Hyam Maccoby (1924–2004)

I toyed with the notion of rereading the New Testament, this time in chronological order of composition, but the more I read other material, the less value I think that offers (one might argue negative value...too many inconsistencies and too much effort annotating for too little return). Maccoby's position is not popular, and it seems some scholars rather detested his work and theories. Regardless, I thought he made his cases well, offering the prevailing interpretations and his arguments against them. No skin off my teeth if he might have been wrong, but the skeptic in me leans in his direction.

Too many notes to share, so just a few:

In his conclusion, he says, “Books on Paul generally end with a chapter on Paul's theology, in which the authors try to tease out Paul's position on such matters as predestination, original sin, the trinity, soteriology and eschatology. It generally emerges that Paul has no sustained philosophical position on these abstract matters, though he provides much material for later more professional thinkers. Paul was not primarily a thinker, but he had a religious imagination of a high order. It seems more fruitful, therefore, to consider Paul as mythologist, rather than as theologian. No religion is based primarily on a theology. First comes the story; and later, when the imaginative fires have died down and the mythmaking faculty has ceased, along come the theologians to try to turn the story into a system.”
{Truth. Create the myth to get it to spread, and then try to rationalize/rigorize it later. Why are there so many apologetics (and apologists)? To try to explain away the inconsistencies the editors missed/created.}

“Here we hit upon an important principle of interpretation of the Gospels: when we come across a passage that goes against the grain of the narrative, we may be confident that this is part of the original, authentic narrative that has survived the operations of the censor.”
{Often overlooked by the apologizers.}

“His [Jesus] use of parables (often thought by people unfamiliar with Pharisee literature to be a mark of his uniqueness) was typical of Pharisee preaching; and even his quaint expressions such as 'a camel going through the eye of a needle', or 'take the beam out of your own eye' are Pharisee locutions found in the Talmud. This is true, of course, only of the Jesus found in the Synoptic Gospels (i.e. Mark, Matthew and Luke). In the Fourth Gospel, that of John, Jesus has become unrecognizable. He uses no parables, nor any idiosyncratic rabbinical expressions; instead he spouts grandiose Hellenistic mysticism and proclaims himself a divine personage. Here the authentic Jesus has been lost in the post-Jesus myth.”

“The use of the term 'Christ' (or 'Messiah') here [Luke 23:2] in its original political sense is interesting, for it shows that despite Christian editing ofthe Gospels, which ensured that the term was de-politicized in almost every instance, editorial vigilance could occasionally slip.”
{There's that editing problem.}

“A careful examination of the Stephen episode, however, reveals many unhistorical features, and shows how it has been built up by the author of Acts precisely for the purpose of providing a link between Paul and Jesus. […] We must conclude, therefore, that the trials of Jesus and of Stephen have been falsified in exactly the same way: namely, an originally political charge has been worked over in order to represent it as a religious charge of blasphemy. “

“Though Paul, in his Epistles, expresses contrition for his earlier role as a persecutor of Jesus' movement, he never mentions that he had anything to do with the death of Stephen; in fact, he never mentions Stephen at all. It may be argued that the author of Acts, having given the death of Stephen such a prominent place as the first Christian martyr, could not resist the theatrical touch of introducing Saul into the scenario at this point.”… (altro)