563 - Jesus the Pharisee: A New Look at the Jewishness of Jesus

Jesus the Pharisee:
A New Look at the Jewishness of Jesus
By Harvey Falk
New York, Paulist, 1985. 175 pp. $8.95.

Rabbi Falk is chiefly known as a commentator on the relevance of rabbinic Judaism to modern life, and latterly as a novelist. In the present book, he aims to defend a theory propounded by Rabbi Jacob Emden in the eighteenth century. According to Emden, Jesus intended to encourage Gentiles to follow the seven Noachic commandments (against idolatry, blasphemy, killing, stealing, immoral sexuality, eating the limb of a living animal, and for establishing courts of justice). On this view, Jesus wished Jews to continue observing the six hundred and thirteen commandments of Moses. Falk argues that Jesus' program for the Gentiles agreed with that of the Essenes and Hillel; when Jesus inveighs against the Pharisees in the Gospels, he is merely attacking the exclusivist school of Shammai. Falk adduces a great deal of information in the course of making his case; perhaps the greatest value of his book is that it clearly demonstrates that rabbis could vehemently, even violently, disagree with one another, without being considered opposed to Judaism as a whole. Those who insist on reading Jesus' passionate language as a rejection of Judaism generally should take note. On the other hand, Falk's argument is crucially flawed. He seems nearly unaware of the difficulty involved in distinguishing first century Judaism from the late formulations of Rabbinic literature, and takes no account of those instances (for example, his teaching on marriage) in which Jesus approximates more to Shammai than to Hillel. Falk's book is therefore a valuable corrective to

564 - Jesus the Pharisee: A New Look at the Jewishness of Jesus

Christian anti-Semitism, but its thesis is most unconvincing.

Bruce Chilton
Yale Divinity School
New Haven, Conn.