Geza Vermes's legacy

Following on from the sad news of the death of Geza Vermes earlier this week, The Times today has its obituary:

Geza Vermes

Unfortunately, most of the obit is behind a subscription wall, as regular readers will know.  Meanwhile, in The Guardian, Hugh Muir's diary today mentions his passing:

Great sadness, finally, at the death at 88 of the great British biblical scholar Geza Vermes. He was a sweet-natured, scholarly man of Hungarian Jewish origins, who survived the Holocaust, became a Catholic and later reconverted to Jewry. In 2004, on the release of Mel Gibson's bloodthirsty film The Passion of the Christ, with all its claims of authenticity, the Guardian took him to a press preview. As the audience recoiled from the scenes of bloody violence, we could hear him chortling. Why so? "It's quite obvious that none of the actors could speak Aramaic," he told us afterwards. He knew hokum when he saw it.

Prof. Vermes's passing has been widely reported among the blogs.  In particular, I'd recommend James Crossley's interesting comments over on the Sheffield Biblical Studies blog, including the following:

Yet at the same time, Vermes’ work is still problematic for scholarship whether or not this is acknowledged (often it is not). His version of Jesus’ Jewishness did not have a strong emphasis on Jesus ‘transcending’, ‘overriding’, ‘making redundant’, or even ‘intensifying’ aspects of Judaism (Judaism, that is, as assumed or constructed by a given scholar or scholarship more generally) that is still found in scholarship and is not so different from the pre-Vermes era. In other words, this makes Vermes stand out from the constant rhetoric of Jesus the Jew that has come after Vermes. I think it is worth being blunt by stating that scholars continue to use Vermes as a Jewish scholar and his influential work on ‘Jewishness’ to justify supercessionist positions (implicit or explicit) that Vermes would not have accepted nor recognised and, unlike Vermes, often without reading sources from the Judaism supposedly ‘transcended’. Apart from some notable exceptions, Vermes’ challenge has still not been met on a widespread scale in historical Jesus scholarship.

I have a lot of sympathy for what James says here.  I sometimes wonder whether scholars have learned the wrong lessons from Vermes, looking to take "Jesus the Jew" and find a role for him in reconstructions that are every bit as thickly mired in Christian theological agendas as were the German, Lutheran historical Jesuses of the "new quest" that they so criticize.  It's why the subtitle of Vermes's seminal book, A Historian's Reading of the Gospels, is  in many respects more important than its main title.

Geza Vermes, 1924-2013

Jim Davila and Michael Law have let us know the sad news of the death this morning of Geza Vermes.

Geza Vermes was a legend.  It is rare for a scholar to make so massive an impact in the guild in different areas, the study of early Judaism and the study of Christian origins.  His Penguin  paperback, The Dead Sea Scrolls in English, was for many of us our first encounter with the scrolls, and the book has remained in print for decades.  His scholarly contributions on the scrolls as well as on other areas in early Judaism have been seminal, yet he will perhaps be best remembered for his work on Christian origins, and especially the Historical Jesus.

It has almost become a cliché to point out that his Jesus the Jew (1973) was revolutionary, but its impact was indeed massive.  I remember seeing the book for the first time in our home when I was a teenager in the 1980s and being somewhat taken aback by its title and its appearance, with lots of Stars of David all over it.  In the early 1970s, with the new quest for the historical Jesus still in full swing, it was still de rigueur for Jesus to be depicted as some kind of Lutheran figure championing his gospel in contrast to a law championed by petty legalists.  The exciting thing about reading Vermes's book was that he had actually read the rabbinic texts that many a New Testament scholar only pretended to know.

In many other books in the four decades afterwards, Vermes continued to draw attention to reading early Christian texts in conversation with a proper knowledge of early Jewish texts.  He never saw these texts as "background".  This was not "the World of the New Testament".  Instead, these texts were themselves evidence in the quest, themselves part of the conversation.  His enduring legacy was in the subtitle of Jesus the Jew -- "A Historian's Reading of the Gospels".  Again it might sound hackneyed now, but that itself is largely the result of Vermes's work -- he stressed the importance of reading the Gospels as a historian would read them.  He was effectively democratizing the quest of the historical Jesus.  Like all good history, it should not matter who is asking the questions.  Like all good history, the study is open to all, no longer thickly mired in the theological agendas of those engaging in the enquiry.

I became fascinated with Geza Vermes's work when I saw him on the Channel 4 documentary Jesus: The Evidence in 1984.  This was something of an iconoclastic piece and I have written about it on the blog before. Here's a clip that nicely gives you a feeling for the curiously compelling way that Vermes attacks a topic:


When I arrived in Oxford as an undergraduate a year later, I was eager to hear Dr Vermes (then a Reader at the Oriental Institute) in person.  For me, it was like seeing a celebrity.  I went along to a talk that he gave about Jesus: The Evidence (later published -- see note here) and loved it.  And later, when I took a special paper on Varieties of Judaism, I went along to his classes on the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs.  It was a privilege not many Oxford students took up.  While E. P. Sanders and Tom Wright were lecturing to hundreds in the Examination Schools, Geza Vermes was talking to just a handful of us in the Oriental Institute.

As a graduate student and later also as a scholar, I occasionally got to meet Geza Vermes.  I remember how on one occasion at lunch at Wolfson College, where Vermes would mix with the students, and chat away to his colleagues, he explained to me why he thought that most approaches to the Synoptic Problem were wrong.  He noted that his article on forty years of the Dead Sea Scrolls had gone through so many different versions that he himself did not know which one was prior and which one was later.  He imagined that something quite similar might have happened among the evangelists.

The last time I saw him was sadly now a decade ago, when we were both part of a controversial BBC documentary filmed at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew Studies, focusing on the Virgin Mary.  He was witty and charming, and I remember that he was very happy to have his simple sandwich lunch provided at the BBC's expense.

In spite of his erudition, Geza Vermes was a gifted communicator and understood well how to appeal to a broader public.  His little books were hugely popular, and he often wrote short op-ed style pieces for British newspapers.  To my amazement, he was also a consumer of the blogs, and sometimes popped along to this blog to comment.

And what's more, he's the only scholar in our area that I can think of who has been on Desert Island Discs.  And that really is matter of distinction.  (You can download or stream the episode, which was broadcast in 2000, here).

He will be greatly missed.

Geza Vermes: Obituaries, tributes and more

Martin Goodman has a fine obituary of Geza Vermes published today on the Wolfson College website:

Professor Geza Vermes - Obituary

Today's Telegraph has its obituary of Geza Vermes (HT: Jim Davila and David Meadows):

Professor Geza Vermes

It's a well-written piece, though it has an error -- The Religion of Jesus the Jew was published in 1993, not 1996.

There is also an AP story (HT: Jim West) that has been widely disseminated, e.g. in The Guardian.  There are one or two oddities in the piece, e.g. the note that Vermes wrote several books on the historical Jesus, "The first, 'Jesus the Jew,' was published in 1973, followed by 'The Authentic Gospel of Jesus' (2003)".  This leaps thirty years, over Jesus and the World of Judaism and The Religion of Jesus the Jew, both of which are mentioned later in the article.

Among the bloggers, in addition to those mentioned the other day, James McGrath, T & T Clark, James Tabor and others have tributes.

Two more items I had not previously spotted: John McCarthy interviews Geza Vermes in this radio programme from BBC World Service (26 minutes):

Heart and Soul: Geza Vermes

And the Standpoint magazine has a tribute here:

Professor Geza Vermes, 1924-2013
Daniel Johnson

The article links to a remarkable cache of online articles by Geza Vermes written over the last five years:

Standpoint Articles by Geza Vermes

They include pieces on Crucifixion, Writing and Rewriting the Bible, Hagiography, Jews, Christians and Judeo-Christians, Herod the Great, Josephus on Jesus, Isaac, the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Historical Jesus.

Geza Vermes in Times Higher and BAS

Jim Davila mentions an obituary for Geza Vermes in today's Times Higher Education Supplement:

Geza Vermes, 1924-2013
Matthew Reisz

The Biblical Archaeology Society has also published a tribute:

Geza Vermes (1924-2013)
Hershel Shanks

The latter links to a fascinating interview with Geza Vermes, dealing with his autobiography, the Dead Sea Scrolls scandal, the revision of Schürer and Jesus the Jew, among other things:

Escape and Rescue—An Interview with Geza Vermes
An Oxford Don’s peregrinations

It is from June 1994.  Here's an excerpt:

HS: One of your specialties has been the historical Jesus and the background of early Christianity. Do you feel this peregrination of yours has given you a unique perspective?

GV: I would like to think that as far as scholarly studies are concerned, this is irrelevant. But it is pretty obvious that what I’ve been through must have helped considerably, first and foremost to acquire the technical knowledge and to understand the viewpoint of an insider. As an insider, you know how the other fellow thinks. At the same time, you come to realize that there is an enormous amount of misunderstanding and blindness and confusion in both camps regarding one another that really prevents them from perceiving historic reality accurately. Perhaps I kid myself by thinking that I’ve performed something useful in producing a historically valid portrait of Jesus without preaching either to one or the other. I trust I am an objective and a detached historian. I don’t want to convert Christians to Judaism. I simply want to learn and to provide knowledge to others who seek to understand things better.

It's all worth reading.

One further thing.  Stephen Goranson (see his comments here) pointed out an error in the New York Times obituary of Vermes and they have today published a correction:

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: May 23, 2013

An obituary on Friday about the religious scholar Geza Vermes erroneously attributed a distinction to him. He was one of the first to write a doctoral dissertation about the Dead Sea Scrolls — not the first.

Well done to Stephen for setting the record straight and well done to William Yardley and the New York Times for making the correction.  I am very impressed. The Telegraph could learn from this -- its error-laden plagiarized obituary of Marvin Meyer is still available online with no corrections or apologies (see The Telegraph's Plagiarized Obituary for the story).

Vermes on Good Friday (with comments)

Geza Vermes has developed an uncanny ability to pop up at all the major moments of the Christian calendar, and at other times too, to comment on the Gospels and the Historical Jesus. He is in this week's Church Times commenting on the date of the first Good Friday and related matters:

Professor Vermes finds a date for Good Friday
By Bill Bowder

Arguing from his knowledge of Jewish laws and customs, he said last week that the Synoptic Gospel writers, Matthew, Mark and Luke, were wrong about many details of the Last Supper, Jesus's arrest, and his trial. The trial before the Sanhedrin never took place, he said. The religious authorities would not have tried Jesus for blasphemy, because he never used the sacred name of God.

"No Jewish law of any age suggests that the messianic claim amounted to the crime of blasphemy," he said. Furthermore, the Jewish authorities could not have tried Jesus on the Passover . . . .

. . . . . Professor Vermes said he knew exactly when Jesus died. "Of course Easter should be on a fixed day. There are not many things in the Gospels that you can be half as certain about." He has based his calculations of Jesus's death on the known dates of John the Baptist's ministry and of the spring equinox, and on the assumption that Jesus's ministry lasted only one year.

Jesus could not have died in the years 31 or 32 because the Passover did not fall on Saturday, although it could have fallen on a Saturday in 33. John's Gospel suggests a three-year ministry, but Jesus could not have survived that long, Professor Vermes argued. "I don't think that anybody of the type of John the Baptist or Jesus could have lasted three years in the Roman Empire. They would have been finished off," he said. The Romans were "completely ruthless if you crossed them".

I haven't had a chance to look at Vermes's new book yet, so these comments are, of course, provisional and may be addressed in the book itself. First, the blasphemy question. Vermes claims here, and has often claimed in the past, that claiming to be Messiah would not amount to blasphemy. That seems to be clearly correct. But some of the most persuasive current readings of the Marcan trial see the blasphemy charge not in Jesus' affirmative answer to the High Priest's question "Are you the Messiah, the Son of Blessed?" but in his elaboration, "You will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of the Power and coming with the clouds of heaven" (Mark 14.62).

Second, the question of the length of Jesus' ministry. I don't know why one would assume that it lasted for only a year and in so far as one can judge from general impressions, mine would be that it was much longer, with time to travel, to build a reputation, to gather followers, perhaps to visit Jerusalem more than once. On the notion that John's Gospel gives us a three year ministry, I am not convinced. It seems to me to be two years, from Passover in Chapter 2 to Passover in Chapters 13 and following, with one Passover in between in Chapter 6. That is two years and a couple of days, not three years. On whether someone like that could have "survived that long", does that not lend plausibility to Jesus' having spent the majority of his career in Galilee away from Rome?

On pinpointing the date of the first Good Friday, I am not as confident as Vermes. That vital contradiction between the Synoptics and John demonstrates that our earliest sources are just not sure whether Jesus was crucified exactly on a Passover or not. What they appear to know is that Jesus was crucified somewhere around that time. That fits the historically probable notion that Jesus' death is likely to have been caught up with the Passover crowds that year, the presence of Pilate and so on, without our necessarily having to try to be as precise as are the Synoptic writers. It is my view, to be defended at great length in due course, that the dating of Jesus' crucifixion on 15 Nisan (Synoptics) and 14 Nisan (John) are bound up with the differing dates on which the respective communities celebrated Jesus' passion. The celebration of Jesus' Passion on 14 Nisan carried on well into the Second Century among the Quartodecimans ("14th-ers"), whose tradition, according the Eusebius (H. E. V, 23), spanned "the whole of Asia".

Geza Vermes: The Guardian Obituary

The Guardian this morning published its obituary of Geza Vermes.  Unlike The Times, The Guardian's obits are not anonymous, and Philip Alexander does a predictably fine job:

Geza Vermes Obituary
Expert on the Dead Sea Scrolls, the historical Jesus and the origins of Christianity
Philip Alexander

It's a superb piece, and features Alexander's own reminiscences as a student of Vermes.  There is one rather debatable line, that Vermes "helped launch the new quest for the historical Jesus".  The term "new quest" is normally given to the quest that began in 1950s Germany among Bultmann's students, and especially Ernst Käsemann, crystallized in the title of James Robinson's 1959 book, A New Quest of the Historical Jesus.  Vermes is more usually associated with the end of the new quest and not the beginning of it.  Some link him with the so-called "third quest", though Vermes himself shied away from such labels.  But that aside, a fine obit.

Geza Vermes on video

I mentioned Geza Vermes's appearance on Jesus: The Evidence (Channel 4, 1984) the other day.  There are several other appearances by Geza Vermes on video online.  The following are both "official" clips.  The first is this whole lecture from 2009:




It is a lecture on "The Story of the Dead Sea Scrolls" (Louisiana State University's Hill Memorial Library, September 29, 2009), in which Prof. Vermes is wearing a Dead Sea Scrolls tie (of the Community Rule)!

This one I have mentioned before, A Jewish view of Jesus, from Sydneyanglicans.net:



It is in a series entitled The Christ Files and is filmed at Yarnton Manor, Oxford, and dates from 2011.  And there is now a slightly longer version of the same piece (4 minutes) here:



The Christ Files: Geza Vermes interview from CPX on Vimeo.

And in case you missed it, here is the link again to Vermes's appearance on Desert Island Discs in 2000.

Vermes article in full

I mentioned earlier Geza Vermes's comments on The Passion of the Christ now that he has seen a preview (see earlier blog entry). Vermes's full article is not in the on-line version of The Guardian but I've found a version elsewhere, on Mathaba.net:

Celluloid brutality, Mel Gibson's 'The Passion of the Christ'
Mel Gibson's film about Christ is horribly gory, historically wrong - and it will inspire judeophobia
by Geza Vermes

I am still in a state of shock having sat through two hours of almost uninterrupted gratuitous brutality, Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ. I hope I will never be obliged to see something as dreadful again . . . .

. . . . . The light element in The Passion of the Christ is supplied by the use of Latin and Aramaic. Not only are Pilate and Jesus(!) fluent Latin speakers, but even the soldiers of the Jerusalem garrison, who were most probably Aramaic- and Greek-speaking recruits from Syria, converse happily in a clumsy Latin with Italian Church pronunciation. I did not find it easy to follow the Aramaic which was mixed with unnecessary Hebraisms . . . . .

Update (Saturday): Vermes article now available on the Guardian Unlimited web site:

Celluloid brutality
Mel Gibson's film about Christ is horribly gory, historically wrong - and it will inspire judeophobia
Geza Vermes

Geza Vermes -- Economist obituary

The Economist has a superbly written obituary of Geza Vermes.  It is from the print edition but has just been published on the net:

Geza Vermes
Geza Vermes, a Jew, ex-priest and translator of the Dead Sea Scrolls, died on May 8th aged 88

And subscribers to the Church Times will be able to read the following:

Tributes to Vermes
Ed Thornton

Geza Vermes -- LA Times and Forward

The LA Times has published its obituary of Geza Vermes:

Geza Vermes dies; wrote about Dead Sea Scrolls and life of Jesus

Geza Vermes, who died at 88, was one of the first scholars to translate the scrolls into English. He later wrote engaging works about the Jewish origins of Jesus

Rebecca Trounson

There are comments from Lawrence Schiffmann, David Ariel and me. 

Also today, the Jewish Daily Forward has published its obituary:

Geza Vermes, Hungarian Bible Scholar Who Returned to Jewish Roots, Dies at 88

Convert to Catholicism Never Shied Away From Judaism

Benjamin Ivry

Vermes on the Historical Jesus

Jim Davila and Helenann Hartley link to this interesting piece in The Times from Christmas Eve:

When you strip away all the pious fiction, what is left of the real Jesus?
Geza Vermes

As Jim Davila says, "It's a good summary of one mainstream view of the historical Jesus". Indeed in many respects, it is a much more conservative picture of Jesus than that of, say, the Jesus Seminar. The summary reminds me of E. P. Sanders's Jesus as much as Vermes's own, though Vermes is more inclined towards the historicity of much of the Synoptic material than I would see Sanders as being, e.g. I doubt that Sanders would list the healing of a "servant of a Roman centurion from Jerusalem" among his secure facts. I was also interested to see the characterisation of the those who object to Jesus in the Synoptic sabbath healings as "some petty-minded bigots". There are some great quotations here for those who need to set examination questions. Here's one I may use one day: "He was crucified before Passover probably in AD30 because in the eyes of officialdom, Roman and Jewish, He had done the wrong thing in the wrong place at the wrong time." Bang a "Discuss" on the end of that and what could be better?

It's a regular complaint, I know, but I find the title of the article unfortunate, because it gives the impression that historical Jesus study is all about stripping away fiction and getting down to a kind of untouched core of "real Jesus" material. The difficulty in this context is that it puts the backs up of many of the Christian readers who might otherwise have been sympathetic to an article on what can be said about the historical Jesus with certainty. I suppose I am sensitive to such things because I often talk to evangelical students who instinctively balk at historical Jesus study because it appears to them to be a quest to strip away fact from fiction, and so to discredit Christianity, rather than as an enquiry into what the historian is able to say with confidence in a public arena. In other words, the rhetoric implied by the title is unnecessarily provocative given the useful content.

There are one or two interesting (presumably Times) editorial elements that will strike some readers. I doubt that Vermes desccribed himself as "the world's leading Gospel scholar" or that he used capital H throughout for "He" and "Him" of Jesus. I'd guess that he didn't use BC and AD either, but I may be wrong about that. Either way, what the latter demonstrates is something I have pointed out before, just how little the Bible scholars' use of BCE and CE is making an impact on the wider world of discourse, even here in the very area where such usage was born.

Geza Vermes in The Independent

There was an article on Geza Vermes in yesterday's Independent, referenced by Bible and Interpretation:

Geza Vermes: A child of his time

The occasion is Vermes's new book The Authentic Gospel of Jesus. I've not yet seen it myself and probably won't rush to do so -- I found the other follow-ups to Jesus the Jew (an all time classic) pretty disappointing. The article, based on an interview with Peter Stanford, doesn't tell you a lot; there is some spurious journalistic nonsense about Vermes easily being able to "pass for one of Santa's elves"; but there's an interesting concluding passage, the first line of which is pretty exaggerated, but the rest is worthwhile:

"For years," he says with a chuckle, "before Jesus the Jew, there had been no books on the historical Jesus, but since then one book after another has been published and what sounded at that time something absolutely revolutionary and very sensational has become almost a cliché. Everybody talks of Jesus the Jew today."

Vermes on Ratzinger and the Quest

Over on Paleojudaica, Jim Davila points out the following article from yesterday's Times:

Jesus of Nazareth
The scholar Ratzinger bravely declares that he and not the Pope is the author of the book and that everyone is free to contradict him
By Pope Benedict XVI, reviewed by Geza Vermes

It's a very interesting review of a book I have not read myself, but what caught my interest in the review was Geza Vermes's characterization of Historical Jesus research, which works first with the common usage of the terminology "no quest" for the 1920s to the 1950s, and then with Tom Wright's term "third quest" for the breakthroughs of the 1970s and 1980s, with himself and E. P. Sanders as the major figures in it:

. . . . However, despite Schweitzer’s funeral oration, the historical Jesus refused to lie down. Around 1950, a new attempt to retrieve him was launched in Germany by Bultmann’s pupils, who reemployed the form-critical method in the pursuit of historical research. The “new” or “second quest” went on for some 20 years without much success. It coincided with the years of Joseph Ratzinger’s theological studies. However, he did not specialise as a Neutesta-mentler, but as a patristic scholar and dogmatic theologian.

The 1970s and 1980s introduced the “third quest”. By then, the dominance of German professors, with Hellenistic expertise to deal with Greek Gospels but without direct familiarity with the Jewish world of the age of Jesus, came to an end. They were replaced by British and American scholars concerned with the discovery, partly associated with the Dead Sea Scrolls, of the “Jewish” Jesus. The literary landmarks of the new era were Jesus the Jew (1973) by your reviewer and Jesus and Judaism (1986) by E. P. Sanders, both professors at Oxford. In no time, the search for the Jewish Jesus became dominant worldwide.

I think that's a great summary, with two qualifications (cf. posts here on the History of the Quest). First, I agree with Dale Allison that the period of "no quest" is a mirage and second, the term "third quest" may now have outlived its usefulness, especially having been co-opted by others who are not on the same trajectory as Vermes and Sanders. But my reason for commenting on it is that it is interesting seeing a pioneer of that quest characterizing it in this way.

Jesus: The Evidence: Geza Vermes on the Testimonium Flavianum

I blogged recently on Morton Smith's appearance in the 1984 Channel 4 documentary Jesus: The Evidence. Here's another nice clip from the documentary featuring a younger looking Geza Vermes discussing the Testimonium Flavianum in a large library (anyone recognize it?). You will notice a curiosity of this documentary with the scholars speaking directly to the camera. We are so used these days to the expert giving his or her opinions looking off-camera at the director, that it is unsettling to see this alternative style. I wonder if this was unique at the time?

I remember attending a lecture given by Geza Vermes in Oxford a year or so after the broadcast, probably in early 1986. He talked about his own experiences in filming the documentary and the backlash against it among Christians in the media. I recall, in particular, his smiling at the repeated complaint about its one-sidedness, with only one minute given to I. Howard Marshall.

Update: Many thanks to Geza Vermes for emailing with the information that the library is Dr Williams' Library in London. The lecture I remembered is "Jesus, the Evidence and the British Press" and it is included in a collection of papers to appear on 4 January 2010 in SEARCHING FOR THE REAL JESUS published by SCM Press.

Update (10 September 2019): A recent Facebook conversation reminded me of this post but on revisiting it, I found that the link to the video above was dead, so I have uploaded a fresh copy here.

Vermes and Wright on anti-Semitism

Thanks to Helenann Hartley for this link to Sunday Sequence which features a discussion of the Passion of the Christ and has 5-10 minute interviews with Tom Wright and Geza Vermes on the question of anti-Semitism in the New Testament. You can listen to the whole programm here (c. 50 minutes):

Sunday Sequence

Wright's interview is towards the beginning (clearly on the phone rather than in a studio) and then Vermes. Worth listening to; plenty of interest. Both are not keen on the term "anti-Semitism" and rightly prefer to use "anti-Judaism". They agree on little else although -- alas -- they are not given the chance to engage with each other. Vermes does comment on The Passion of the Christ but Bishop Tom does not. Come on, Tom, we want to know what you thought about the film!

More on Vermes on Caiaphas

On Paleojudaica, Jim Davila asks the expert Helen Bond what she makes of Vermes's article about Caiaphas. It's an excellent response which provides some useful nuancing of several of Vermes's points. Also on Paleojudaica, Vermes then responds and clarifies a key point. Apparently he read my brief comments too but does not offer a response except to say that he preferred Helen Bond's comments. Goodness; I'll have to be careful what I write in future! Here was I thinking that only about seven people read my blog and certainly none of my former teachers! But perhaps Jim Davila drew his attention to it. I should say that I remain puzzled by the comment that "Jesus and his followers are not really presented as Jews" in the Gospels, but it may be that I am missing something obvious here.

Vermes on Caiaphas

Geza Vermes has a piece on Caiaphas in today's Telegraph:

Never mind what Mel Gibson says, Caiaphas was innocent

It's a useful and interesting article, as you would expect from Vermes, yet it features several extraordinary claims -- or is Vermes just being more sloppy in writing a newspaper article than he would when writing his books? Take this, for example:

Given this highly specific context [i.e. post-70], it is no surprise that Jesus and his followers are not really presented as Jews. By contrast, it is the Jews that the Gospels - especially Matthew - blame for the death of Jesus.

Jesus and his followers not presented as Jews? What? I can't make any sense of that at all. I found this also odd:

According to the Gospel writers, Caiaphas judged Jesus to be a blasphemer for calling himself the Messiah. Such an assertion did not amount to blasphemy in any Jewish law, Biblical or post-Biblical.

When the High Priest in Mark rents his garments, this is not only after Jesus has affirmed that he is Messiah but also when he has said "you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven" (Mark 14.62).

Also in today's Telegraph a longish piece on reactions to The Passion of the Christ by Chris Hastings:

Passion and Prejudice

Geza Vermes - New York Times Obituary

The New York Times has just published its obituary of Geza Vermes, and it is well done.

Geza Vermes, Scholar of Dead Sea Scrolls and ‘Historical Jesus,’ Dies at 88
William Yardley

Multiple Tributes to Geza Vermes in the Marginalia Review

The Marginalia Review has this morning published multiple tributes to Geza Vermes, all from top brass scholars of early Judaism and early Christianity like Paula Fredriksen, Jimmy Dunn and Fergus Miller.  Many thanks to T. Michael Law:

Tributes to Geza Vermes, June 22, 1924-May 8, 2013

The full roll call is: T. Michael Law, Sir Fergus Millar, Emanuel Tov, Paula Fredriksen, Tessa Rajak, Joan Taylor, Philip Alexander, Sidnie White Crawford, Timothy Lim, Charlotte Hempel, James D. G. Dunn, C. T. R. Hayward and Jim Davila.

Vermes on The Passion of the Christ

Geza Vermes's article from The Guardian on The Passion of the Christ (see blog entry on) has now been reproduced on the Bible and Interpretation web site as part of their section Essays from Bible and Interpretation on The Passion:

Celluloid Brutality
Mel Gibson's film about Christ is horribly gory, historically wrong - and it will inspire judeophobia
By Geza Vermes
Friday February 27, 2004
The Guardian