Jesus the Jew. Geza Vermes
appear in the surviving parts of the document, it cannot be in doubt. The composition is inspired by the story of Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel 4.47 The most crucial section reads:
I was afflicted with an evil ulcer for seven years . . . and a gazer pardoned my sins. He was a Jew from among the [children of Judah and he said:] ‘Recount this in writing to [glorify and exalt] the name of the [Most High God].’
The Aramaic word gazer applied here to the Jew who healed the king and forgave his sins appears four times in the Book of Daniel,48 where, as it is usually linked to nouns designating magicians and astrologers, it is habitually rendered in the pejorative sense of ‘soothsayer’ or ‘diviner’. In the Qumran text such an imputation is definitely not attached to it. Gazer signifies in this work, if A. Dupont-Sommer’s suggestion is accepted, an exorcist.49 Moreover, because the root from which the term derives means ‘to decree’, a gazer is one who exorcises by decreeing the expulsion of the devil. In a story to be considered presently, the same verb is employed in a command addressed by Hanina ben Dosa to the queen of the demons.50
It is worth noting that although the devil, sin and sickness are logically combined in the Qumran picture, the story is told elliptically. The narrator mentions the king’s illness without referring to its cause; and the exorcist is credited, not with the expulsion of a demon, but with the remission of the sufferer’s sins. The three elements were so closely associated that it was natural to jump from the first to the third without recording the intermediary stage: an exorcist pardoned my sins and I recovered from my sickness.
This fragment which has so luckily survived is particularly valuable in that it sheds fresh light on the controversial Gospel episode of the healing of the paralytic.51 Considered side by side with the Nabonidus story, there is nothing outstandingly novel or unique in the words of Jesus, ‘My son, your sins are forgiven.’ The scribes think that they are blasphemous, but for Jesus – as for the author of the Qumran fragment – the phrase ‘to forgive sins’ was synonymous with ‘to heal’, and he clearly used it in that sense.
‘But that you may know that the son of man has authority on earth to forgive sins’ – he said to the paralytic – ‘I say to you, rise, take your pallet and go home’ (RSV).
By comparison with the style of the Qumran text, ‘he pardoned my sins’, the Gospel use of the passive form, ‘your sins are forgiven’, strikes a more cautious note. The words are not disrespectful of God, nor do they imply that the speaker claimed for himself divine status. The main reason for the scandal of the scribes must have been that their legal language was very different from that of Jesus. But however this may have been, rabbis of the second and third century AD were still voicing the opinion that no one could recover from illness until all his sins were remitted.52
Jewish Charismatics
The representation of Jesus in the Gospels as a man whose supernatural abilities derived, not from secret powers, but from immediate contact with God, proves him to be a genuine charismatic, the true heir of an age-old prophetic religious line. But can other contemporary figures be defined in the same way?
The answer is yes. Furthermore, far from digressing from the main theme of the present enquiry, it is very pertinent to a search for the real Jesus to study these other men of God and the part they played in Palestinian religious life during the final period of the Second Temple era.53
1. Honi
One of the prime characteristics of the ancient Hasidim or Devout is that their prayer was believed to be all-powerful, capable of performing miracles. The best known of these charismatics, though perhaps not the most important from the point of view of New Testament study, is a first-century BC saint, called Honi the Circle-Drawer by the rabbis, and Onias the Righteous by Josephus.54
To understand the figure of Honi it is necessary to remember that from the time of the prophet Elijah55 Jews believed that holy men were able to exert their will on natural phenomena. Thus, in addition to offering formal, liturgical prayers for rain, in times of drought people urged persons reputed to be miracle-workers to exercise their infallible intervention on behalf of the community. Such a request for relief from their misery is reported to have been addressed to Honi some time before the fall of Jerusalem to Pompey in 63 BC.
Once they said to Honi the Circle-Drawer: ‘Pray that it may rain.’. . . He prayed but it did not rain. Then what did he do? He drew a circle, and stood in it, and said before God: ‘Lord of the world, thy children have turned to me because I am as a son of the house before thee. I swear by thy great name that I will not move hence until thou be merciful towards thy children.’ It then began to drizzle. ‘I have not asked for this’, he said, ‘but for rain to fill cisterns, pits and rock-cavities.’ There came a cloud-burst. ‘I have not asked for this, but for a rain of grace, blessing and gift.’ It then rained normally.56
It is easy to misjudge the curious attitude revealed by Honi in this episode. His behaviour towards God appears impertinent; indeed, as will be seen, it was frowned on by the authorities of his own day as well as by subsequent orthodoxy. Nevertheless, in the last resort even his rabbinic critics likened the relationship between the saint and God to that of a tiresome and spoiled child with his loving and long-suffering father. The leading Pharisee of Honi’s time, Simeon ben Shetah, is said to have declared:
‘What can I do with you, since even though you importune God, he does what you wish in the same way that a father does whatever his importuning son asks him?’57
Josephus’s Onias is rather different. This is an admirable and heroic character, whose saintly detachment aroused the anger of political partisans just before Rome first intervened in the affairs of Judea at the time of the conflict between the two sons of Alexander Janneus, Hyrcanus II and Aristobulus II. As in the rabbinic story, the supernaturally efficacious nature of Honi’s intercession is once more accepted as a matter of course.
There was a certain Onias, who, being a righteous man and dear to God, had once in a rainless period prayed to God to end the drought, and God had heard his prayer and sent rain.
Although he had gone into hiding, he was sought out by the men of Hyrcanus who wished him to ‘place a curse on Aristobulus’ which they believed would be as effective as his prayer for rain.
When in spite of his refusals and excuses he was forced to speak by the mob, he stood up in their midst and said: ‘O God, king of the universe, since these men standing beside me are thy people, and those who are besieged are thy priests, I beseech thee not to hearken to them against these men nor to bring to pass what these men ask thee to do to those others.’
Incensed by such neutrality, ‘the villains among the Jews’ stoned him to death.58
The shift from the almost openly critical presentation of Honi in the Mishnah to the fully sympathetic portrayal in Josephus for the benefit of a Hellenistic audience is worthy of remark. Compare in particular the rather sinister Hebrew epithet, ‘Circle-Drawer’, with the Greek, ‘righteous man and dear to God’. On the other hand, despite the unfriendly mainstream of rabbinic thought concerning Honi, it would be incorrect to characterize Josephus’s point of view as representing Hellenistic Judaism and contrast it with that of Talmudic literature. In effect, fragments exist showing a less antipathetic attitude. For example, Simeon ben Shetah declares that a word of the Bible, Proverbs 23: 23, found its fulfilment in Honi.59 Again, an anonymous comment on Job 22: 28, described as a message from the members of the Sanhedrin to Honi and assigned to the first or second century AD, reads:
Whatever you command will come to pass: You have commanded on earth, and God has fulfilled your word in heaven.
And light will shine on your path: You have enlightened by your prayer the generation which was in darkness.60
Even more pregnant is another anonymous saying from the Midrash Rabbah:
No man has existed comparable to Elijah and Honi the Circle-Drawer, causing mankind to serve God.61