Reading Hyam Maccoby’s book is no joke, for me at least. I feel like my eternal soul is at stake: If Maccoby is wrong, I’m screwed, so to speak.
Maccoby is making significant claims against Christianity: Its founder, Paul, is a fraud who threw Jews under the bus to aggrandize and empower himself in part and to resolve his emotional conflicts. The New Testament writers also go back and edit the Jesus stories to make the Pharisees and the Jews in generals the evil force that forces the sacrifice of Jesus so that mankind can have a blood sacrifice and be okay with God, a salvific template, Maccoby argues, Paul borrows from other cults.
If Maccoby is correct, then to follow orthodox Christianity is to follow a fake religion that is guilty of antisemitism. If he is incorrect and it is orthodox Christianity that is right, then one who is persuaded by Maccoby could be damning his soul.
So like I said, grappling with Maccoby’s book is no joke.
Now let us proceed with Chapter 4.
Maccoby says the NT is a fraud: Jesus did not criticize the Pharisees. They were “an enlightened, progressive movement.” Jesus was himself a Pharisee.
The author says the Gospels suffer from “re-editing” so that the Pharisees are demonized. As an example, a “friendly exchange” between Jesus and a lawyer in Mark becomes chilly by the time it’s retold in Matthew.
Furthermore, much of what Jesus teaches, such as Love thy Neighbor as thyself, is a Pharisee teaching.
In Chapter 4, we arrive at a major contention: Jesus, painted as anti-Pharisee, is actually a Pharisee; and Paul, who portrays himself as a Pharisee, never was one (33).
For Maccoby, the NT is a smear campaign against the Pharisees. The most probable enemies of Jesus, the author speculates, would be the Sadducees (35, 36).
Maccoby points out that Jesus’ claim of being Messiah was not blasphemous for many prophets made such a claim, which meant the “anointed one” who claims the throne of Israel.
That he was condemned by the High Priest evidences that his offenses were political, not religious.
Maccoby goes on to observe that the law of love should be expressed in the context of rights, and that the Pharisees have been unfairly been painted as being anti-love to Jesus’ love gospel (37).
Furthermore, Jesus preaching style, his allegories, and “elocutions” were of Pharisees and the Talmud.
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