The Rev. John Meier, professor of New Testament at Notre Dame, is one of my heroes. Over the past few years, I've read each of the volumes of his indispensable A Marginal Jew, a multivolume work (still rolling out) on "the historical Jesus." If you want to know more about the life and times of Jesus, and what was going on in first-century Palestine (and who doesn't?) Father Meier is your man. Here he is in an hour-long lecture on "Jesus the Jew: But What Sort of Jew?" Webby sleuthing led to the discovery that it's the Eugene C. Burke, CSP Lecture on Religion and Society, at the University of California, Davis, from October 2001. The rest of this series on Youtube is pretty impressive: David Tracy, Stanley Hauerwas, Avery Cardinal Dulles, Amy-Jill Levine, Elizabeth Johnson, CSJ. You have some time today, right? Check it out.
The persons using that contra-historical oxymoron (demonstrated by the eminent late Oxford historian, James Parkes, The Conflict of the Church and the Synagogue) exposes dependancy upon 4th-century, gentile, Hellenist sources.
While scholars debate the provenance of the original accounts upon which the earliest extant (4th century, even fragments are post-135 C.E.), Roman gentile, Hellenist-redacted versions were based, there is not one fragment, not even one letter of the NT that derives DIRECTLY from the 1st-century Pharisee Jews who followed the Pharisee Ribi Yehoshua.
Historians like Parkes, et al., have demonstrated incontestably that 4th-century Roman Christianity was the 180° polar antithesis of 1st-century Judaism of ALL Pharisee Ribis. The earliest (post-135 C.E.) true Christians were viciously antinomian (ANTI-Torah), claiming to supersede and displace Torah, Judaism and ("spiritual) Israel and Jews. In soberest terms, ORIGINAL Christianity was anti-Torah from the start while DSS (viz., 4Q MMT) and ALL other Judaic documentation PROVE that ALL 1st-century Pharisees were PRO-Torah.
There is a mountain of historical Judaic information Christians have refused to deal with, at: www.netzarim.co.il (see, especially, their History Museum pages beginning
with "30-99 C.E.").
Original Christianity = ANTI-Torah. Ribi Yehoshua and his Netzarim, like all other Pharisees, were PRO-Torah. Intractable contradiction.
Building a Roman image from Hellenist hearsay accounts, decades after the death of the 1st-century Pharisee Ribi, and after a forcible ouster, by Hellenist Roman gentiles, of his original Jewish followers (135 C.E., documented by Eusebius), based on writings of a Hellenist Jew excised as an apostate by the original Jewish followers (documented by Eusebius) is circular reasoning through gentile-Roman Hellenist lenses.
What the historical Pharisee Ribi taught is found not in the hearsay accounts of post-135 C.E. Hellenist Romans but, rather, in the Judaic descriptions of Pharisees and Pharisee Ribis of the period... in Dead Sea Scroll 4Q MMT (see Prof. Elisha Qimron), inter alia.
To all Christians: The question is, now that you've been informed, will you follow the authentic historical Pharisee Ribi? Or continue following the post-135 C.E. Roman-redacted antithesis—an idol?
I thought missing from the lecture was the word "Messiah" and given the response of Jesus to John the"Plunger" about the mesianic miracles, it struck me that that was an important notion to approach, especially in terms of the other biggy question, Jesus self consciousness.