Recherche – Detailansicht
Ausgabe: | März/2022 |
Spalte: | 202–204 |
Kategorie: | Neues Testament |
Autor/Hrsg.: | Deines, Roland |
Titel/Untertitel: | Jakobus. Im Schatten des Größeren. |
Verlag: | Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt 2017. 384 S. m. Abb. = Biblische Gestalten, 30. Kart. EUR 24,00. ISBN 9783374040278. |
Rezensent: | Markus Bockmuehl |
Ya’aqov ben Yosef, known to the church as St James ›the Just‹ or sometimes ›the Less‹, remains the most unfamiliar and misunderstood major early Christian leader. The influence and authority of this brother of Jesus among the Christian communities of Jerusalem and the Land of Israel were unsurpassed during his lifetime. And yet, recent centuries of critical scholarship on the subject have tended to increase rather than to lift the fog surrounding this figure who is as emblematic as he remains enigmatic.
Roland Deines is Professor and Dean of Research at Internationale Hochschule Liebenzell (Germany), and »emeritus« Professor at the University of Nottingham (UK). His 370-page volume on James the Just is the most substantial volume in Leipzig’s extensive Bib-lische Gestalten series of character studies. (This is despite the author’s persistent grievance, from the first paragraph to the last, about the extensive cuts demanded of him to fit the series. A full version of the book is said to be forthcoming in English from a US publisher, although no details are given and none has appeared at the time of this belated review).
In his introduction, D. portrays James as the key representative of a vigorous Jewish Christianity in the Holy Land. James and other Jewish Jesus-believers pose the question of whether it is possible to be both a Jew and a Christian – a challenge that generated a far-reaching afterlife not only in antiquity, but also in post-Enlightenment critical scholarship in the wake of F. C. Baur (1792–1860).
A little over 200 pages are then devoted to the place of James in the New Testament. In probing the largely silent or negative evidence of the Gospels, D. proposes significant clarifications of a number of knotty problems, including how to disaggregate the Jesus movement’s five different »Jacobs« or »Jameses«: the sons of Zebedee and of Alphaeus, the father of Jude the Apostle (Luke 6.16; Acts 1.13), James the Small with his mother Mary (Mk 15.40), and only last of all James »the brother of the Lord« (Gal 1.19). Such inescapable problems of identification, not least with the Jacob/James who is named as the author of an eponymous New Testament epistle (Jas 1.1), are not just an idle preoccupation of modern critics but famously already troubled ancient interpreters.
D. approaches the birth narratives of Matthew and Luke in re-latively optimistic and constructive critical fashion, also draw-ing intermittently on influential early apocrypha like the second-century Protevangelium of James. This leads him to sympathetic readings of both Jerome (for whom James was Jesus’s first cousin) and the more influential Epiphanius (James as Jesus’ half-brother from the widowed Joseph’s first marriage). The Holy Family’s ap-parent conflict with Jesus during his lifetime is here said to be due not to his messianic teaching as such, but rather to the idiosyn-cratic and not traditionally Davidic nature of that messianism, its expectations and Jesus’ self-identification (134 and passim).
Despite indications of intermittent tension, Paul’s letters identify James unambiguously as the brother of Jesus, a witness of the resurrection, and a pillar of the church in Jerusalem. An eventual reconciliation of this sometimes rocky relationship appears to D. entirely plausible, once one permits oneself to question conven-tional Protestant scholarship’s quasi-axiomatic assumption of an unbridgeable apostolic contest between a supposedly law-free Gentile mission and its strictly implacable, Jewish legalistic opponent. This is facilitated for D. by his proposed chronology that dis-tinguishes a Jerusalem »circumcision« council preceding Galatians from a subsequent, separate apostolic council and »decree« to re-solve outstanding disagreements.
In this context there is also a brief consideration of James’s reported epithet Oblias, interpreted as »bulwark (περιοχή) of the people« by Hippolytus (in Eusebius Eccl. Hist. 2.23.7; cf. Epiphanius, Pan. 68.7). Not implausibly, D. suspects here a scribal misread-ing of ΩΒΛΙΑΣ as ΩΒΔΙΑΣ, i. e. the prophet Obadiah, who at 1.1 (LXX) identifies his message to the nations using precisely the term περιοχή. (Might the Targum add suggestive support to such a reference? It renders Obadiah’s message (M. T. הָעומְׁש) as »good news« (ארוסב), its messenger (M. T. ריִצ) as an »apostle« (חילש) and its substance directed against Edom/Esau (a popular rabbinic cipher for Rome) for violence done to »the house of Jacob«, who will possess their inheritance when the kingdom of God is revealed (יויד אתוכלמ ילגתתו, 1.20).)
D.’s circumspect discussion of James in Acts allows this Apostle to emerge as a sage spiritual statesman. He is from a confidently Da-vidide family, a listener and reasoner from scripture who seeks to broker a faithful meeting of minds between conflicting interpreta-tions of Jesus, including between the demands of the mission to the Gentiles and of a practical modus vivendi allowing the Jesus movement to survive among the people of Israel in the Holy Land. Unlike many Protestant critics, D. takes the text to imply that Paul’s collection from the Gentiles was gratefully accepted in Jerusalem.
One of the strengths of this book is its sustained dismantling of a Protestant/Lutheran prejudicial caricature about James as a figure of presumed moralism, legalism and anti-Paulinism. In relation to Acts 21, however, D. continues to see Paul’s financing of Nazirite sacrifices of Acts 21 as a case of political bluff and appeasement: it is polite but finger-crossing expediency rather than a sincere demonstration of loyalty to Torah. A similar approach is in play vis-à-vis James’s other famous epithet »the Just« (i. e. the Tzaddiq), which Hegesippus (Eusebius Eccl. Hist 2.23.4–5) links to his ›holy‹ (ἅγιος) quasi-Nazirite coiffure and abstention from alcohol, along with halakhically intelligible avoidance of unkosher meat (ἔμψυχον, i. e. with blood, tref), oil and bathhouses (βαλανείῳ). D. parses this expressly as concerned not with Torah piety but rather ›passionate commitment to the people’s salvation‹ (58). Perhaps that insistence is the price one pays to make James palatable to Lutheran Angst about »law«, let alone about living Jewish observance?
Given New Testament scholarship’s predominant assumption of a late first or second-century date of the Letter of James, D. con-fines this puzzling text to the end of his discussion. Noting the inconclusive circularity of most arguments once the name in 1.1 is discounted as spurious, D. instead discerns marks of primitivity in church structures and doctrines. He opts for what he knows to be an »extremely« early date, i. e. belonging to the period between two Jerusalem »councils« in 45 and 50. Here too James’s leadership emerges as that of a spiritual sage, prophet and pastor – his people’s ombudsman and conciliator, aware of his own failings.
The third part of the book somewhat eclectically explores James’s place in postbiblical reception, including at Nag Hammadi and in early church orders like the Didascalia and Apostolic Constitutions, his »throne« in the Armenian Cathedral of Jerusalem, and his commemoration in the ancient liturgy of Jerusalem. Finally, D. surveys diverse ancient texts attesting the martyrdom of James, along with migrating late antique architectural traditions about the locations of his grave and the contested ossuary inscription of »Jacob son of Joseph the brother of Jesus« (here granted the benefit of the doubt).
Although the series format’s limited referencing understand-ably precludes any exhaustive rehearsal of all critical options, both the flavour and stated purpose of this learned work are critically engaged and conversant with contemporary international scholarship and with an impressive range of ancient sources.
The reviewer may not be alone in hoping that the fuller English version will afford space for a more forthright discussion of how this rehabilitation of James relates to the repercussions of Luther’s (and later Lutheranism’s) emphatic demotion of the Epistle from its historic location and significance in the New Testament canon (whether in relation to the Praxapostolos and/or immediately after the Pauline corpus).
For a book of this length and erudition, the complete absence of any index seems an oddly user-unfriendly omission that should also be rectified in the promised English edition. And in an age when other publishers routinely deploy affordable high-quality photographic reproduction even in colour, the reviewer was surprised by the prevalence here of shockingly poor black-and-white photos reminiscent more of publications half a century ago.
D.’s fresh and substantial exploration of James the Just intends to redress long-standing scholarly and popular misapprehensions about this brother of Jesus. His learned and attractive book contributes usefully to that purpose.