Customer Reviews

Jesus the Pharisee

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In 1980, Maccoby wrote his first book entitled "Revolution in Judea"--don't bother trying to find this book--it's out of print. If you are somehow able to get a copy, grab it--it will open your eyes about what really happened in the trial and crucifixion of Jesus. Be prepared for all of your conceptions and beliefs to be systematically shattered by this master historian. Now, 23 years later, Maccoby's book Jesus the Pharisee is the expounding of his earlier work on this subject, not as much focused on the crucifixtion and trial, but moreso on the actual intent of Jesus's sayings and works. Maccoby lays out a very compelling, if not certain case that Jesus was a Pharisee, most likely a Chasid, and had no intention whatsoever of abrogating or eliminating even a single Jewish law. In fact, he and his disciples were extremely scrupulous adherents of Jewish law. His claim to be the Messiah was not only not unusual (other Jews had done so as well), but the leader of the Pharisee movement himself, Rabbi Gamaliel, defended Peter's leadership of the post-crucifixion Jesus messianic movement. Maccoby has an amazing ability to find bits and pieces of truth amongst the writings of the Gospels. The Gospel writers all, to varying degrees, accidentally left lines from the original Jerusalem Church documents as they were redrafting and concocting the Pauline Jesus mythology---lines which completely contradict their other manufactured statements and depictions of the life of Jesus. Maccoby successfully challenges the theories of many contemporary pro-Gospel Christian historians who, as Maccoby demonstrates, lack even the most basic logical and commonsensical abilities, and whose true motivations can sometimes best be explained as anti-Semitic. Through proven and accepted methods of textual examination, Maccoby pieces together a truly shocking picture of Jesus that goes completely against the portrayal that Christians are taught to believe. Although this was certainly not his intent, this book exposes the fatal flaws of Christianity's Jesus mythology and makes its adherants look absolutely foolish.

You will not be able to put this book down, and will certainly want to pass it along to friends and family.

Maccoby (in this and his other books) examines the New Testament without making assumptions based on later Church teachings. He gathers compelling circumstantial evidence, common sense, and knowledge of historical events at the time. By unearthing and contextualizing passages that run against the grain of later Church teachings, Maccoby demonstrates that Jesus was more Jewish and anti-Roman than the depiction of the Gospels.

This, together with Maccoby's "The Mythmaker" provide eye-opening correctives to perceptions of Jesus and his world around him.

When Diane Sawyer interviewed Mel Gibson about his movie, "The Passion of the Christ," she asked him if the Jews killed Jesus. Gibson replied flippantly that Jews and Romans were there, and that there weren't any Norwegians. Later Church teachings and their advocates (until Vatican II) promulgated that "the Jews" (as if they were one cohesive monolith) killed Jesus. Curiously, though, these same teachings have also successfully wrenched Jesus from *his* Jewish -- and Pharisaic -- roots.

If you thought "The Da Vinci Code" was eye-opening regarding the Holy Grail, I urge you to read this about Jesus himself.

This totally goes against what most evangelical and regular christians believe but it is very educational and sheds some light on a subject that perplexed and haunted human beings for the nearly the past 2,000 years. All I can say is this is a lot better than some of the more evangelical books such as "More than a Carpenter" and "A Case for Faith" by Lee Strobel (note: I didn't comment on those books yet and I will try not to because it might just make me angry)...

The Pharisees have gotten a bad rap throughout history, but Maccoby's attempt to rehabilitate them by placing Jesus within their movement fails miserably. His characterization of Judaism in the 1st century CE as monolithic is a caricature that ignores the huge amount of evidence we have that attests to the diversity of the religion at the time. His selective readings of his sources (Josephus, the Gospels, and the rabbinic texts) are highly misleading, and he provides almost no hard evidence for some of his most central claims (for example, that the Chasids were Pharisees). Additionally, many of his arguments contain so many internal contradictions as to render them almost worthless. He does a decent job of exposing the reasons for the negative portrayal the Pharisees get in the Gospels, but this adds little to his book because the rest of it is practically useless, and better studies of anti-Pharisee Gospel bias are available elsewhere. Read Sanders and Neusner on this topic instead.

The author is a Jew who has an axe to grind against Christians. He obviously felt the best way to "retaliate" against Christians was to publish rubbish that knocked their faith.

The greatest glaring error in this book (and all his anti-Christian books) is the failure of the author to address the fate of the apostles, post-crucifixion. Why would 12 men (plus Paul) invite death upon themselves by advocating Jesus as the Messiah? Were all these men as crazy as Jesus? Common sense says no and the author has no explanation at all.