Corpus-Paul

["Hyam Maccoby" <h.z.maccoby AT leeds.ac.uk>]

Dear Loren,

You wrote:

>Why the disciples reintegrated themselves with the
sacrificial cult after Jesus' death is one of the
biggest NT mysteries, and theories run rampant in all
directions. <

This seems to me to be manufacturing a 'mystery' quite unnecessarily.  If
Jesus was not opposed to the sacrificial cult (as I argue) there is no
mystery at all.  On the principle of Occam's razor, the simplest hypothesis
is the best.

The arguments that Jesus was in fact opposed to the sacrificial cult all
turn out, on examination, to be extremely weak.  He was opposed, indeed, to
the High Priest, but so were the whole Pharisee movement, who were not at
all pleased with the fact that the Temple was presided over by a Sadducee
(i.e. in their eyes a heretic) and by an appointee of the Romans (see
Josephus) who acted as a quisling in the interests of the Roman Occupation.
It was a Pharisee saying, recorded in the Mishnah, that 'a learned bastard
takes precedence over an ignorant High Priest', and Caiaphas would certainly
qualify in Pharisee eyes as an 'ignorant High Priest' ,though the Gospels
(for rather obvious reasons) play down the conflict between the Pharisees
and the High Priest, and indeed ludicrously present the High Priest as a
kind of Jewish Pope or chief representative of Jewish religion generally.

The best evidence remains the attitude of Jesus' immediate disciples.  That
they would reverse Jesus' standpoint immediately after his death is
incredible.  That they were too stupid to understand Jesus' attitude was of
course a thesis sedulously cultivated by their opponents in the Pauline
Church.

With all good wishes,

Hyam

--------------------------------------------------------------




Dr.Hyam Maccoby
Research Professor
Centre for Jewish Studies
University of Leeds
Leeds.LS2
Direct lines: tel. +44 (0)113 268 1972
                   fax +44 (0)113 225 9927
e-mail: h.z.maccoby AT leeds.ac.uk


----- Original Message -----
From: "Loren Rosson" <rossoiii AT yahoo.com>
To: "Corpus-paul" <corpus-paul AT franklin.metalab.unc.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, September 10, 2002 11:55 AM
Subject: [corpus-paul] Re: The blood of the covenant


> Hyam,
>
> Thanks for the response. See comments below.
>
> >the Gospel accounts of the Last Supper are
> >simply attempts to import the Pauline Eucharist
> >into the narrative - attempts which show their
> >artificiality by their inconsistency
> >with each other.
>
> The inconsistencies actually point to independent
> traditions. At least, Luke's eucharist tradition seems
> independent of the Markan/Matthean version. I see no
> hints of Pauline intrusion into the synoptic accounts.
>
> >The Gospel which shows the greatest enthusiasm of all
>
> >for the Eucharist is that of John, and he omits it
> >from his Last Supper narrative altogether. Surely
> >this fact is very significant, showing that
> >the Eucharist is an intrusion into the Last Supper
> >narrative, since if it had been an integral
> >ingredient, John, of all people, would surely have
> >included it. How do you explain his omission of it?
>
> I don't follow your logic at all. John axed the
> eucharist from the last supper tradition precisely
> because he felt it didn't belong there. The spiritual
> metaphor would have been diluted. Literal bread and
> wine (as that eaten at the synoptic last supper), for
> John, had nothing to do with "real" bread and wine --
> that is, the "bread of God which comes down from
> heaven" (Jn 6:33), etc.
>
> >Where we differ most is about Jesus' attitude
> >towards the Temple. I think it is important to point
> >out that his closest disciples, the leaders
> >of the Jerusalem Church, were strong supporters of
> the
> >Temple, as is stressed in Acts (e.g. Acts 2:46).
>
> Why the disciples reintegrated themselves with the
> sacrificial cult after Jesus' death is one of the
> biggest NT mysteries, and theories run rampant in all
> directions. What we hypothesize depends on how we
> perceive the nature of Jesus' prior conflict with the
> temple. For instance, Bruce Chilton and Jacob Neusner
> believe that Jesus had made his meals of bread and
> wine into a rival altar because of the controversy
> over where the action of acquiring animals for
> sacrifice was to occur. According to them, Jesus --
> much like Hillel (and thoroughly unlike Shammai) --
> believed that offerings brought to the temple should
> have hands laid on them by their owners before giving
> them over to the priests to be slaughtered. Caiaphas'
> installation of traders in the southern court not only
> brought in commercialism and the forbidden purses, but
> (more importantly) it created a breach of the link
> between worshipper and offering in the southern and
> northern areas of the temple. After Caiaphas' death,
> the vendors of animals were restored to their usual
> position -- not in the temple, but on the Mount of
> Olives opposite the Kidron Valley -- and so the
> followers of Jesus were able to reintegrate with the
> sacrificial cult. Now that's just Chilton and Neusner.
> Other scholars (Ed Sanders, Tom Wright, John Meier,
> Dick Horsley, etc) have their own ideas about why
> Jesus opposed the temple and how his followers
> subsequently reintegrated with it.
>
> >Nothing that Jesus taught them led them to believe
> >that the validity of the Temple had ceased.
>
> Sure! Unless he believed in its imminent destruction
> and purposefully supplanted its sacrificial system
> with the eucharist. :)
>
> By the way, Hyam, I agree with you somewhat about
> Paul. It was he who began introducing pagan elements
> into the eucharist. But a complete break from Jesus --
> from the eucharist understood soley as alternative
> Jewish sacrifice to a full-fledged pagan understanding
> -- hadn't yet been effected.
>
> Thanks again for the comments.
>
> Loren Rosson III
> Nashua NH
> rossoiii AT yahoo.com
>
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