Zealot - The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth

however, what even his staunchest defenders
     cannot deny is just how deviant his views are from even the most experimental Jewish
     movements of his time.
    That Paul is speaking about himself when he cites Isaiah 49:1–6 regarding “the root
     of Jesse” serving as “a light to the Gentiles” is obvious, since even Paul admits
     that Jesus did not missionize to the gentiles (Romans 15:12).
    Research done by N. A. Dahl demonstrates just how unusual Paul’s use of the term
Xristos
(Christ) was. Dahl notes that for Paul,
Xristos
is never a predicate, never governed by a genitive, never a title but always a designation,
     and never used in the appositional form, as in
Yesus ha Xristos
, or Jesus
the
Christ. See N. A. Dahl,
Jesus the Christ: The Historical Origins of Christological Doctrine
(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991).
    It was not unusual to be called Son of God in ancient Judaism. God calls David his
     son: “today I have begotten you” (Psalms 2:7). He even calls Israel his “first-born
     son” (Exodus 4:22). But in every case, Son of God is meant as a title, not a description.
     Paul’s view of Jesus as the literal son of God is without precedence in second Temple
     Judaism.
    Luke claims that Paul and Barnabas separated because of a “sharp contention,” which
     Luke claims was over whether to take Mark with them on their next missionary trip
     but which is obviously tied to what happened in Antioch shortly after the Apostolic
     Council. While Peter and Paul were in Antioch, they engaged in a fierce public feud
     because, according to Paul, Peter stopped sharing a table with gentiles as soon as
     a delegation sent by James arrived in the city, “for fear of the circumcision faction”
     in Jerusalem (Galatians 2:12). Of course, Paul is our only source for this event,
     and there are plenty of reasons for doubting his version of the story, not the least
     of which is the fact that sharing a table with gentiles is in no way forbidden under
     Jewish law. It is more likely that the argument was about the keeping of Jewish dietary
     laws—that is, not eating gentile food—an argument in which Barnabas sided with Peter.
    Luke says Paul was sent to Rome to escape a Jewish plot to have him killed. He also
     claims that the Roman tribune ordered nearly five hundred of his soldiers to personally
     accompany Paul to Caesarea. This is absurd and can be flatly ignored.
    Claudius expelled the Jews from Rome, according to the historian Suetonius, “because
     the Jews of Rome were indulging in constant riots at the instigation of Chrestus.”
     It is widely believed that by Chrestus, Suetonius meant Christ, and that this spat
     among the Jews was between the city’s Christian and non-Christian Jews. As F. F. Bruce
     notes, “we should remind ourselves that, while wewith our hindsight can distinguish between Jews and Christians as early as the reign
     of Claudius, no such distinction could have been made at that time by the Roman authorities.”
     F. F. Bruce, “Christianity Under Claudius,”
Bulletin of the John Rylands Library
44 (March 1962): 309–26.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN: THE JUST ONE
    The description of James and the entreaties of the Jews are both taken from the account
     of the Palestinian Jewish Christian Hegesippus (100–180 C.E. ). We have access to Hegesippus’s five books of early Church history only through
     passages cited in the third-century text of
Ecclesiastical History
by Eusebius of Caesarea (c. 260–c. 339 C.E. ), an archbishop of the Church under the Emperor Constantine.
    How reliable a source Hegesippus may be is a matter of great debate. On the one hand,
     there are a number of statements by Hegesippus whose historicity the majority of scholars
     accept without dispute, including his assertion that “control of the Church passed
     together with the Apostles, to the brother of the Lord James, whom everyone from the
     Lord’s time till our own has named the Just, for there were many Jameses, but this
     one was holy from his birth” (Eusebius,
Ecclesiastical History
2.23). This claim is backed up with multiple attestations (see below) and can even
     be traced in the letters of Paul and in the book of Acts. However, there are some
     traditions in Hegesippus that are confused and downright incorrect, including his
     claim that James was allowed to “enter the Sanctuary alone.” If by “Sanctuary” Hegesippus
     means the Holy of Holies (and there is some question as to whether that