temple purity practices.

Purity and Holiness

Finally, the seminar probed the question of the relationship between purity and holiness, or put negatively, impurity and sinfulness. Generally, it was seen that there is a relationship between purity and morality, but with important distinctions. These items were mentioned:  

• In its boundary-marking dimensions, purity could be understood as denoting the difference between the God of Israel and the gods of the pagans: Adonai is ethical and just. Therefore, ritual purity is a sign of human commitment to justice and an ethical life.

• One often hears a wordplay on the English terms “holiness” and “wholeness” that is not justified by their Greek roots. The association with wholeness then leads to an understanding of holiness as “perfection.”  This leads some historical Jesus scholars (including social science critics) who see Jesus as critical of the purity system to characterize the system as Pharisaic perfectionism, which it simply is not.

• The driving concern behind the purity system is the psalmist’s question: “Who can enter the presence of the Lord?”

• Purity did not just apply to individuals, but could involve the land as well as the Temple itself which might need to be purified.

• It could fairly be said that purity and morality are related but not co-extensive concerns. The relationship might be imagined as a Venn diagram with a moving area of overlap.

• It appears Jesus placed a greater emphasis on the overlap than did some other Jews.

• The group rejected Marcus Borg’s opposing of “a system of Purity” with a “system of Compassion”; some participants suggested that the divorcing of Jesus from concerns with purity was a means of ‘de-Judaizing’ him.

Next Year:

In general it was agreed to continue discussing the broad topic of historical Jesus research and Jewish-Christian relations. This might be done through joint session(s) with the Historical Jesus Task Force.