The Jesus Dynasty, four years after publication in April, 2006, continues to get picked up in the news. Here are the the three latest examples, with on-line links if available:

First, a fascinating article by Adam Gopnik in the May 24, 2010 issue of The New Yorker titled “What Did Jesus Do? Reading and Unreading the Gospels.” Gopnik draws a number of insights from The Jesus Dynasty in his opening section and specifically mentions the tradition of Pantera as a little-known father of Jesus.

Second, Gopnik’s mention of the Pantera tradition, as if to give any credibility whatsoever to the tradition raised the ire of convervative New York Times columnist Ross Douthat who devoted an entire Op-Ed piece to blasting scholars who would give any view of Jesus’ birth other than the “no human father” option. It seemed to me sort of an odd piece to appear in the New York Times, and as several readers noted in the Comment section following the article. You can find my own comment, 5th from the top:

http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/27/choose-your-own-jesus/

Finally, on newsstands now, is a special issue of USNews & World Report, titled Mysteries of History, that contains a three page interview with me on “Jesus Last Days Revealed.” I encourage readers to purchase the entire issue but I have attached a PDF version here of my own contribution.

There is a fascinating article, not to be missed, by Prof. Eilat Mazar on her excavations in the “City of David” area of Jerusalem on-line at the Biblical Archaeology Society web site, “Did I Find David’s Palace?”

Prof. Mazar recounts in a most objective way how her efforts developed over the years, the obstacles she has faced, and her interpretation of the results. I knew her grandfather from the 1968 digging south of the Temple Mount and I particularly enjoyed her story about talking with him before he died about this area. There are lots photos of the “City of David” area taken from 1900-1920 and there is not a building in that whole area, Jewish, Christian or Arab, other than the pump house for the Gihon built by the British. The dense construction we see there today is mostly post 1948 with some initial building in the 1930s. Too bad we can’t go back in time and skip the local turf wars of who owns what. David belongs to the ages, to humankind, and is the common spiritual ancestor of Jews, Christians, and Muslim–as is the case for all the amazing history of Jersualem, from Jebusite to today!

One the political side of things, one of the best sources for 19th and early 20th century photos of Jerusalem, not to mention just about any other photos related to Biblical studies (with some offered free), is the amazing collection of Todd Bolen at Bibleplaces.com. In this case, that is, the City of David, a picture is truly worth a thousand words–or more!

In terms of biblical and archaeological studies, especially what has been called “Biblical Archaeology,” I find the arguments Prof. Mazar offers in her article about how the texts of the Hebrew Bible can be properly used as a source for ancient Jerusalem and its potential correlation with material evidence both balanced and compelling. Our task is always to “find what is there” and to explore and examine the material evidence of the past as objectively as possible, regardless of religious traditions. However, the methods Prof. Mazar pursues in this regard are in my view are sound and historically responsible. After all, to ignore these ancient texts entirely is as misguided as to use them as a road map to predict and interpret what one finds, regardless of the evidence.

FIVE KEZAR PONDS, ME — Ronald Arthur Gestwicki, 71, of Five Kezar Ponds, Maine and Sanibel, Florida died at Stephens Memorial Hospital on Tuesday, May 18th, 2010 after a nearly three year fight with mesothelioma, and one week after his return to his beloved ponds. He was born on January 19, 1939, in Dunkirk, New York, to Earnest and Beatrice Gestwicki and attended schools in Dunkirk. He graduated from the University of Buffalo in 1960 with a BA in chemistry, awarded the T. R. McConnell award as the outstanding graduate. He spent the year following graduation in New York City as a special student at Columbia University, a laboratory technician at Mount Sinai Hospital, and the summer in London, England in the Winant Volunteer Student Program. He then attended General Theological Seminary in New York City, graduating in 1964 with a Master of Divinity. In 1966 he enrolled at Drew Graduate School to study for a Ph.D. in religion and modern literature. After transferring to Syracuse University in 1968, he received his Ph.D. in 1971. As a college professor, he taught at Hobart and William Smith from 1970-1972. Most of his academic career was spent teaching in the Religious Studies department at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, from 1972 until retirement in 2001. While teaching full-time, he also worked part-time as an Intensive Journal Consultant, then as Director of Advanced Studies in Holistic Depth Psychology for Ira Progoff’s Dialogue House Program in New York City. After retirement, he attended Antioch New England Graduate School, graduating in 2003 with a Master of Science in Environmental Studies. His last work was a field biologist for the Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation, 2001-2007. He was the author of two books: Santa Claus, The Tooth Fairy and Other Stories: A Child’s Introduction to Religion (1978), and A Life Study of Franz Kafka: Using the Intensive Journal Method by Ira Progoff (1992).

He was married to Carol Louise Findlater of Hamilton, Ontario, Canada in 1964. They met in Kenya on Operation Crossroads Africa during the summer of 1962, and spent the first two years of marriage working for the Episcopal Church in German South West Africa, now Namibia. He was an involved and loving father for sons Timothy Scott, born in 1965, and Jay Douglas, born in 1971. Beyond his professional and family life, Ron loved the outdoors, and was a passionate environmentalist and conservationist, serving on the board of the Greater Lovell Land Trust, and as President of the Five Kezar Ponds Watershed Association until his illness. He was a competitive runner, a social activist, and a lover of good times. He will be remembered by family and friends as a man with strong convictions and opinions.

He is survived by his wife of 45 years, Carol, his sons Tim and Jay, both of Charlotte, and granddaughters Lila and Rose.

There will be a graveside burial ceremony on Sunday, May 23, 2010 in Woodlawn Cemetery, North Waterford, Maine, followed by a reception in the family cottage, 114 Five Kezar Ponds, Rd. In lieu of flowers remembrance donations may be made to the Greater Lovell Land Trust, P. O. Box 181, Center Lovell, ME 04016, with the designation ‘Ron Gestwicki Memorial.’

Arrangements are under the direction of Weston-Chandler Funeral Home 45 Main St., South Paris. Online condolences may be shared with his family at www.westonchandler.com
Published in Charlotte Observer on May 21, 2010

Adam Gopnik has a long, fascinating, and witty, New Yorker-style essay on the search for the historical Jesus. As I began reading it I have to confess, modestly of course, that the opening few paragraphs seemed like a pretty accurate summary of my own book, The Jesus Dynasty (Simon & Schuster, 2006) as Gopnik ticked through his points about John the Baptizer, Sepphoris, and the meaning of tekton. I was pleased to see acknowledgment further along, with my treatment of the theories about Jesus’ paternity and the name Pantera briefly touched upon. All in all though it is really a good piece and I recommend it:

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2010/05/24/100524crat_atlarge_gopnik

This wonderful tribute to Moshe Greenberg, who died yesterday, on Shabbat, is well worth reading as we contemplate some of the amazing accomplishments and insights of this master of the Hebrew Bible, surely one of the greatest in our generation…

Thanks to Jeffrey Tigay who wrote it some time ago but it captures the spirit of this great scholar’s work…

www.sas.upenn.edu/~jtigay/MGbio.doc

MOSHE GREENBERG

Moshe Greenberg was born in Philadelphia on July 10, 1928.  Raised in a Hebrew-speaking, Zionist home, he studied Bible and Hebrew literature from his youth. At the University of Pennsylva nia, where he received his Ph.D. in 1954, he studied Bible and Assyriology with E.A. Speiser; simultaneously, he studied post biblical Judaica at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. Strongly influenced by the comparative Biblical-Assyriological approach of Speiser and by the studies of the Israeli scholar Yehezkel Kaufmann in Biblical thought and religion, Greenberg’s scholarship is characterized by the critical integration of ancient Near Eastern and Jewish materials in his explication of the Bible.

Greenberg taught Bible and Judaica at the University of Pennsylvania from 1964-1970 and at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem from 1970-1996. The first Jewish Biblical scholar appointed to a position in a secular university after World War II, Greenberg has had an important influence on the development of Biblical scholarship, particularly, but not limited to, Jewish Biblical scholarship. He has devoted most of his attention to the phenomenology of biblical religion and  law, the theory and practice of interpreting biblical texts, and the role of  the Bible in Jewish thought.

In the area of prayer, Greenberg traced the development of Biblical petition  and  praise away from their roots in the conception that the deity  literally needs to be informed of the worshiper’s plight and  propitiated by flattery, into “a vehicle of humility, an expression of  un-selfsufficiency, which in biblical thought, is the proper stance  of  humans before God” (Studies, 75-108). In Biblical Prose Prayer he showed that the prose prayers embedded in Biblical narratives reflect the piety of commoners. He reasoned that the frequency of spontaneous prayer must have sustained  a constant sense of God’s presence and strengthened the egalitarian tendency of Israelite religion which led to the establishment  of  the  synagogue. The fact that prayer was  conceived  as  analogous to  a social transaction  between  persons fostered an emphasis  on sincerity, and may lie at the root of the classical-prophetic view of  worship as a  gesture  whose acceptance depends  on   adherence to the values of God. In  his  “Reflections on Job’s Theology” (Studies, 327-333) Greenberg observes  that Job’s experience of God’s inex plicable enmity  could  not  wipe  out his knowledge of God’s benignity gained  from  his earlier  experience,  and  hence he became  confused  instead of simply  rejecting God. Accordingly, the fact that the  Bible  retains Job as well as the Torah, Prophets, and Proverbs reflects the capacity of the  religious sensibility to affirm both experiences: “No single key unlocks the mystery of  destiny.”

In the  area  of biblical law, Greenberg argued that “the law [is] the expression of underlying postulates or  values of culture” and that differences  between  Biblical and ancient Near Eastern laws  were not reflections  of  different stages of social  development  but  of different underlying legal and religious principles (Studies, 25-41). Analyzing economic, social,  political,  and religious laws in the Torah, he showed that their thrust was to disperse authority and prestige through out society and prevent the monopolization of prestige and  power by narrow elite groups (Studies, 51-61).

In his commentaries on Exodus (1969) and Ezekiel  (1983, 1997), Greenberg developed  his “holistic”  method  of  exegesis. While  building on the  source-critical  achievements  of  earli er  scholarship, the holistic method redirects attention from the text’s  “hypothetically  reconstructed  elements”  to the  bibli cal  books  as integral  wholes,  as  the products of  thoughtful  and  artistic design  conveying  messages  of  their  own. This approach recalls scholarly  attention to  the “received text [which] is the only historically  attested datum;  it  alone has had demonstrable effects; it alone  is  the undoubted  product of Israelite creativity.” In this connection argues that since  midrashic and later pre-critical Jewish exegesis  operated on the assumption of unitary authorship, they have many  insights to offer the holistic commentator.

Greenberg’s studies of Jewish thought include important studies of the  intellectual  achievements  of  medieval  Jewish   exegesis (1988 lecture, forthcoming), investigations  of Rabbinic  reflections on defying illegal orders (Studies, 395-403), and  attitudes toward members of other  religions  (Studies, 369-393; “A Problematic Heritage”).  In the latter he argues that a  Scripture-based  religion can and must avoid fundamentalism by being selective and critical in its reliance on tradition and by re-prioritizing values. In “Jewish Conceptions of the Human Factor  in Biblical Prophecy” (Studies, 405-419), Greenberg shows that from the Talmud  to the Renaissance, classical Jewish exe getes and thinkers who never doubted  the divine inspiration and authorship of the Torah and other  prophetic writings neverthe less acknowledged the  literary evidence of human shaping of the text.

WORKS

The Hab/piru. New Haven: American Oriental Society, 1955

The Religion of Israel, abridged English translation of vols. 1-7 Yehezkel Kaufmann’s Toldot

ha’Emuna ha-Yisre’lit. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960

Introduction to Hebrew. Englewood, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1965

Understanding Exodus New York: Behrman House, 1969

Ezekiel 1-20 and Ezekiel 21-37 (Anchor Bible. Garden City: Doubleday, 1983, 1997)

Biblical Prose Prayer.  University of California, 1983

Studies in the Bible and Jewish Thought (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1995) includes

many of Greenberg’s essays. Most notable are the following:

·      “Three Conceptions of the Torah in Hebrew Scriptures.”

·      “Some Postulates of Biblical Criminal Law.”

·      “Biblical Attitudes toward Power: Ideal and Reality in Law  and Prophets”

·      “On the Refinement of the Conception of Prayer in Hebrew Scriptures.”

·      Religion: Stability and Ferment.”

·      “The Stabilization of the Text of the Hebrew Bible: Reviewed in the Light of the Biblical Materials from the Judean Desert.”

·      “The Use of the Ancient Versions for Interpreting the Hebrew Text.”

·      “Reflections on Interpretation.”

·      “To Whom and For What Should a Bible Commentator Be Respon sible.”

·      “Another Look at Rachel’s Theft of the Teraphim.”

·      “The Decalogue Tradition Critically Examined.”

·      “Reflections on Job’s Theology.”

·      “Rabbinic Reflections on Defying Illegal Orders: Amasa, Abner, and Joab.”

·      “Jewish Conceptions of the Human Factor in Biblical Prophe cy.”

·      “Bible Interpretation as Exhibited in the First Book of Maimonides’ Code.”

·      See also:

·      “Prophecy in Hebrew Scripture.” Dictionary of the History of Ideas, ed. Philip P. Wiener (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1973).  3:657-664.

·      “Biblical Judaism (20th-4th centuries BCE).” Encyclopaedia Bri tannica: Macropaedia. 15th ed. Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1974. 10: 303-310.

·      “A Problematic Heritage: The Attitude Toward the gentile in the Jewish Tradition — An Israel Perspective,” Conservative Judaism 48/2 (Winter, 1996):23-35.

·      Articles in Encyclopaedia Judaica  (Jerusalem:  Keter, and New York: Macmillan), 1972:  “Decalogue” (5:1435-1446), “Herem” (8:345-350), “Sabbath” (14:557-562).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

“Moshe Greenberg: An Appreciation,” and “Bibliography of the Writings of Moshe Greenberg,” pp.

ix-xxxviii in M. Cogan, B.L. Eichler, and J.H. Tigay, eds., Tehilla le-Moshe. Biblical and Judaic

Studies in Honor of Moshe Greenberg. Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbraun’s, 1997

S.D. Sperling, ed., Students of the Covenant: A History of Jewish Biblical Scholarship in North

America (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992), index s.v. “Greenberg, Moshe.”

Peras Yisra’el 5754 (Israel Prizes, 1994). Israel: Ministry of Science and Arts; Ministry of

Education, Culture, and Sports, 1994), pp. 5-7 (in Hebrew)

By Jeffrey H. Tigay

University of Pennsylvania