Read The Gospel of John and Christian Origins Online
Authors: John Ashton
The earliest of the British monarchs chosen by Shakespeare as subjects for his history plays is King John, who came to the throne in 1199, the latest Henry VIII, who died in 1547. The time gap between the end of Henry’s reign and Shakespeare’s play is roughly the same as the gap between the death of Jesus and the composition of the Fourth Gospel. But the social and political situation of the Jewish people had changed no less dramatically within a span of roughly sixty years than had that in the three centuries between the reign of King John and that of Queen Elizabeth, which was when Shakespeare wrote his history plays.
To understand why, we must consider the enormity of the change undergone by the Jewish people as a consequence of their disastrous revolt against Rome. The war that followed lasted from 66 to 73
ce.
Seven bloody years of war—just think of it! Longer than either of the two world wars of the twentieth century, longer than the American Civil War, just a year shorter than the American War of Independence. And as far as the city of Jerusalem was concerned, an agonizing five-month siege was followed by complete and absolute defeat. Though repulsed time and time again, the Romans, having already destroyed the temple, eventually broke through the last ineffective ramparts erected by the defenders, and swarmed through the city, murdering, burning, and looting, leaving nothing behind that could be called a city at all. Jerusalem was an area of utter devastation, and was, for the time being, deserted. Josephus tells us that those who visited it at this time could not believe that it had ever been inhabited (
War
7.3). All the survivors fled, many of them to the coastal town of Yavneh, about forty miles west of Jerusalem, a few miles south of Tel Aviv, sometimes known by its Greek name of Jamnia. This rapidly became a special center of scholarly activity. It was the home first of Yohanan ben Zakkai and later of Gamaliel II, the two best known of a large circle of early rabbinical scholars. But of course their influence was not restricted to this one small town. It extended beyond Palestine into the Jewish Diaspora.
Let me quote Emil Schürer on the consequences of the war:
The destruction of Jerusalem resulted in a violent upheaval in the inner life of the Jewish people. The disappearance of the Sanhedrin and the suspension of the sacrificial cult were the two great factors which profoundly affected Jewish life. . . . The Sanhedrin embodied the last vestige of Jewish political independence, and with it the last remains of the power of the Sadducean nobility. The latter’s influence had already been reduced since the time of Alexandra by the growing power of Pharisaism.
[6]
Nevertheless, as long as the Sanhedrin existed, it still had a role to play. For the competence of this aristocratic senate of Judaea was, during the time of the procurators, quite far-reaching; and at its head were the Sadducean High Priests. . . . The Pharisees and the rabbis entered into the heritage of the Sadducees and the priests. They were excellently prepared for this role, for they had been pressing for leadership during the last two centuries. Now, at one stroke, they acquired sole supremacy, as the factors which had stood in their way sank into insignificance.
[7]
The priests did not lose all their authority immediately: taxes continued to be paid to them as before.
[8]
They had suffered more than most from the defeat by Rome and had retained, at least for a time, the respect of the people. And the amount of legislation in the Mishnah relating to temple worship suggests that those responsible for its redaction (including the Pharisees) still had hopes that the temple would eventually be rebuilt. But in those parts of the Gospel of John that can be shown to relate to the period of the composition of the Gospel, the priests play no part.
The Pharisees, on the other hand, play a significant part, but it is largely obscured by John’s general preference for the term
Jews
(’Ιουδαῖοι) when referring to Jesus’ adversaries. Most scholars think that he uses the two terms synonymously, but there are reasons for thinking that, in its most common, adversarial use in the Gospel, the term οἱ ’Ιουδαῖοι had come down from the self-appellation of the closely knit band of exiles who returned to Israel from Babylon when they were at last permitted to do so by the Persian king Cyrus in 538
bce.
[9]
From that time on the name
Jews
denoted primarily an inner group within Israel characterized by particularly strong monotheistic beliefs—beliefs associated with the exilic prophet Second Isaiah—what Morton Smith called “the Yahweh-alone party.”
[10]
The returning exiles who held these beliefs distinguished themselves from those who had remained behind, who came to be given the derogatory appellation
the people of the land
.
[11]
Centuries later, taking advantage of the disarray that followed the fall of Jerusalem in 70
ce
, this powerful party gradually assumed authority over the people of Israel as a whole and determined the nature of what we now call Judaism, which was pretty well settled by the time of the publication of the Mishnah, around 200
ce.
The Pharisees, numbered by Josephus at roughly six thousand, must have had great influence within this inner group, but they are rarely mentioned after the end of the Jewish war. (There are only three occurrences of the name in the whole of the Mishnah.) Perhaps it was at this time that they managed to rid themselves of the separatist implications of their name by identifying themselves simply with the ’Ιουδαῖοι.
[12]
If so, then this would explain why the evangelist uses the term ’Ιουδαῖοι in passages of the Gospel relating directly to the conflict between the Jesus group in the synagogue and those who rejected the message of Jesus.
In some passages of the Gospel, however, the discussion is not with the ’Ιουδαῖοι but with the Pharisees. These passages, as the Cambridge scholar Ernst Bammel pointed out in a little-known essay, reflect some very early disputes. “The Jews (’Ιουδαῖοι)-level,” he says, “is later,” whereas “the Pharisees-passages represent old valuable tradition,”
[13]
dating from a time when the two groups in the synagogue were still talking to one another. (I will have much more to say on this topic later.)
The quarter century that followed the defeat of the Jewish rebels saw the birth of two religions, not just one. Both of these emerged from the ruins of the temple to contend for dominance, a contention that went on for centuries, often accompanied by bitterness, misunderstanding, and mistrust. Both rabbinic Judaism and primitive Christianity can be traced back to the period following what we now call Second Temple Judaism (which, as the name suggests, lasted no longer than the Second Temple itself). But Second Temple Judaism already had its differences. That rabbinic Judaism sprang out of Pharisaism is beyond dispute. But what, precisely, were the origins of Christianity? That is a question to which there is no single answer. It would be wrong to think of the differing understandings of Jesus represented by, say, the writings of Paul, of Matthew, and of Mark, as if they had but a single provenance. In the remainder of this book I will continue to discuss one writing only, the most singular of all—the Gospel of John.