Jesus the Man (book)

Jesus the Man: New Interpretations from the Dead Sea Scrolls is a 1993 book written by the Australian biblical scholar and theologian Barbara Thiering. Using a technique that the author calls "pesher", she purports to have uncovered evidence that effectively contradicts the biblical story, which she calls the "surface meaning" ("for 'babes'"), regarding the nature of Jesus and his mission. The book has primarily received scepticism by the scholarly community.

Content

The central thesis of the book is that "Jesus was the leader of a radical faction of Essene priests. He was not of virgin birth. He did not die on the Cross. He married Mary Magdalene, fathered a family, and later divorced. He died sometime after AD 64".

By applying her unique interpretive method to the New Testament gospels and Dead Sea Scrolls, Thiering reconstructs a new history of early Christianity which she contends was hidden in pesher coding. She sees Jesus as a prominent member of this movement, because of his descent from the Davidic kingship, as well as the efforts of his great grandfather, Hillel the Great, and his grandfather, Heli, to establish schools of religious instruction for Jews of the Diaspora. Being technically born out of wedlock, his fortunes changed depending on the views of inheritance of the high priest in power. Unlike Simon Magus, the second most important figure in the New Testament, Jesus was a pacifist and opposed the zealots, calling for a reform and renewal of religion leading to a Jewish empire which would overrule the Roman Empire by its appeal to reason and morality.

Thiering finds that the biography of Jesus hidden in the New Testament shows him to have been born in Qumran, an Essene community beside the Dead Sea, in March, 7 BC. His brother James was born (within wedlock) in September, 1 AD. In March, 17 AD, he was initiated at the age of 23, and took a political stance in favor of his (spiritual) "father", the Annas high priest, "who taught peace with Rome and the promotion of Gentiles".

Rebaptized by John the Baptist in March, 29 AD, he was soon involved in a schism from him, together with a party "called the Twelve Apostles", some of whom (including Judas Iscariot and Simon Magus) were zealots and others (including Jesus), pacifists.

Thiering examines each of the miracles in the New Testament and finds in them nothing miraculous, but rather events marking turning points in the history of "the Fig Tree", as the movement was called.

Rationale

By way of explaining how special meanings came into use and make sense, Thiering writes:

Human institutions tend to develop a private language in order to give identity. The more exclusive the institution, the more it develops a language that acts as a set of passwords, giving admission to those who are "in the know", keeping out those who are not. The institutional language may be so rarefied that it looks like nonsense to the outsider. To take some examples: If someone remarked: "I saw the bench talking to a silk", apparently making no sense, it would, in fact, convey to a member of the legal profession that a judge had been talking to a queen's counsel. Similarly, "the White House spoke to the Kremlin" would make sense to anyone who followed politics. "The Sharks play the Dragons" would be quite natural to an Australian rugby fan. A "foundation chair" in a university means the position of a first professor. An actor "treads the boards"; and "the House rises" means that parliament adjourns. The purpose of this book has been to show that the secondary meaning is objectively there in the gospels and Acts. It has set out the story that emerges, and the elements of the basic systems that lie behind the gospel history: chronology, locations, and hierarchy. A great many lesser systems remain to be set out, with their associated vocabulary. But enough has been done to show that a new chapter in our understanding of the New Testament and of Christian origins has been opened up by the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Scholarly Reception

Thiering's thesis has primarily received scepticism from the academic community. N.T. Wright, a prominent figure in the historical Jesus debate, writing in 1993 states "It is safe to say that no serious scholar has given this elaborate and fantastic theory any credence whatsoever. It is nearly ten years since it was published; the scholarly world has been able to take a good look at it: and the results are totally negative." In a critical review of the book's conclusions and methodology, Ancient Historian and New Testament scholar C.B. Forbes concludes that "Her books cannot be described as history. They are extraordinary fantasy, and have been dismissed as such by historians around the world."

Garcia Martinez, the editorial secretary of the revue de Qumran, has called her work “science fiction” and disconnected from all historical and literary reality.

See also

• Historicity of Jesus

External links

• Pesher Technique website of Dr. Barbara Thiering
• A Review of Jesus the Man by C.B. Forbes, Macquarie University