Hyam Maccoby
Encyclopedia
Hyam Maccoby was a British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 Jewish scholar and dramatist specializing in the study of the Jewish and Christian
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...

 religious tradition. His grandfather and namesake was Rabbi Hyam (or "Chaim") Maccoby (1858–1916), better known as the "Kamenitzer Maggid," a passionate religious Zionist and advocate of vegetarianism and animal welfare.

Maccoby was a Domus Exhibitioner in Classics at Balliol College, Oxford. During the Second World War he served in the Royal Signals.

Maccoby was librarian of Leo Baeck College in London. In retirement he moved to Leeds
Leeds
Leeds is a city and metropolitan borough in West Yorkshire, England. In 2001 Leeds' main urban subdivision had a population of 443,247, while the entire city has a population of 798,800 , making it the 30th-most populous city in the European Union.Leeds is the cultural, financial and commercial...

, where he held an academic position at the Centre for Jewish Studies, University of Leeds
University of Leeds
The University of Leeds is a British Redbrick university located in the city of Leeds, West Yorkshire, England...

. Maccoby was known for his theories of the historical Jesus
Historical Jesus
The term historical Jesus refers to scholarly reconstructions of the 1st-century figure Jesus of Nazareth. These reconstructions are based upon historical methods including critical analysis of gospel texts as the primary source for his biography, along with consideration of the historical and...

 and the historical origins of Christianity
Origins of Christianity
For centuries, the traditional understanding has been that Judaism came before Christianity and that Christianity separated from Judaism some time after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE....

.

Maccoby also wrote extensively on the phenomenon of ancient and modern Anti-Semitism
Anti-Semitism
Antisemitism is suspicion of, hatred toward, or discrimination against Jews for reasons connected to their Jewish heritage. According to a 2005 U.S...

. He considered the Gospel traditions blaming the Jews for the death of Jesus and especially the legend of Judas Iscariot
Judas Iscariot
Judas Iscariot was, according to the New Testament, one of the twelve disciples of Jesus. He is best known for his betrayal of Jesus to the hands of the chief priests for 30 pieces of silver.-Etymology:...

 (which he believed to be a product of the Gentile Pauline Church) as the roots of Christian antisemitism. Other topics of Maccoby's scholarship include the Talmud
Talmud
The Talmud is a central text of mainstream Judaism. It takes the form of a record of rabbinic discussions pertaining to Jewish law, ethics, philosophy, customs and history....

ic tradition and the history of the Jewish religion.

Maccoby's theories of the historical Jesus

Maccoby considered the portrayal of Jesus given in the canonical Gospels and the history of the early Church from the Book of Acts to be heavily distorted and full of later mythical traditions, but claimed that a fairly accurate historical account of the life of Jesus could be reconstructed from them nevertheless.

Maccoby argued that the real Jesus was not a rebel against the Jewish law, but instead a Jewish Messianic
Messiah
A messiah is a redeemer figure expected or foretold in one form or another by a religion. Slightly more widely, a messiah is any redeemer figure. Messianic beliefs or theories generally relate to eschatological improvement of the state of humanity or the world, in other words the World to...

 claimant whose life and teaching were within the mainstream of first-century Judaism
Judaism
Judaism ) is the "religion, philosophy, and way of life" of the Jewish people...

. He believed that Jesus was executed as a rebel against the Roman
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....

 occupation of Judaea
Iudaea Province
Judaea or Iudaea are terms used by historians to refer to the Roman province that extended over parts of the former regions of the Hasmonean and Herodian kingdoms of Israel...

. However, he did not claim that Jesus was the leader of an actual armed rebellion. Rather, Jesus and his followers, inspired by the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament
Old Testament
The Old Testament, of which Christians hold different views, is a Christian term for the religious writings of ancient Israel held sacred and inspired by Christians which overlaps with the 24-book canon of the Masoretic Text of Judaism...

 prophet
Prophet
In religion, a prophet, from the Greek word προφήτης profitis meaning "foreteller", is an individual who is claimed to have been contacted by the supernatural or the divine, and serves as an intermediary with humanity, delivering this newfound knowledge from the supernatural entity to other people...

ic writings, were expecting a supernatural
Supernatural
The supernatural or is that which is not subject to the laws of nature, or more figuratively, that which is said to exist above and beyond nature...

 divine intervention that would end the Roman rule, restore the Davidic Kingdom with Jesus as the divinely anointed monarch, and inaugurate the Messianic age of peace and prosperity for the whole world. These expectations were not fulfilled and Jesus was arrested and executed by the Romans.

According to Maccoby, Barabbas
Barabbas
Barabbas or Jesus Barabbas is a figure in the Christian narrative of the Passion of Jesus, in which he is the insurrectionary whom Pontius Pilate freed at the Passover feast in Jerusalem.The penalty for Barabbas' crime was death by crucifixion, but according to the four canonical gospels and the...

, from the Aramaic Bar Abba, "Son of the Father," originally referred to Jesus himself, who was called thus from his custom of addressing the Father as Abba
Abba
ABBA is the name of a former Swedish pop music group.Abba may also refer to:* ABBA , a self-titled album by the Swedish pop music group ABBA* "Abba ", a song by Christian pop and rock artist, Rebecca St...

, Father, in his prayers, or else as a form of the rabbinic honorific Berab.

Many of the disciples of Jesus did not lose their hopes, believing that Jesus would soon be miraculously resurrected by God
God
God is the English name given to a singular being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism....

, and continued to live in expectation of his second coming. Their fellowship continued to exist in Jerusalem, as a strictly orthodox Jewish sect under the leadership of James the Just
James the Just
James , first Bishop of Jerusalem, who died in 62 AD, was an important figure in Early Christianity...

.

Maccoby's theories on Paul

According to Maccoby, the founding of Christianity
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...

 as a religion separate from Judaism was entirely the work of Paul of Tarsus
Paul of Tarsus
Paul the Apostle , also known as Saul of Tarsus, is described in the Christian New Testament as one of the most influential early Christian missionaries, with the writings ascribed to him by the church forming a considerable portion of the New Testament...

. In this Maccoby's view is largely based on that of Heinrich Graetz
Heinrich Graetz
Heinrich Graetz was amongst the first historians to write a comprehensive history of the Jewish people from a Jewish perspective....

.

Maccoby claimed that Paul was a Hellenized
Hellenization
Hellenization is a term used to describe the spread of ancient Greek culture, and, to a lesser extent, language. It is mainly used to describe the spread of Hellenistic civilization during the Hellenistic period following the campaigns of Alexander the Great of Macedon...

 Jewish convert or perhaps even a Gentile
Gentile
The term Gentile refers to non-Israelite peoples or nations in English translations of the Bible....

, coming from a background exposed to the influence of Gnosticism
Gnosticism
Gnosticism is a scholarly term for a set of religious beliefs and spiritual practices common to early Christianity, Hellenistic Judaism, Greco-Roman mystery religions, Zoroastrianism , and Neoplatonism.A common characteristic of some of these groups was the teaching that the realisation of Gnosis...

 and the pagan mystery religions such as the Attis
Attis
Attis was the consort of Cybele in Phrygian and Greek mythology. His priests were eunuchs, as explained by origin myths pertaining to Attis and castration...

 cult, a myth involving a life-death-rebirth deity
Life-death-rebirth deity
A dying god, also known as a dying-and-rising or resurrection deity, is a god who dies and is resurrected or reborn, in either a literal or symbolic sense. Male examples include the ancient Near Eastern and Greek deities Baal, Melqart, Adonis, Eshmun, Attis Tammuz, Asclepius, Orpheus, as well as...

. The mystery religions, according to Maccoby, were the dominant religious forms in the Hellenistic world of that age and so, would have strongly influenced Paul's mythological psychology. Maccoby partially derived this theory from fragments of the writings of opponents of Ebionites
Ebionites
Ebionites, or Ebionaioi, , is a patristic term referring to a Jewish Christian sect or sects that existed during the first centuries of the Christian Era. They regarded Jesus as the Messiah and insisted on the necessity of following Jewish religious law and rites...

, particularly in the treatise on Heresies by Epiphanius of Salamis
Epiphanius of Salamis
Epiphanius of Salamis was bishop of Salamis at the end of the 4th century. He is considered a saint and a Church Father by both the Eastern Orthodox and Catholic Churches. He gained a reputation as a strong defender of orthodoxy...

.

Maccoby considered Paul's claims to an orthodox Pharisaic
Pharisees
The Pharisees were at various times a political party, a social movement, and a school of thought among Jews during the Second Temple period beginning under the Hasmonean dynasty in the wake of...

 Jewish education to be false, asserting that while many of Paul's writings sound authentic to the uninitiated, they actually betray an ignorance of the original Hebrew scripture and the subtleties of Jewish Law. Maccoby claimed that an examination of the New Testament indicates that Paul knew no Hebrew at all, and relied entirely on Greek texts that no actual Pharisee would ever use because they were not properly translated.

According to Maccoby, Paul fused the historical story of Jesus' crucifixion with elements of contemporary mystery religions and Gnosticism, developing such new non-Judaic mythic ideas as the Trinity
Trinity
The Christian doctrine of the Trinity defines God as three divine persons : the Father, the Son , and the Holy Spirit. The three persons are distinct yet coexist in unity, and are co-equal, co-eternal and consubstantial . Put another way, the three persons of the Trinity are of one being...

 and the Last Supper
Last Supper
The Last Supper is the final meal that, according to Christian belief, Jesus shared with his Twelve Apostles in Jerusalem before his crucifixion. The Last Supper provides the scriptural basis for the Eucharist, also known as "communion" or "the Lord's Supper".The First Epistle to the Corinthians is...

. Paul also made an attempt to find prophetic justification for his newly created myth in the Old Testament
Old Testament
The Old Testament, of which Christians hold different views, is a Christian term for the religious writings of ancient Israel held sacred and inspired by Christians which overlaps with the 24-book canon of the Masoretic Text of Judaism...

. Paul came to present Jesus as a dying and rising savior deity similar to those from the Hellenistic mystery cults, fused with the historical pedigree of Judaism, thus giving birth to a powerful new myth whose preaching gained him a large following. As the Jerusalem group of the original disciples of Jesus gradually became aware of Paul's teachings, bitter hostility ensued between them.

Maccoby interpreted certain New Testament
New Testament
The New Testament is the second major division of the Christian biblical canon, the first such division being the much longer Old Testament....

 passages (for example Paul's account of his quarrel with Peter
Saint Peter
Saint Peter or Simon Peter was an early Christian leader, who is featured prominently in the New Testament Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles. The son of John or of Jonah and from the village of Bethsaida in the province of Galilee, his brother Andrew was also an apostle...

 in the Incident at Antioch) as remnants of authentic accounts of this hostility. However, the Jewish Rebellion of 66-70 soon brought a violent end to the Jerusalem sect, and the Gentile Church founded by Paul emerged as the winner by default. Maccoby viewed the Book of Acts as a later attempt by the Pauline Church to present the relations between Paul and the Jerusalem disciples as harmonious, thus presenting the Pauline Church as legitimized by the chain of apostolic succession
Apostolic Succession
Apostolic succession is a doctrine, held by some Christian denominations, which asserts that the chosen successors of the Twelve Apostles, from the first century to the present day, have inherited the spiritual, ecclesiastical and sacramental authority, power, and responsibility that were...

 reaching back to the original disciples of Jesus. Maccoby also conjectured that the Jewish-Christian sect of Ebionites
Ebionites
Ebionites, or Ebionaioi, , is a patristic term referring to a Jewish Christian sect or sects that existed during the first centuries of the Christian Era. They regarded Jesus as the Messiah and insisted on the necessity of following Jewish religious law and rites...

 may have been an authentic offshoot of the original Jerusalem community.

Maccoby focused his work on tracing the roots of anti-Semitism
Anti-Semitism
Antisemitism is suspicion of, hatred toward, or discrimination against Jews for reasons connected to their Jewish heritage. According to a 2005 U.S...

 back to an early-Christian origin, and on disassociating Christianity from a truly Jewish background. Maccoby placed the blame for the death of Jesus on the Roman authorities and their Jewish collaborators from the Sadducee party, who controlled the Temple, its funds, and its police. He considered the Gospel accounts of the hostility between Jesus and the Pharisees
Pharisees
The Pharisees were at various times a political party, a social movement, and a school of thought among Jews during the Second Temple period beginning under the Hasmonean dynasty in the wake of...

 as an invention of the Pauline Church, and argued that Jesus himself subscribed to Pharisaic Judaism as revealed in such texts as the Sermon on the Mount.

Reception of Maccoby's view

Reception of Maccoby's view of Paul among conservative scholarship has generally been negative. John Gager
John Gager
John Goodrich Gager Jr. retired from his position as William H. Danforth Professor of Religion at Princeton University in the spring of 2006. Gager was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1937...

 of Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....

 reviewed The Mythmaker (1986) in the Jewish Quarterly Review
Jewish Quarterly Review
The Jewish Quarterly Review is an peer-reviewed academic journal which focuses on Jewish studies. It is published quarterly for the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania by the University of Pennsylvania Press. The current editors are Elliott Horowitz...

(1988) describing part of Maccoby's thesis as "perverse misreading" and concluded "Thus I must conclude that Maccoby's book is not good history, not even history at all." Skarsaune (2002), referencing Maccoby's work and the theory that Paul represents a Christianity totally different from that of the early community in Jerusalem, writes that "Acts provides no evidence to substantiate this theory." James D. G. Dunn (2006) describes Maccoby's revival of Graetz' accusations that Paul was a Gentile as "a regrettable reversion to older polemics". The continuity with Graetz is also noted by Langton (2009), who contrasts Maccoby's approach with adherents of a "building bridges" view, such as Isaac Mayer Wise
Isaac Mayer Wise
Isaac Mayer Wise , was an American Reform rabbi, editor, and author.-Early life:...

, Joseph Krauskaupf, and Claude Montefiore
Claude Montefiore
Claude Joseph Goldsmid Montefiore was son of Nathaniel Montefiore, and the great nephew of Sir Moses Montefiore. Some identify him as a significant figure in the contexts of modern Jewish religious thought, Jewish-Christian relations, and Anglo-Jewish socio-politics.-Education:He was educated at...

, even if they shared some details of the polemic critique of Paul.

The Disputation

Maccoby's play, The Disputation is a reenactment of the Disputation of Barcelona
Disputation of Barcelona
The Disputation of Barcelona was held at the royal palace of King James I of Aragon in the presence of the King, his court, and many prominent ecclesiastical dignitaries and knights, between Dominican Friar Pablo Christiani, a convert from Judaism to Christianity, and Rabbi Nachmanides The...

, a dramatic confrontation between the Spanish Rabbi
Rabbi
In Judaism, a rabbi is a teacher of Torah. This title derives from the Hebrew word רבי , meaning "My Master" , which is the way a student would address a master of Torah...

 Moshe ben Nachman, better known as Nachmanides, and a Spanish convert from Judaism to Christianity, Pablo Christiani
Pablo Christiani
Pablo Christiani , a figure of the thirteenth century, was born to a pious Jewish family, with the name Saul. He became a Christian convert and Dominican friar....

, before King Jaime I of Aragon in 1263.

Much of the play is drawn from Nachmanides's account of the disputation, and much is inferred from the king's affection for the rabbi and considerable generosity to him following Christiani's formal victory. The play centers about King Jaime, who is portrayed as a complex, troubled soul who comes to accept the rabbi's ideas. The play has been widely performed and was broadcast by Channel 4.

Books

  • The Day God Laughed: Sayings, Fables and Entertainments of the Jewish Sages (with Wolf Mankowitz
    Wolf Mankowitz
    Cyril Wolf Mankowitz was an English writer, playwright and screenwriter of Russian Jewish descent.-Early life:...

    , 1973)
  • Revolution in Judea: Jesus and the Jewish Resistance (1973)
  • Judaism on Trial: Jewish-Christian Disputations in the Middle Ages (1981)
  • The Sacred Executioner: Human Sacrifice and the Legacy of Guilt (1983)
  • The Mythmaker: Paul and the Invention of Christianity (1986)
  • Early rabbinic writings (1988)
  • Judaism in the First Century (1989)
  • Paul and Hellenism (1991)
  • Judas Iscariot and the Myth of Jewish Evil (1992)
  • A Pariah People: Anthropology of Anti-Semitism (1996)
  • Ritual and morality: the ritual purity system and its place in Judaism (1999)
  • The Philosophy of the Talmud (2002)
  • Jesus the Pharisee London, SCM, (2003)
  • Maccoby contributed an essay in The Jewish World: Revelation, Prophecy, And History edited by Elie Kedourie (2003)
  • Antisemitism and modernity: innovation and continuity (2004)

External links

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