I have just finished Stephen Patterson’s excellent article in “The Fourth R” (thank you for turning me on to this great publication) entitled Was the Resurrection Christianity’s Big Bang? Much of the article reminded me of your arguments concerning how the original Jesus experience was interpreted through the Jewish tradition and liturgy of the first century.
Patterson refers to the second prayer of the Eighteen Benedictions from the traditional Jewish liturgy (Blessed be you, O Lord, who makes the dead to live), serving as a critical lens through which the earliest confession regarding the resurrection surfaced. Would you please comment on this idea? What are these Eighteen Benedictions and how sure are we that they date back to the first century, making up an important part of the context that found meaning in Jesus’ life and death?
By the way our summer book club at the First Presbyterian Church of Hastings, Nebraska just finished a lively and rewarding study of Jesus for the Non-Religious. Thanks for your good work and leadership.
Dear John,
I share your appreciation for Steve Patterson’s two part series on the Resurrection in “The Fourth R,” which is the quarterly journal of the Westar Institute or the Jesus Seminar. I thought it was an impressive piece of work and have written Steve to tell him so. I am not sure I would base the story of the resurrection on the Benediction that he mentions, but I think it is fair to say that there was a genuine Jewish interest in life after death in the first century and it was located theologically in a concept of the justice of God. The Benediction that Steve cites reflected that interest and that conviction. I see the primary role of the Eighteen Benedictions, however, as serving a later and more crucial interest in the Christian movement.
The Eighteen Benedictions have an interesting history. Not all sources agree on the details of history regarding these Benedictions, but let me tell you what I, at least, have come to understand. There was a council meeting of Jewish leaders at a place called Jamnia in the latter half of the first century. I date it around the year 88 CE. At that time the Jews were living through a very difficult period of their history. A war with the Roman Empire had begun in Galilee in 66 CE. The forces of Rome ignored Galilee and struck instead at the capital city of Jerusalem, entering it and destroying it in 70 CE. Jewish resistance seems to have lasted three more years in the desert fortress of Masada before it was finally crushed. For all practical purposes, however, the destruction of Jerusalem brought this Jewish rebellion to an end. The Jewish nation disappeared from the pages of human history in that year and did not reappear until 1948. The Temple was destroyed and a pagan temple rebuilt over its ruins. Jerusalem was repopulated with non-Jewish citizens.
With no nation, no holy city, no Temple and no priesthood, the Jewish religion was hard pressed to survive. The Jews who were followers of Jesus were still at this time members of the synagogue. They were busy incorporating Jesus into Jewish worship. They were thought of as Jewish revisionists, that is, they were tolerated, but not appreciated in traditional Jewish circles. With the loss of so much of their symbolic life during the war and following the defeat at the hands of the Romans, this tolerance began to fade and was replaced by increased irritation. Ultimately, the tension got so hostile between the two Jewish groups that at this meeting of Jewish leaders in Jamnia, the more traditional orthodox party of Jews adopted the Eighteen Benedictions, all of which had had an earlier history, for use in the synagogue liturgy. In these Benedictions anathemas were articulated against the “heretics” who, it seems, believed the things identified with the Jewish Christians. This meant that in synagogue worship the Jewish followers of Jesus had to participate in their own anathematization. It was the adoption of these Benedictions for synagogue usage that ultimately led to the excommunication of the followers of Jesus from the synagogue, which seems to have occurred near the end of the 9thdecade. John’s gospel needs to be understood, at least on one level, as the product of the excommunicated Jewish followers of Jesus, which is why the idea of being expelled from the synagogue is mentioned three times in John’s gospel and is the subject of the dialogue with the man born blind in John, chapter nine. That is also why, I believe, this gospel alone adopts the name of God “I AM” to be the way Jesus identifies himself.
Piecing this story together from ancient sources is not always easy and exactness is often hard to achieve, but I think this is basically accurate and I hope it is helpful.
My best,
~John Shelby Spong
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