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From hills to plains
In one sense this book is mostly a summary of New Testament scholarship. In another sense it establishes (or re-establishes) what we have long known - that the Jesus of tradition is not single, unified person but a man of many faces.

Vermes is unambiguous: "By the end of the first century Christianity had lost sight of the real Jesus and of the original meaning of his message." The question I asked as I read this book was whether or not the author thinks he is able to discover "the original meaning" of the message. Indeed, does he claim to know what the original message was? Does he know the "real" Jesus?

From my no doubt limited and amateurish standpoint, it seems to me that there is today a distinct gap between two approaches to the "real" Jesus. The first can be broadly termed an historical approach. The second is the approach in "faith".

The historical position in relation to the real Jesus is of two strands. Both claim to be historical in the sense that they capture Jesus "as he really was". 

One strand admits as data most of the gospel accounts, including Johannine narrative, as well as data gleaned from the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles. It excludes only those parts of the data which appear grossly impossible in the light of modern knowledge, such as Jesus walking on water. 

The other strand applies rigorous standards designed to meet the requirements of non-Christian historians. It is left with comparatively little knowledge of Jesus "as he really was" - but what it retains is relatively powerful in that it would be confirmed by many secular historians.

The approach from faith doesn't mind exactly how much of "the real Jesus of history" we can salvage - though it would prefer more than less good information. This is the result of a position which holds that being a Christian is less about the historical Jesus and more about faith. By the latter is meant acceptance that history takes us only so far, beyond which we are called to trust in the witness of early Christians. 

So although evidence for the physical resurrection of Jesus might not be all we'd like, for example, we need not worry because we rest ultimately upon the testimony of honest witnesses in the first place, and upon our existential experience of the Risen Lord in the second.

Vermes' intention in this excellent book appears to be:

• To give equal weight to the Old and New Testaments. The Jewish books, he says, have been used as "... servants and auxiliaries, allowed to speak only when spoken to."

• To examine the effects of the transition from the spoken words and observed acts of Jesus to the relatively elaborate interpretations of the New Testament "... in order to discover changes and developments in meaning, and even potential deformation."

He tackles his subject in reverse, as it were. Instead of progressing along a timeline from Mark to John, he begins with the latter, putting "... the engine into reverse" to search for the human Jesus, moving "... from the Everest of the Gospel of St John and the high peaks of the letters of St Paul towards the much more this-worldly figure of the Jesus of Jewish Christianity in the hills and on the plain of the Acts of the Apostles and the Synoptic Gospels, in the hope of catching a glimpse of the real Jesus concealed beneath the accounts of Mark, Matthew and Luke."

FIn one sense Vermes gives us little new in his review of the Jesus of the New Testament. His summaries of the enormous body of scholarship which underpins his conclusions are succinct yet accurate. There are frequent flashes of insight. The author is a world-figure in relation to the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Essenes, a group of Jewish ascetics who were Jesus' contemporaries. He's also Jewish - and so is able to bring to his readers a broader perspective than they usually get. In short, he brings to life the social and literary background in which Jesus lived.

It bears mentioning in passing that this book has nothing for the Christian fundamentalist who has concluded that the Bible contains the original, undistorted words of God. Vermes is firmly in the camp which considers the New Testament in terms of analytical history. Indeed, his central thesis rests upon a distinction between history and the a-historical intentions and methods of the authors.

So, for example, the long monologues in John's Gospel purporting to be "what Jesus really said" mustn't be taken as anything else but the theology of its author. Vermes takes his readers quickly but accurately through the extreme difficulties of treating much of John's Gospel narrative as good history.

The Jesus of John differs radically from the Synoptic Jesus of Mark, Matthew and Luke. He is "... a mysterious stranger, a celestial being in human disguise, who came from above and was to re-ascend into heaven ... In contemporary jargon he could be called an ET." John's account of Jesus "... postdates Jesus by at least seventy years, [so] the chances of hearing the genuine voice of the Galilean Master are minimal."

Vermes discovers many faces of Jesus in the Fourth Gospel alone - Jesus as teacher, prophet, Messiah, king, son of God, Lord, lamb of God, son of man, the "personified Holy Spirit" and (in more philosophical mode) the very logos or Word of God.

Even though Paul uses the concept of Jesus as God's son, Vermes establishes convincingly that this is not equivalent to John's Son of God. More than that, 

... Paul's prayers and liturgical blessings are regularly addressed to God or the Father, and not to, though often through, Jesus Christ. As a result, Christ is neatly distinguished from God.

Jesus in Paul's writings is, says Vermes, essentially a theological figure. His importance and power derive from his significance in the light of Paul's vision on the road to Damascus. That Paul made the cross central to his interpretation of the meaning of Jesus is old hat - but nevertheless worth reiterating. Vermes is, I think, entirely convincing when he writes that the Pauline "myth" of redemption 

...though consistently structured, is essentially supra-rational, and although designed with vaguely historical strokes as the culmination of a salvation mystery, the last Adam repairing the harm caused by the first, it is painted with faint, almost indistinguishable colours.

The implications of this position are not spelled out by Vermes. His concerns lie elsewhere. He makes the point, however, that Paul's accounts of the resurrection of Jesus and the last supper are governed by Paul's own assertion that they are the tradition he received. That is, he informs his readers and us that there is a tradition and that it includes these two centre-pieces of the Christian faith. His letters to the Corinthians probably date from around 55, so we can be reasonably sure that the tradition is early.

But far more importantly if Vermes is correct, Paul's purpose is quoting these traditions was not historical. That is, by quoting them he was not making a statement about historical veracity. This was not his need; it was not the need of those he was writing to; it was not even a concern of the followers of "The Way" - the early Jewish and pioneer Gentile Christians. They did not and could not think of history as we do. Nor did or could Paul himself so think. Our analytical, scientific desire to know "what really happened" would, to put it bluntly, have been considered little short of absurd. We, not they, would have been considered the fools.

The evidence is solid that Paul regarded his revelation of "Christ crucified" as independent of what had been handed down. At the same time, he was not ignorant of the tradition. What is so hard for us to realise is that the tradition was never meant to be history. It was theology, proven correct by Old Testament prophecy and teachings of ancient holy men. 

In the same way, Paul's teaching of Christ crucified was not intended to "prove" that Jesus did die on the cross - that went without saying because it had been forecast (and, by the way, writes Paul, so-and-so spoke to so-and-so who says he was there). It was a statement about revelation and the understanding of God's purposes this conveys, not an historical proof.

A synoptic Jesus
Vermes makes what was for a me puzzling assertion as he embarks on a journey through the Synoptic Gospels. He writes: 

... the portrait of Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels takes the form of a biographical sketch ... they acted as narrators of the life, ideas, activities, teaching and death of a holy man of flesh and blood.

I searched in vain for a "biographical sketch" as Vermes summarised the background and content of the gospels in what seemed to me a far from unusual way. He spells out the literary sources, describes the carpenter from Nazareth, Jesus the teacher, healer and exorcist is some detail. In the process he gives the Jewish background in which Jesus lived and died.

In the event, I suspect that my definition of "biographical" and his differ. His knowledge of the cultural background enable him to draw some conclusions about Jesus which, though not new to me, might surprise some. I found his account of the Jesus of the gospels thorough, if brief. Of this figure he says, "It mirrors in some way, but is not identical with, the Jesus of history." The figure created by the Gospel authors is, he writes, destined to be gradually changed 

...step by step. It started with the miraculous birth recorded in Matthew and Luke, and continued through Paul and John by the Fathers, the theologians and the councils of the Hellenised Gentile church.

My interest perked up with the chapter entitled, "Beneath the Gospels: The real Jesus." Vermes, as far as I understand him, intends to show that the nature of the Jewish religion and society in the time of Jesus is extremely unlikely to have suggested or nurtured the idea that this holy man, who preached love and peace, and was killed as a threat to public order, would have thought of himself as the Messiah - and certainly not as the "Son of God". Nor would his immediate followers have dreamed of so naming him.

The Jesus of the Church grew rapidly from small beginnings:

The fact that Jesus was admired, or suspected, as a potential Messiah started a complex process of theological speculation which in the course of three centuries culminated in the elevation of the carpenter from Nazareth to the rank of the second person of the triune Godhead.

The Hebrew Bible, popular religion in Jesus' time, Rabbinic literature and models of holy men - none of them either allow or encourage such a conclusion.

Christ the God and an object of worship, Vermes makes clear, arose because "By the end of the first century Christianity had lost sight of the real Jesus and of the original meaning of his message." How could this happen? The original person and his message were transferred  within decades of Jesus' death from a Semitic, Palestinian setting, a Jewish religious framework, to a Greek-speaking pagan world. The transfer happened too early and too fast, spurred on, no doubt, by the destruction of Jerusalem and the final dispersal of the Jewish nation.

"The aims, ideas and style of life of Christianity had no time to properly crystallise and develop." And because of the confused tensions after 70, says Vermes, "... must be added another dark factor, the growing anti-Judaism of the church."

Does Vermes discover the "real" Jesus? He summarises New Testament scholarship well. He illuminates beautifully the various theological portraits of Jesus as Messiah, as they grow gradually more and more detailed and descriptive over the years. He eliminates the supposition that there is or ever was a unified understanding of Jesus even in the first century. He provides interesting and well-informed background to Jesus the Jew. We are left in no doubt of the role played by Gentiles in the formation of the traditional Jesus and of Paul's "revelation" in the history of the Church and its reformation. Perhaps we understand the shadowy Jesus more clearly as his Jewishness is explained.

If the "real" Jesus is a man in history, then Vermes adds slightly to the facts "as they really are". Our knowledge of "what really happened" is expanded somewhat, but the historical Jesus remains as slight a figure as ever.

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