Aher (Elisha ben Abuyah) and Jesus
by G. David Schwartz
I.
How do we compare the "hero" of one culture with a personage from another
culture? The comments we make about another are likely to be uninspiring. This is especially
the case where the "hero" of one culture is the failure of another. To suggest
that an individual is heroic is a superlative term. When a Jew applies thought to Jesus,
however, the remark can only be regarded as far short of the mark. If a hero is someone
against whom we measure truth, contradictions and antinomies occur because we cannot agree
about what is true.
In contemporary times, when competition to find a good example of the type of being we
Jews call a "mensch" [a person of integrity, a personable yet effective, caring
yet capable, honest yet friendly human being] is so frustrating, why talk about failures?
Each of us knows personal failure. Why dwell on it? Surely we search for the man or woman
who is a mensch and we cannot feel good knowing the failures of others. Failure surrounds
us. Surely this ubiquity of failure makes the bright spots in life - a tender word of
encouragement, a sense of humor, and other reprieves from the everyday - all the more
healthful. Why, then, go looking for failure? Why highlight failure? Why search the past for
failure?
The mission of a human being is, in some sense, to cast light, to enlighten us by their
very presence. If so, it is an act of menschhood to enlighten our common past. A malicious
person who investigates the past may find a series of monuments to overturn and
opportunities for sarcasm. No doubt that person will be doing some stratum of the community
a favor. However, for those of us who take the sages' advice seriously - where there is no
mensch, strive to be one - there is something more imporant than facts and derisive
laughter. That which is more imporant is to be a mench.
For the honest person, the person searching and seeking honesty, of the self and the
community, one may prevaricate in a similar manner as is reported of Aaron in the Fathers
According to Rabbi Nathan, Chapter 12. There it is reported that Aaron once told two
quarreling fellows that the other beats his breast and tears his clothes. The story clearly
suggests that neither fellow was engaged in beating his chest, rending his garments, or
weeping bitter tears because of the fight in which they were engaged. Aaron lied, yet the
sages of Israel, those seekers after correct behavior, recommended this behavior! The honest
person is one who occasionally lies.
We should soften the paradox. Aaron is not known as a liar but as a priest and a prophet.
Indeed, one might say that Aaron saw that, if the two contesting partners allowed their
battle to escalate and destroy the partnership, then there would be rending of garments and
weeping. With failure all around us, we cannot afford to lose friends. In fact, Aaron's
success, the behavior recommended, is that we act so as to mitigate failure. Interestingly,
the English word "mitigate" derives from the Latin mitis, mild, and agre, to
drive. Hence, "mitigate" is an oxymoron: to force or compel mildness.
We elect presidents and want them to be heroic. We study legends and hope to find heroes.
We talk up our friends in the hopes of associating ourselves with living legendary figures.
All we find are various shades of failure. The problem is exacerbated when the hero of one
people is little more than the failure of another. The problem is even more terrible when
the self-claimed failures of one people are claimed to be more heroic than the heroes of
another people.
It seems that today's hero is yesterday's comic figure: our Don Quixote or Jacques the
Fatalist, Joseph Andrews or Tevya. A hero is someone against whom we test any application of
the truth. Therefore, a hero is an arbitrary assessment of the real. How can we regard any
hero as anything less than arbitrary as long as we do not agree on what is true, just, and
good?
For Christians, Jesus was and is the Christ, the Son of God, very God of the universe.
Even disaffected Christians, typically, are disillusioned with what they regard as outmoded
rules and regulations, not with Jesus himself. Accordingly, Jesus is a brilliant
personality, a profound moralist, a religious genius. Although Jews resist speaking about
Jesus while engaged in the daily practice of Judaism (as diverse as these practices are),
and do not feel compelled to speak about Jesus among themselves, and shy away from speaking
about him when questioned, Jesus was one gigantic failure. Why should we speak about Jesus
among ourselves? He has done nothing for the Jews, and, historically, things done in his
name too frequently reverberated to the physical punishment of the Jews at the hands of
those who adored and claimed to emulate the savior.
Each of the preceding statements is an exaggeration. Jews do, in fact, speak about Jesus.
We Jews even have the unmitigated gall to speak about Jesus to Christians! We speak about
our personal impressions of this man, this son of Israel, to people who worship and adore
him. This situation is not so much outrageous as odd. When we talk to a people who pray to
Jesus, rely on him for the forgiveness of sins and for salvation from this world, who regard
Jesus as God of gods and Man above men, we make many superlatively senseless statements.
Jesus was "a good man" or a "decent rabbi" or "a pious sage."
Occasionally, we risk venturing further: Jesus was prophet-like, a really intelligent
fellow, a mensch who should not be blamed if his followers took a "noble idea" and
perverted it.
We look for salvation and find want, depravity, frustration, and failure. Too many
examples of such behavior have occurred in the name of Jesus.
We do not praise Jesus when we speak to Christians, and we do not bother to denounce
Jesus when we speak among ourselves. The question arises as just what, if anything, we are
talking about. Denigration of Jesus in the history of Judaic thought has been muted in the
contemporary Jew. Historically, we have not failed to call Jesus an apostate, a demon, a
fool. These days we keep quiet so as not to offend the Christian majority in the lands in
which we live. We want to be quiet about him. Only when pressed, or feeling ourselves
pressed, do we offer "good man," "noble Jew," and "pious
rabbi." If the truth be known, discussion of Jesus in contemporary Judaic discourse is
less important than talk about the sage who was the Talmud's favorite heretic, the scholar
who abandoned legitimate scholarship: Elisha ben Abuyah, known as Aher, "the
other."
II.
Ralph P. Martin says that Jesus was "a Jewish rabbi [who] stands in contrast to Paul
the apostle to the nations."(1) This statement
adequately summarized the position at which Jewish thinkers begin and, too often, remain. In
order to compare Jesus with the heretic Aher it will be necessary to discuss the historical
knowledge we have about Jesus. The following remarks are by no means complete. They are
presented simply as a means of raising the issue.
The historical Jesus must be regarded as a Jew with a self-imposed limitation to
minister, in some manner, to the land, the people, and the God of Israel. The exclusive
preaching in the land of Israel did not require Jesus be a nationalist. The exclusive
preaching to the people of Israel may have required that he be critical [read: prophetic].
His exclusive concern with the God of Israel may have required that he be concerned with
universal issues and world-historical questions.
Inasmuch as the Reign of God was perceived to be at hand, Jesus was concerned with how he
and his disciples would serve, and serve in, the Kingdom of God. If these issues are to be
regarded as the limitation of a Jewish perspective of Jesus, there are also conditions that
require an extended perspective. The extended perspective may be framed as follows.
1. As noted, Jesus' exclusivistic concern with the universal God required that he think
his exclusivism in universal terms. Smaller minds may have generated a ubiquitous
nationalism (hints of which are early disregarded, as when Jesus indicated that he thought
of the gentile women as a dog; cf. Mt. 15:22-28). Martin seems correct when he says that the
church would not have invented such a limitation.(2) What
is interesting about Jesus' subsequent reply to the woman was his apparent surprise that she
was correct. Jesus' concern with the land, people, and God of Israel was developed into a
"startling" concern for moral behavior. We see this occurring through development
of Jesus' own moral behavior.
2. The extensive perceptions of Christians concerning what we Jews may regard as the
development of Jesus from man to Son of Man to Son of God to very God must ultimately be
located in:
a. Jesus' authentic remarks understood, perhaps, as an imperative for an advanced
relationship of all that occurs in the (immanent) Reign of God;
b. The relationship between Jesus' words and his understanding of the immanent occurrence of
the reign as mediated in the thought of his most active, most vocal follower, Paul. However,
we must not superficially understand Paul as an assimilated, hellenized Jew but as one who
was genuinely concerned (if misguided) in his quest to overcome the differences between Jew
and Greek, male and female, and so on. Are we all one in Christ? We might become
"one" in fruitful conversation that would allow - require! - differences. In the
"Father's" house, there are many mansions.
c. To understand what is too easily accepted as a deep contrast between the earthy Jewish
Jesus and the great reconciler Paul, the best place to begin may be with an understanding of
Jesus' resurrection. It may be the case that the resurrection is not to be regarded in a
Christian sense. Nor need the resurrection be regarded in a psychological sense. Precisely
how the resurrection ought to be understood, as a phenomenon that influenced perceptions,
especially the perceptions of Jesus himself, cannot be examined in the present context.
Suffice it to say that in death there is neither Jew nor gentile, male nor female, saint nor
sinner.
As this brief discussion may indicate, in addition to the two perspectives that occur
between Christians and Jews (regarding Jesus as more than merely heroic and regarding him as
less than heroic), there is also a distinction between the historical Jesus and the figure
of the redeemer. It is senseless to ask which Jesus was heroic and which was not. While not
accepting the image of Jesus as meek and sensitive (a meek person did not throw the money
changers out of the temple, and a sensitive person would not call the gentile woman a dog),
nor other too-easily-offered suggestions of who Jesus was, the above starting points might
be used to determine what may be said about the historical Jesus. We may say that he was
concerned with the God, the people, and the land of Israel. Having said this, we say little
more than that he was a Jew. We have no evidence with which to answer the question
concerning what kind of Jew he might have been: a disciple of the Pharisees, an Essene, a
Zealot, a mystic, a humanist, etc. He was a man whose insights and concerns developed.
We may even speculate that the development in Jesus' thoughts occurred more rapidly once
Jesus realized that his original message - that the people ought to repent, for the Reign of
Heaven was at hand - was false. The Reign was not immanent when Jesus walked the earth, and
it does not seem close a hand at the moment. The more religious among us may say many fine
things, such as that the reign is at hand whenever a soul sincerely repents and prays, seeks
God, and so on. This personalistic insight does not feed the hungry, shelter the homeless,
or protect widows and orphans and the sick. At best, it protects the individual. Jesus was
an individual who, for the sake of his land, his people, his God, did not concern himself
with self-protection.
When the Reign was not manifested, the terms of Jesus' ministry underwent a change. He
recognized himself as an unprotected man. The books that contain the message of that change
are largely modeled on the thought of Paul, who, it should be noted, was not concerned with
the historical Jesus. When Paul rejected knowledge of Christ after the flesh (2 Cor. 5:16),
this must be the result of Paul's previous understanding that Jesus now became irrelevant in
view of the fact that Paul's expectation of an immanent historical occurrence did not take
place. The Parousia did not happen, yet the active mind continued to broaden the query for
wisdom and expectation. Hence, the historical Jesus became, simply put, uninterested in
comparison with the eschatological figure who was anticipated. Insofar as documents were
written that purported to be the life of Jesus, these documents can only be regarded as
explanations of how the Pauline Jesus became the savior of the world (although, of course,
he was regarded as such "from the beginning").
Not only did Paul become unconcerned with the historical Jesus, but this practice is also
touted as the norm. Too frequently the historical concern with Jesus is regarded as a Jewish
quest, and the opposite is regarded as a true Christian concern. This is not quite right,
first, because there is no opposite to history. Even the divine, according to both Jews and
Christians, is concerned with what occurs in this mundane sphere. Second, Karl Rahner has
said that it is legitimate for the theologian "to point out the historical
problems" entailed by Christian sources in relation to Jesus. Rahner said, however,
that if an exegete were to seek to say "with positive and unambiguous historical
certainty that the realities supposed here simply did not exist at all, then the premises of
fundamental theology and dogmatic theology for the Christian faith would really be
destroyed."(3) Theologians, then, are legitimately
concerned with historical issues.
It seems the Christian must be concerned with the historical Jesus if only because the
Christian claim is that, at a certain point in history, God's love became manifest. A Jew,
of course, may wish to revert to the personalistic response discussed above and say that
God's love becomes manifest whenever a human being feels love for God in his or her soul.
However, what is not good for the goose is not good for the gander. The Jew must recognize
that the demand to base all issues on history can, at best, be for the sake of uttering a
few plausible intuitions. The few points suggested above - issuing in the final point, that
a concern with the issue of resurrection must ultimately be discussed - are perhaps all that
can be known of the "historical Jesus."
If so, we might as well not discuss any issue based on history, much less the history of
this sect or that partisan. The Jew must uItimately agree with the theologian: there is more
than we are currently aware of going on in the text. Nor is the "more going on" to
be elucidated by endless discussions of what this or that word or phrase means, whether
Jesus really spent time in Jerusalem, how many years he preached, how old he was when he
died, and so on. These are interesting questions that may entertain us while we wait for the
more important answers that ought to be sought. The more important answers are, perhaps,
those that respond to the questions concerning what we are doing.
III.
The indication that there is more going on in the text than we think is a challenge to
use our imagination. Use of the imagination is a requirement that we go beyond the stated or
supposed facts. Asking what is going on in the text is like asking for a decision concerning
the significance of passages. Stating the significance of an event is to approach beliefs
that, of course, do not necessarily rely on historical facts. Both facts and beliefs are
encompassed by another factor. Stories, whether consciously designed contemporary fiction or
folklore, affect both history and belief. Just as there are different significations for
different events, so there are, legitimately, different stories that may be told. In telling
of tales, there are no hostile clashes or competition. Heroes and tricksters abound. Of
course, to tell another culture that you are going to treat its "hero" as a
"story" is likely to draw scorn. Let us say, then, that everything is story.
Everything told affects both history and belief. Nor is it the case that the best we can
derive is a good story. It is the case that a good story is the best there is.
Let us do midrash. Let us approach the other not as a hostile entity from which we must
suffer or whom we must eliminate. Let us approach each other as a tale that may interest us
but toward which we must ultimately put our own signification if we are to achieve
understanding. Indeed, once we propose to do this, to use imagination rather than rhetoric,
to speak tales rather than curses, the world becomes not so sufferable, not so hostile. And,
in the process we become heroic!
William Blake, perhaps not the greatest commentator on Christian thought, said that Jesus
created "not one Moral Virtue that Plato and Cicero did not inculcate before him."(4)
The everlasting gospel, according to Blake, is "forgiveness of sins alone."(5)
Yet, even forgiveness, he said, was constituted by the Jews. Blake then presented several
contradictions between Jesus' words and deeds. For example, the same person who said
"obey your parents" asked his mother "what have I to do with thee?"
Blake compared differing versions or visions of Jesus. One image had "a great hook
nose" and another "a snub nose like to mine." One was a "friend of All
Mankind." The other "spoke in parables to the blind."(6)
One may object that the duality of presentation derives neither a Christian nor a Judaic
Jesus but a Nietzschian Christ. In such an instance, the distinction between the
christological and the historical Jesus has become unimportant. What is important is
contrasting sayings and deeds in order to pick and choose what one will or will not follow.
One may object that the finding of contradictions is both easy and nonexplanatory.
Nevertheless, even contemporary theologians point up contradictions. Pierre Talec noted,
"He who said 'Who ever drinks of this water will never thirst again' also cried, 'I am
thirsty.'"(7) Thought thrives on contradictions. If
there were no contradictions, there would be little to think about. Gossip is nothing but
the ploy of division: us against them/him/her. Philosophy is frequently the argument for
this, against that.
Surely Talec's assertion indicates only a distinction between physical thirst and
metaphoric thirst. If so, there may be more to quenching than simply drinking liquid. Again,
there is a "more going on" that ought to be investigated. Perhaps the invention of
contradictions ought be praised as a means for us to have something "more" to talk
about than what is traditionally regarded as acceptable speech.
Consider the stories of two teachers. Jesus taught "only to the lost sheep of the
house of Israel" and, if the story is to be believed as a true report, Jesus was
rejected with scorn and derision. Elisha ben Abuyah, on the other hand, at some point ceased
considering himself a son of Israel, became a lost sheep himself, and was treated with
derision and scorn but was not totally rejected. Here is a severe contradiction: a good
teacher rejected while a pure heretic accepted in some sense.
The stories in rabbinic literature concerning Elisha are devastating. The Jerusalem
Talmud states that Elisha slew a scholar, enticed the young from studying Torah, and
informed against Jews during the Hadrianic persecution (Hagigah II:1; 15a). Elisha
penetrated the innermost secret recesses of religion and "cut the shoots," that
is, perverted the teachings and traditions. We are told that Greek songs did not cease from
his mouth and, when Elisha rose to leave the schoolhouse, many heretical books fell from his
lap (J.T., Hag. 15b).
Nevertheless, Elisha is remembered in rabbinic literature for teaching Rabbi Meir, one of
the most respected sages of Israel. Elisha is also quoted in several instances himself,
before becoming an apostate, as an authority. Among other teachings, Elisha is named as the
authority who determined the time of mourning in two different instances: the case where a
father dies and the son is not informed for three years, and the case where a son dies in
the diaspora (Mo'ed Katan 20a). Consider what these situations tell us about the times:
fathers dying, sons dying; contact between family members severed, communications made
impossible; exile and existence taking their toll on the people; sages going insane, sages
becoming heretic!(8) These were perilous times. Sin, one
may imagine, was rampant; the cajoling of human beings into the nets of error was abundant.
Life was estranged, in danger, and of little worth.
God, as worshipped by Christianity, is determined to be a God who "justifies the
godless" (Rom. 4:5) by calling sinners to join the community. God is a being "who
overrides religious and racial barriers to meet human beings at the place of their
need."(9) When Rabbi Meir followed the heretic Aher,
who was riding a horse on the Sabbath, in order to hear his legitimate teachings, the image
of God we humans forge for ourselves went even beyond the requirement that the sinner join
the community. Aher was living separate from the community. Nevertheless, Meir was
determined to argue the case of Elisha with the result that, after Meir died and argued with
God, the grave of Aher emitted smoke. This smoke indicated that Elisha had been forgiven.
Surely Meir's concern for Elisha was a messianic moment. Surely the retention of Elisha's
legitimate teachings in the rabbinic literature constitutes messianic instances.
What do we learn from the sages' treatment of Elisha? We learn, it seems, that wisdom and
halakah are to be derived from anyone who possesses insight, whatever their life-situations
or personal circumstance. Yet, this is manifestly not the case with Jesus. If we start with
the idea that the Jews rejected Jesus with scorn and derision, there is a contradiction
between the words of the sages concerning Jesus (that he was an apostate, a demon, a fool)
and their actions (accepting wisdom from every source, regarding the apostate as in a
messianic moment rather than pure rejection). The rejection of Jesus, then, is one more
instance of Pharisaic hypocrisy. They say one thing and do another. They hold fast to a
heretic who did things much worse than Jesus, yet reject the latter without hesitation. The
sages, one might believe, are the fools. They rejected their Christ, the Son of God, very
God of the universe.
Yet, if we start from a much simpler hypothesis - that the rabbis did not know Jesus,
were largely unaware of his activities, and did not come to hear or understand the stories
concerning Jesus until relatively late - then a different, more realistic story results. The
evidence for early knowledge of Jesus is very thin. There seems to have been a rabbinic
development of the image of Jesus that corresponds to the Christian development through
texts. One may say that the more "positive/adulatory" the Christian theologians
spoke about Jesus the more "negative" the rabbis spoke. The earliest discernable
Jewish utterances about Jesus spoke of him as an ignoble student who was given a limited
excommunication (Sotah 47a). At some later period Jesus was regarded as a heretic. The
latest rabbinic utterance speaks not about Jesus at all but about the theologian's image of
him: "If a man say to thee: 'I am God,' he is a liar. If he says: 'I am the Son of
Man,' in the end people will laugh at him. If he says: 'I will ascend to heaven,' he saith
it, but he shall not perform it."(10)
If the suggestion of a late recognition of Jesus is cogent, when the rabbis began truly
to assess statements made by or about Jesus - which never occurred in an adequate manner -
he could no longer be regarded as an ignoble student or a heretic or simply a fool. People
were claiming he was God. Such a claim would have caused the rabbis to forego any detailed
consideration of Jesus. Indeed, the rabbis reported Rabbi Eliezer's having heard a halakic
statement from one of the disciples of Jesus (Abodah Zerah 16b-17a), which was preserved as
perhaps the only legal decision of Jesus remembered by anyone. Beyond that, Jesus had become
worse than a heretic: He had become an alien god. Such things were never discussed. Not even
if Aher had perverted school children with such myths would these have been presented in the
literature.
IV.
The story of Jesus, like all stories, requires not ignorance but interpretation.
Interpretations, as the retention and projection of goodly teachings, are instances of a
messianic moment. One story is elaborated and calls forth another story. Particular stories
are not worrisome when they present conflicting truths. A Jew may indeed contribute to these
additional stories, even about Jesus. The Jewish versions, however, will be radically
dissimilar from the Christian interpretations and may even be regarded as blasphemous.
The Gospels themselves indicate Jews of various religious affiliations who attempted to
make sense of Jesus. Fisherfolk and peasants flocked to him. Sages are portrayed as debating
with him. Mysterious persons, like Joseph of Arimathea, are shown to have a mysterious
relationship with him. Herod questioned him. Gamaliel defended the sect. Sadducees
excommunicated him. We need regard none of these instances as universally true. Each
attempts to communicate something "more" about what was going on than an extremely
tightly reasoned and well-researched journalistic account may have provided. On the other
hand, Jesus was arrested, tried, convicted, and executed by a source that did not concern
itself with religious understanding. We may regard some of the stories told by and about
Jesus as not factual statements. Nevertheless, stories (fiction) were, and are, a means of
approaching truth.
A Jew may eventually regard Jesus as a metaphor for God. Søren Kierkegaard suggested
that Jesus represented the way we humans would have treated God if God lived on earth.(11)
Human beings would, until things changed for the good, ignore, betray, arrest, and crucify
God. A Yiddish proverb says, "If God lived on earth, we would break His windows."
Imagine God as our neighbor. We do not have to stretch our imagination. Our treatment of
the poor, the hungry, the homeless, the orphaned, and the sick designs our treatment of God.
A Christian may say that Jesus made himself resemble all the above "types." Our
attitude toward Jesus, then - like our attitude toward any human being, toward other beings,
toward trees and rivers that are polluted on a routine basis, toward everything in life -
indicates our attitude toward God.
To prevent the stories that we may eventually tell with regard to Jesus or trees or
polluted rivers from offending, we may perhaps agree at the beginning that our stories have
but one goal: to excavate, define, and strengthen our relationship with God. If so, strength
may even proceed through an initial blasphemy. We ought not fear what sounds blasphemous if
our goal is to strengthen our relationship with God. Excavation, definition, and strength
proceed through stories we tell ourselves and one another. Nevertheless, our stories ought
to do so by feeding, clothing, and sheltering both ourselves and the other: the depraved,
the soiled, the hungry, the pained. Our stories ought to inspire us to take care of one
another, physically, psychologically, spiritually, and metaphorically. If so, our stories
will not be lies but Aaronic truths; that is, tales told to search the hidden recesses of
the good life.
There would then be no need to seek heroes. We would speak a new heroics into being.
Notes:
1 Ralph P. Martin, Reconciliation: A Study of
Paul's Theology (Atlanta, GA John Knox Press 1981), p. 206.
2 Ibid.
3 Karl Rahner, "The Historical Jesus as a Dogmatic
Problem, in Geoffrey B. Kelley, ed., Rarl Rahner: Theologian of the Graced Search for
Meaning (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1993), p. 217.
4 William Blake, The Complete Poems, ed. Alicia Ostriker
(Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1979), p. 848.
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid., p. 851.
7 PierreTalec, Jesus and the Hunger for Things Unknown,
tr. Joachim Neugroschel (NewYork: Seabury Press, 1982), p. 2.
8 See a fuller treatment of these and the following
issues in my "Elisha ben Abuyah In Our Midst," Midstream, Vol. XXXXII, No. 2
(Feb./Mar. 1996).
9 Martin, Reconciliation, p. 212.
10 Cited in Hugh J. Schonfield, According to the
Hebrews: A New Translation of the Jewish Life of Jesus (the Toldoth Jeshu), with an inquiry
into the Nature of the Sources and Special Relationship to the Lost Gospel according to the
Hebrews (London: Duckworth, 1937), p. 151.
11 Søren Kierkegaard, Christian Discourses, tr. Walter
Lowrie (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1971), p. 286.
(A version of this paper was published in the Journal of Ecumenical Studies, 32:1, Winter
1995.)
With kind permission of the author.  |
