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Hillel Halkin, in his review of my book, Revolution in Judea [Books in Review, September 1981], asserts that because the Gospels underwent “basic editing” it is impossible to arrive at any reliable conclusions about the historical Jesus. This is to overlook the fact that our knowledge of every figure of the ancient world depends on texts that require critical sifting. In the case of Jesus, we are lucky enough to have four documents which, by supplementing and contradicting each other, give grounds for scientific investigations and conclusions. We also have a wealth of documentation, by which background details can be checked, in Josephus, Philo, the Talmud, and Roman authors.

Mr. Halkin fails to understand the methods of textual criticism of the Gospels used in my book and in other works of the historical school. These methods are not arbitrary, as he supposes. When faced with contradictions in the texts, one asks, “Which is the earlier, more authentic version?,” and the answer must be one that can explain how the later version came to be added. Thus, the question of Jesus' alleged pacifism (adduced by Mr. Halkin as insoluble) demands an explanation of passages in which Jesus is shown as the reverse of a pacifist, e.g., his forcible expulsion of the moneychangers. The principle used is the well-tried one, lectio difficilis melior, i.e., the passage that goes against the grain of the narrative, or contradicts its general Tendenz, is likely to be a survival of the underlying earlier version, for it could not have been added at a late stage when the Tendenz was fully established.

Mr. Halkin's naive question as to how censorship could have allowed “incriminating passages [to] pass,” shows great faith in the competence of censors. Even in modern works, censorship is always imperfect: for example, a future historian would be able to reconstruct the importance of Trotsky in the Russian Revolution even from textbooks in which that importance has been censored out. If the historian had a series of four Soviet textbooks of different dates in which the process of censorship could be observed progressively, the reconstruction would be much easier; and this is exactly the situation in regard to the four Gospels (Mr. Halkin does not even mention the methodological importance in my book of the order in which the Gospels were written). When, further, the myth of Jesus' pacifism is given its historical explanation (the desire of the Gospel writers to avoid political conflict with Rome and to dissociate themselves from militant Jewish nationalism), the argument is complete, for all the text and its process of development has been explained, not just the parts selected as early and authentic.

These methods, especially when confirmed by technical documentary analysis, can attain a high level of probability. Mr. Halkin's approach, however, leaves contradictions altogether unexplained and inexplicable. He also gives a crude account of the process of censorship, when he supposes it to be the conscious perpetration of “blatant fictions.” As I explain, the process is much more likely to have been unconscious.

Mr. Halkin refers to what he calls the “Carmichael-Brandon-Maccoby” hypothesis, and wonders why I do not give more acknowledgment to the first two names in this designation. This shows considerable ignorance of the literature of the subject. The view that Jesus had no intention of founding a new religion and that his claim to be the messiah had an anti-Roman political aspect has been held by hundreds of authors. Moreover, Mr. Halkin is wrong in thinking that the Jewish Jesus is a “modern enterprise” and “Christian scholars began it,” for a similar approach can be found in medieval Jewish authors, notably Profiat Duran and Hasdai Crescas. The whole line of thought dates from the time when Jewish scholars began to study the New Testament seriously, and found that it conflicted with the official Church interpretation of Jesus' intentions.

It is true that S.G.F. Brandon and my good friend Joel Carmichael (to whom I do refer in the book) and myself and many others all belong to an established school of thought that contrasts the historical Jesus with the Jesus of the Christian myth. While there are many vital matters on which we are agreed, there are also important differences among us. For example, unlike Carmichael and Robert Eisler (and before them, H. Rodrigues and M. Fluegel), I do not argue (despite Mr. Halkin's misrepresentation) that Jesus was a Zealot. I see no evidence of realistic military planning or activity on Jesus' part; I see him, rather, as a figure similar to Theudas, i.e., an apocalyptic messianic claimant who expected that a God-given miracle (on the Mount of Olives, in accordance with biblical prophecy) would overwhelm the Romans, accompanied by only token fighting by himself and his followers. This answers Mr. Halkin's objection that the Romans do not seem to have taken Jesus' rising very seriously; as I explain in my book, a disturbance by an excited mob would either die down quickly or could be quelled by the removal of the charismatic figure at its center, as in the case of Theudas described by Josephus. Jesus is mentioned by Josephus, contrary to Mr. Halkin's assertion, though the passage has been much tampered with by Christian editors.

Brandon, to whom I make frequent reference in my book, also sees Jesus as a Theudas-figure, but he does not stress, as I do, Jesus' kingship, and thus interprets incidents such as the Transfiguration and the Triumphal Entry very differently. Ideologically, moreover, Brandon and I are poles apart. Brandon, following Rudolf Bultmann, regards the historical Jesus as entirely lacking the theological significance of the mythical Jesus based on Hellenistic mystery-religion. While this releases Brandon to consider the historical Jesus objectively, it blinds him to the religious value of Jewish messianism, which comprises a fusion of religion and politics that the modern “liberation theology” is seeking to recover. The theological aspect of my book is dismissed by Mr. Halkin in a phrase about the “apologetic character” of my defense of the Pharisees. But my whole point is that the “political Jesus” is not, as Christians think, smaller than the otherworldly Jesus, but greater; and the Jewish concept of the messiah is superior to that of Christianity, which delivers this world into the hands of tyranny and injustice.

It is in this light that my view of the Barabbas incident should be regarded. Mr. Halkin's comment that it is “cleverly original, if not necessarily convincing” is quite inadequate to the scope of my intention, which was not merely to propose an ingenious solution to a problem. From the literary standpoint, the Barabbas incident is the center of the Gospel story, encapsulating the theme of Jewish political-minded worldliness versus Christian “spiritual” otherworldliness. The contrast reaches its height in the Jewish choice of the “robber” Barabbas in preference to Jesus the otherworldly pacifist. My argument, beginning with the fact that Barabbas' name is given in early manuscripts as “Jesus Barabbas,” and that there is no previous or later mention of him either in the Gospels or elsewhere, is that Jesus and Barabbas were originally the same person (“Barabbas” being a title, equivalent to “Son of the Father”), but were split off and given separate identities in order to detach Jesus from his political aims and his Jewish affiliation. The Jewish crowd, who actually shouted for Jesus' release, was then represented as supporting the wrong Jesus, and was therefore saddled with the guilt of the death of the true Jesus. I added that “even if one regards Barabbas as a separate historical personage . . . [he] has been the receptacle into which the unwanted characteristics of Jesus have been dumped.” Barabbas was thus the steppingstone by which Jesus was transformed from a Jewish messiah, destroyed in political conflict with Rome, into a cosmic Christ, destroyed by the Jews in their mythical role as accursed performers of the sacrificial murder which was indispensable for salvation. This transformation has provided the driving-force for anti-Semitism throughout the Christian era.

It is an urgent task to uncover the facts underlying the myth. The work has made good progress at the hands of many able investigators, despite the inevitable objections of those who like to put foward ill-informed theories about the a priori impossibility of the task. . . .

Hyam Maccoby

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