For Palm Sunday to Easter reading, I highly recommend the archaeological-historical point of view in Shimon Gibson’s masterful book, Final Days of Jesus, now out in a bargain-priced paperback. Its breakthrough insights and many contributions are not to be missed. Here is my complete review:

Shimon Gibson’s new book, Final Days of Jesus: The Archaeological Evidence (HarperOne) begins with a straightforward, provocative sentence that summarizes the whole quite nicely: “Who was Jesus, and what can archaeology tell us about him?” For the past 1800 years Christians have been traveling to the Holy Land with one burning desire–to walk where Jesus walked. Our earliest surviving pilgrimage account, the anonymous description of the “Pilgrim of Bordeaux,” dates to AD 333, and makes fascinating reading to this day. Although the heart of a pilgrim is filled with devotion, central to that celebration of faith is the idea that one arrives at the actual place and gazes upon, or even touches, what remains. It is this proximity of place, and this possibility of contact with the past, that fires the imagination and feeds the soul. The irony is, this is no less true for the historian and the archaeologist than the pilgrim. For the past 200 years scholars have entered this same arena, asking, in the words of the poet Carl Sandburg, “What is this place, where are we now?” In the Preface to my book, The Jesus Dynasty, I relate my own experience on my first trip to the Holy Land at age 16. Even at that age I found myself asking, how do the holy places of 20th century Jerusalem connect authentically to the time of Jesus?  I remember buying a copy of the book, Where Jesus Walked, by Frank McCoy Field, at a little tourist shop, and devouring it each evening after a day of touring with our guide. The problem, of course, is one of time and tradition. So much has been altered, lost, forgotten, and distorted, especially since the Crusader period, when the basic Holy Week itinerary became fairly fixed for most visitors.

Gibson’s new book is not intended as a pilgrim’s guide to Jerusalem, but it goes a long way toward resetting the stage, for both pilgrim and historian, to consider anew his opening sentence–what can our surviving archaeological record tell us about Jesus? He rightly points out that material evidence can be as informative as our textual records, and should not be considered as “garnish” or mere “background” to our quest for the historical Jesus. Indeed, archaeology can substantially shape and change the way we read our Gospel accounts and shed significant new light on our understanding of Jesus.

What Gibson presents is new, fresh, and challenging, so much so that both specialists and general readers will find this book an indispensable companion-in-hand for wandering, either mentally or actually, the streets and landscapes of Jerusalem. The book is presented in an engaging “you are there” style, with much of the analysis based on Gibson’s own first hand experience as an archaeologist working in Jerusalem for the past 30 years. I consider Gibson’s work so important that I have made it required reading in my Christian Origins classes at UNC Charlotte and also for participants in our Mt Zion dig this summer.

The focus, as the title makes clear, are those final days of Jesus in Jerusalem, from his journey from Galilee to his death and burial. It is worth noting that this focus is that of our Gospels as well. Mark, for example, has sixteen chapters, but by chapter 8, just halfway through, Jesus has set his face toward Jerusalem for his final journey. Matthew, Luke, and John have a similar structure. In other words, to understand those final days is to understand Jesus as a whole–particularly why he was arrested and killed. Gibson shows us, in surprising ways, how the archaeological record can contribute to that central historical query.

In this review I want to concentrate on what I consider two of the most significant new contributions Gibson offers for our better understanding of Jesus and his last days and I will finish up with a few caveats and observations on the book overall.

The first has to do with the location of Jesus’ trial before the Roman Prefect Pontius Pilate, the identification of the Praetorium, that is the headquarters of the governor, the “courtyard,” and more particularly, the “pavement” of the judgment seat, called lithostrotos in Greek or gabbatha in Aramaic (see John 18:28, 33; 19:9, 13, cf. Matt 27:27 and Mark 15:16). The traditional route Jesus took to the place of crucifixion, the Via Dolorosa, traced by pilgrims by the thousands on Good Friday, begins in the northeast of the city, at the Church of St Anne. Indeed this is the 1st Station of the Cross. This is based on the assumption that Jesus’ trial before Pilate was at the military barracks of the Antonio Fortress, located on a high rocky outcrop at the northwest corner of the Temple complex. Today there is a scholarly consensus that this location is incorrect, and that the Praetorium was located at Herod’s Palace, on the west side of the city. It has become clear that this magnificent palace was used by Pilate as his residence as well as the military and civic headquarters of Roman rule in Jerusalem. Gibson offers a full exposition of this correct location and why it has become preferred over the traditional site. What this means, of course, is rather earthshaking in terms of the Good Friday processions and their time-sanctified traditions.

But he goes much further in details, having excavated with Magen Broshi along the outside of the western city wall in the 1970s. There a monumental gateway was revealed with the remains of a large courtyard and intact pavement between the fortification walls. Gibson, with maps and detailed drawings, makes a compelling case that this is indeed the very spot where the governor would have had his bema or judgment seat, and he shows in detail that the language of the Gospels, particularly in John, with Pilate going inside the palace, and back out again, and the crowds gathered outside below, fits the location we can see today perfectly. In fact, the steps, dating from the Herodian period, are now exposed, leading up to the remains of the gate and the platform or pavement. CNN ran a very nice story this weekend of Gibson with correspondent Ben Wedeman, explaining his theory at the site, see “Jesus Took a Different Path.” Since Gibson first took me and my students to this site back in 2000 I have been back many times, studied it thoroughly, and I have become convinced it is indeed one of the most fascinating archaeological discoveries in the past 100 years related to the life of Jesus. The impact of Gibson’s identification is hard to overemphasize, as this would be the precise location, uncovered down to the pavement, of one of the most famous scenes in the life of Jesus, namely Pilate’s “Ecce Homo,” (“Behold the man” John 19:5) declaration. I have posted here my own reconstruction of the scene, marvelously done by the extraordinary artist, Balage Balogh for my book, The Jesus Dynasty. Gibson’s own reconstruction differs a bit from mine and has more details based on his latest research. It is amply illustrated in his book.

But there is much more. Gibson also persuasively argues that this western gateway, leading into the grounds of Herod’s palace, was indeed the famed “Essene Gate” mentioned by Jewish historian Josephus (War V.145). As one who has been convinced for years of Bargil Pixner’s location for the “Essene Gate,” on the southeast of the city, as published and popularized in Biblical Archaeology Review in an article I helped him edit, namely “Jerusalem’s Essene Gateway” (May/June, 1997), I was not an easy convert to Gibson’s view, having spent hundreds of hours over a decade with my dear late friend, Father Pixner, walking the site and studying the area together. Indeed, one finds Pixner’s location on many maps today, with or without a question mark, indicating uncertainty. I have to confess that Gibson has convinced me. But perhaps even more important, this means the so-called “Essene Quarter,” that Pixner associated with his gate likely never existed inside the city walls. What seems more likely is that the Essenes lived outside the city wall, as indicated by Josephus, and the area Pixner had identified was one of the wealthiest areas of the city, just south of Herod’s Palace, and the traditional site of David’s Tomb.

The second really significant contribution I want to highlight here is found in Gibson’s 4th chapter titled “Signs and Wonders at Bethesda and Siloam.” Gibson focuses upon the central question posed by all historians who study the life of Jesus, namely, why was Jesus killed? Why did he pose such a threat to the religious establishment? The standard consensus, that Jesus posed a “revolutionary” threat to the economic, religious, and social establishment no one would deny. But what about the specifics? In what areas, and over what issues and situations, were the enemies of Jesus willing to cross the line of tolerance and move to eliminate him? What Gibson highlights are the healing activities that Jesus carried out at the public pools of Bethesda and Siloam during the last week of his life, and their revolutionary potential among the crowded masses. It was Passover week in the year 30 CE, and hundreds of thousands of visitors had flocked to the city for the festival. Gibson skillfully reconstructs for us the mobbed scene at these large public pools, one  to the south of the Temple, the other to the north. He argues, quite persuasively in my view, that both pools functioned as sites for the mass rites of ritual water purification that were required of all visitors who were to ascend up to the Temple area for Passover. That means they were crowded and thickly populated that week with a diverse mix of the local and visiting populations. Jesus, by centering his healing activities at these strategic locations, was bound to attract the attention of those who controlled the religious affairs in Jerusalem, and he was deliberately provocative in both his activities and his pronouncements to the crowds. The large parameters of both pools have recently been clarified by archaeological work and Gibson provides photos and drawings of how they might have appeared in the time of Jesus. Gibson is convinced, and convincing I think, that not only the large crowds that Jesus drew in the Temple precincts drew the attention of the city authorities, but also his healing activities around these pools.

Gibson’s book contains much else that positively contributes to our understanding of the “last days of Jesus” from an archaeological perspective. I would mention in particular his insightful comments on Jewish burial practices, both of Lazarus and Jesus, that in my view truly break new ground (chapters 2 and 7). He updates his readers on the very latest evidence on Roman crucifixion, with new analysis on the heel-bone of the “crucified man” of Givat haMivtar, discovered in a tomb north of Jerusalem in 1968 (chapter 6). His analysis of the tomb of Jesus itself, and what it might have looked like, given our evidence from tombs found all over Jerusalem, is as insightful as it is convincing (chapter 8).

This is not to say that I find agreement with all that Gibson argues. I have my strong disagreements with his location of the crucifixion and burial of Jesus in the vicinity of the 4th century site of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, even though he locates the site of the crucifixion and burial in slightly different areas than the dominant Christian shrines within the Church. I remain convinced that Jesus was crucified and temporarily buried on the Mt of Olives. I find Gibson’s closing lines of his last chapter, “Who Moved the Stone,” somewhat counterproductive in terms of what we might be able to responsibly say as historians. He writes: “The reality is that there is no historical explanation for the empty tomb, other than if we adopt a theological one, i.e., the resurrection. I leave it up to the reader to make up his own mind.” I have to disagree here. Though I freely admit our sources might never allow us to definitely state what happened that Easter weekend, I think by definition the explanation “God took Jesus bodily to heaven,” is not one that historians can responsibly entertain, as historians.

Gibson ends his book with a strong Conclusion that offers a nice summary of his main arguments in the book as a whole. Finally, there is an Excursus on the “Talpiot (Jesus) Tomb and the ‘James’ Ossuary.” It is no secret that Gibson and I have our agreements and disagreements on this subject, having both published extensive articles on the topic in Near Eastern Archaeology (Vol. 69, Nos. 3-4, Sept-Dec, 2006, pp. 118-124; 132-136), but we continue to learn from one another. Since I have written so extensively on this subject on this Blog, with the posts all archived, I will not belabor the topic in this review.

There is no doubt in my mind that the rich contents of this wonderful and engaging book will make it a standard in the field of Christian origins. It is an indispensable handbook for the scholar, and a thrilling investigative read for the non-specialist wanting to know more of those last critical days of Jesus.

Was the Last Supper a Jewish Passover Seder? Millions of Christians who are happily and profitably discovering their “Hebraic roots” by studying, participating in, and even reenacting “Passover” services have equated it with the final evening meal Jesus had with his disciples. Indeed, many so-called “messianic” groups have developed an extensive interpretation of the traditional Jewish Passover Seder that finds all sorts of Christological meanings reflected in the ceremonies, including the death and resurrection of Jesus for the sins of humankind.

All four of our gospels report that Jesus ate a last meal privately with the Twelve, on the “night he was betrayed,” as Paul puts it. However, the Synoptics (Mark, Matthew, Luke) and John report things differently in so far as whether this meal took place on the night of Passover, or the night before. Although many have attempted harmonization, the differences in the two reports remain stark and and can not be ignored.  Scholars have exhaustively argued out every possibility pro and con.

I argue in The Jesus Dynasty (chapter 12 “Last Days in Jerusalem”) that the final meal was not a Passover Seder and offer a revised chronology in which Jesus dies on a Thursday, rather than a Friday, with the Passover Seder falling at the beginning of the 15th of Nisan, after sundown, Thursday night with that Friday, in the year AD/CE 30 being a “high day” sabbath, followed by the weekly Sabbath.

In a thoroughly comprehensive general article just published in the latest issue of Biblical Archaeology Review (March/April, 2010) titled “Was Jesus’ Last Supper a Seder,” Boston University professor Jonathan Klawans explores the issue in a clear and compelling way, concluding that the last meal of Jesus was most likely not a Passover Seder. I am pleased to say you can read it on-line here, but hope you will consider subscribing to BAR magazine as it continues to bring us quality articles of this type.

P.S. I hope my readers notice that I have chosen as a “Last Supper” illustration the etching by the incomparably great Albrecht Dürer in which the “beloved disciple” is sleeping as a small child, next to Jesus.

There was a fascinating interview with the esteemed Prof. Jacob Neusner in the Jerusalem Post last week. Neusner is known first and foremost for the ways in which he has brought a systematic critical historical study of the classic Rabbinic sources to the forefront of the academy, and for that matter, to the world. His provocative work, A Rabbi Talks with Jesus which came to the attention of Pope Benedict the XVI and has resulted in two meetings between Prof. Neusner and the Pope in which they have shared substantive exchanges. This interview takes a different direction. It touches on many important issues relevant to Neusner’s life-long academic work, but particularly his insights on Judaism itself in our time both in the Diaspora and in Israel. I produce it here in full, the link is: http://www.jpost.com/Home/Article.aspx?id=111090

A Utopian Document, a Utopian Law
March 4, 2010
Jacob Neusner talks of his five-decade love affair with the ancient rabbis, on the future of Jewish life. Questions posed by the interviewer are in italics:

In the world of Jewish studies, Prof. Jacob Neusner needs no introduction. The 75-year-old scholar of Talmud and rabbinic literature has written, edited or translated more than 900 books (though he doesn’t want you to read them all), making him among the most active and prolific authors alive. “But I have a limited repertoire,” he says with a smile, an expertise which extends across a millennium and through dozens of difficult, tightly-written works that are the record of the rabbinic love affair with the Torah. For Neusner, the study of rabbinic literature has been a kind of love affair in itself, and as with all true loves, he remembers clearly when it began. He sat down to study his first passage of Talmud just after Succot in October of 1954, at the age of 22. It was the eighth chapter of Baba Kama, “Hahovel,” he recalls almost 54 years later. “I was an American history major,” and had always been a bit bored with the subject. “When I started studying Talmud, I finally came across something endlessly interesting. I had never met anything so challenging. It was like mathematics, only 1,000 times more complex. I was never bored again.” Now, struggling through the latest work, Sifrei Zuta Bamidbar, “a very strange text,” he is a happy man. “Every line is a challenge, the challenge of reconstructing the thought processes of the rabbis.” Educated at Harvard, Oxford and Columbia, with rabbinic ordination from the Jewish Theological Seminary, Neusner’s stature has made him a focal point of interfaith dialogue, such as a National Endowment for the Humanities-funded conference on tolerance among the world’s religions and a much-publicized theological exchange with the pope.

On a recent lecture visit to Israel, The Jerusalem Post sat down with the energetic professor, since 1994 at Bard College about two hours’ drive north of New York City, for a discussion on issues closer to home. Who were the rabbinic Sages? What can we know about their world? What can they tell us about Jewish life today?

Rabbinic writings are often in difficult, coded language, usually focused on legal argumentation. They don’t seem to reveal much about themselves personally, socially? We don’t have the basis for a biography on sound critical historical lines for any rabbi. The cultural patterns that shaped biographical writing didn’t exist. The rabbinic accounts of individuals are subordinated to systemic purposes they’re trying to serve. If you have a model of an individual rabbi, you have an expression of detail within a larger theory of the social order. We have in Halacha a design for a social order. It lays out rules of constitution, institutions and patterns of life of the ideal Israelite society. It’s a utopian document, a utopian law. Meanwhile, the aggada [rabbinic homilies] provides a system for a worldview which accommodates new knowledge and unexpected situations. The Sages show what it means to have a rational social order in which things fit together.

A rational social order-as opposed to our modern societies? Correct. The poetry of the 20th century discusses the collapse of the established order, the notion that the social order has disintegrated. The Sages dealt with a collapsing social order as well, represented in the destruction [of the Second Temple] in 70 [CE]. In the Mishna, 130 years later, we have a plan for reconstructing Israelite society that served us for 2,000 years.

How relevant is this plan for today? Can it help us construct a rational order out of the chaos of modernity? The question the Sages answered no longer imposes itself on the life of the community. The question was: “How does Israel exist as distinct from anything else?” The question of modern times is: “How does Israel exist together with everything else?” Here, Reform Judaism and modern Orthodox Judaism ask the same basic question about how to be both a citizen and a Jew. The Sages wanted to know how to be a Jew only, emphasizing the uniqueness of Israel.

This difference begs the question: Does the new question of modernity require a new Talmud, so to speak? Does the Jewish world need a new social order? For Jews in the Diaspora, the question of “Jewish and something else” is urgent. There are only two types of people who say you can’t be two things at once-those who believe in assimilation, a belief that is not institutionalized but is broadly held, and the self-segregating haredim.

What does the Talmud offer for integrated, modern Jews? There are two roles for the Talmud. First, it’s a model of how people can think, a demonstration of the value of rigorous, critical thought producing systematic results-that is to say Halacha. Second, it contains situation-specific lessons that can be generalized.

Does Halacha have a role in modern society, not just as an exercise in logic, but in terms of observance? As I grow older I return to my Reform roots from childhood. I find observance a matter of personal thinking. After Oxford, I was advised I’d get a better rabbinical education at [the Conservative] JTS than [the Reform] Hebrew Union College. At the time it had a superior faculty. So I ended up spending many years as an observant Conservative Jew.

If observance is personal, do you see the boundaries of Judaism as ideological or intellectual rather than halachic? The gap between self-segregating Orthodoxy and Reform Judaism is unbridgeable. They represent two very different notions of what it is to be an Israelite. But the boundary has to be both. People won’t be robots. They have to find rationale in what they do. That’s the strength of Reform Judaism, which is the strongest Judaism in the Diaspora.

There may be more Reform-registered Jews in the Diaspora, but they are personally less observant and intellectually uncommitted to Halacha. What do you make of the criticism that this makes for a weaker Judaism, not a stronger one? If people want to stop being Jewish, they don’t have to be Reform. Reform Judaism is a positive option. The Orthodox make up 10 percent of American Jewry, even if there is diversity there. Reform Jews are 50%.

Even so, are Reform congregants, the “Jews in the pews,” making deep choices in belonging to that movement? It’s easy to mistake people on the bus who are trying to reach a destination and people on the same bus going from nowhere to nowhere.

The Orthodox, it is often said, are growing faster than the other movements. The haredi [community] seems to be growing, but that doesn’t take into account the rate of attrition, the number of young people leaving that community.

What about patrilineal descent-the American Reform movement’s acceptance of Jewish identification through the father, and not just the mother as Jewish law and tradition have held? Doesn’t this create two Jewish peoples? There are more than just two Jewish peoples. In Israel, there is a whole variety. The split between haredi and the rest of Orthodoxy is as dramatic as the Orthodox-secular divide. In America you have a large population completely unaffected by synagogue life. Patrilineal descent is not as great a point of differentiation as Orthodoxy to everyone else.

What do you think the Sages would make of today’s Jewish world? That’s a good question. I don’t know. It’s hard not to project one’s own positions onto them, especially since rabbinic literature contains so many positions-kol davar vehipucho [everything and its opposite]. The classical position of the Sages is that you become an Israelite through Torah, through accepting its discipline. It would seem that Orthodoxy carries this forward. But the Sages expressed a liberal spirit in accepting people coming in, and this social policy would also have to be carried forward. Recognition of converts is a case in point. Ruth Raba contains the message that conversion is undertaken by the convert and the Jewish response is a welcoming one. Orthodoxy in Israel is the opposite of this.

The Orthodox position in Israel differs from that of the Talmud? It’s hard to know criteria by which the Sages would reject a convert. I can’t think of a single passage demanding [halachic observance].

This newspaper has commented on the seemingly growing cultural gap between American Jews and Israeli Jews, how little they seem to understand about each other despite their constant communication. Do you share that observation? I don’t know how I would measure [the cultural gap]. You have two different civil religions. It’s very difficult to teach these to each other. Civil religion requires a previous experience that is concretized and that can’t be taught. Young Americans don’t have the [Israeli] experience.

Is this the reason the liberal Jewish movements are not having as much traction in Israeli society as they have in America? I don’t know the Israeli situation well enough to comment on it. It would seem that Reform and Conservative are answering questions people aren’t asking. Israelis don’t regard Judaism as an ongoing adventure that responds to new questions with authentic classical answers. The strength of Reform Judaism is that it responded to masses of Jews who wanted to be different than their parents. Even in America, Israelis form a community unto themselves, building their identity on the Hebrew language and Israeli customs.

Are you a pessimist, then, on the future of Israel-Diaspora relations? The experience of visiting Israel has a good impact. But if success is measured in aliya, this hasn’t been successful. [American Jews] are Americans. America is not an exporter of immigrants. We’re the only Western society not losing population. On the other hand, I’m not a great witness to the wisdom of an intellectual on issues of Jewish public life. When Birthright announced it was going to spend millions bringing young Jews to Israel, I thought this amounted to an evasion from day school education. But I was impressed when I saw my students coming back.

How do you see the cottage industry of conferences and committees looking into strategies for the future of the Jewish people? The most important thing happening this week or any week in the Jewish world is what’s taking place in the classrooms of the universities. The future of the Jewish people is in the hands of Jewish intellectuals. Politicians and public intellectuals nourish themselves from scholars who are not at those meetings and have no interest in them. It’s hard to engage too seriously in social science as a medium of cultural mediation. They’re measuring the present and not facing the future. For example, when I started my career there was no such thing as Jewish studies in universities, just a few professors of the Hebrew language. Now there’s a Jewish studies professor in every university in the US and Canada, and that cultural resource is beginning to hit the Jewish community. Young people are coming with an intellectual background that’s the result of my generation’s commitment to an ambience of Jewish learning. It didn’t come because people held conferences and passed resolutions. It came about because universities decided to turn to culture.

You are an outspoken critic of the study of rabbinic literature in Israeli academia. What, in summary, is your criticism? The stress is on problems of philology instead of problems of culture. But philology is of interest only to specialists, while the Sages represent a resource of thought and expression that provides a model of the social order and how society can deal with conflict and instability. In American academia, the Sages are treated as accessible models for shaping everyday life. We study the classics of any civilization to find viable examples of what we can be ourselves, of our own potential. The age that confronted the Holocaust should understand the Sages’ discussion of the destruction of the Temple, of rebuilding a social order.

Today is my birthday and I am in a “thinking back” mood. Let’s just say I can now sing the lovely Beatles song, “When I’m Sixty-Four.” So looking back…

I published my first book back in 1986: Things Unutterable: Paul’s Ascent to Paradise in its Graeco-Roman, Judean, and Early Christian Contexts (University Press of America). It was in the Brown University Studies in Judaism series, and was recommended through the good agency of Jacob Neusner. The book is essentially my Ph.D. dissertation at the University of Chicago, written under the esteemed and legendary Jonathan Z. Smith with the equally illustrious Robert M. Grant as a reader and co-director. I graduated from the Humanities in the Department of New Testament and Early Christian Literature–look it up, it was quite a place in those days, outside the Divinity School, but thriving with its own purposes and emphases, headed by Prof. Grant.

I was incredibly proud of that book, dedicated it to my late father, Elgie Lincoln Tabor, and I would still stand with most of the positions I take in that book, even after nearly 30 years (Ph.D. 1981 so I wrote it in 1980).  The Journal of Religion, in reviewing books on Paul during the decade of the 1980s, put my book in the top ten. My new book on Paul with Simon & Schuster (publication date yet to be determined) will make some huge advances beyond what I knew and understood in 1986, but it absolutely builds on the former.

The book has been long out of print and regularly sells on Amazon for $200-700–which seems pretty ridiculous. Over the years I have had hundreds of requests for copies and I only own two or three myself. I recently authorized Genesis 2000, one of my publishers, to issue an unbound edition, autographed, with color cover (8.5 x 11) for $25.00. It is not a photocopy of the book (hey that’s illegal, right!) but an actual printout of the page poofs from the original disk–which now belongs to me. If you are interested you can order through Amazon.