Jesus and Menachem. Siegfried E. van Praag

      Jesus and Menachem

      A Historical Novel in the Time of the Second Temple

      Copyright © 2013 Kalman Kaplan. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

      Wipf and Stock Publishers

      199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3

      Eugene, OR 97401

      www.wipfandstock.com

      ISBN 13: 978-1-62032-701-2

      EISBN 13: 978-1-62189-695-1

      Manufactured in the U.S.A.

      All scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.

      Originally published under Siegfried E. Van Praag. Jezus en Menacheem. Roman Wereld- Bibliotheek. Amsterdam- 1951-Antwerpen

      I would like to dedicate this translation in the name of my father Lewis C. Kaplan (Yehuda Lev ben Moshe HaKohen) to his grandson and my son Daniel Lewis Kaplan (Daniel Lev ben Kalman Hillel HaKohen),who is named after him. Lew Kaplan never had the chance to know Dan, who was born eleven years after he died, but my late mother, Edith Saposnik Kaplan, also an author, made sure that Dan knew his grandfather. This is “grandpa Lew’s” present to you, my son.

      —Kalman J. Kaplan (Kalman Hillel ben Yehuda Lev haKohen)

      Foreword

      This translation has a long and fascinating history. It was begun but not completed in the early 1950s by my late father, Lewis C. Kaplan, from an acclaimed novel in Dutch, Jesus and Menachem by Siegfried Emanuel van Praag, the prolific Dutch-Jewish writer of more than sixty books. Van Praag was born to Jewish parents and was the youngest of three sons. Apart from his Dutch and Jewish cultural roots, Siegfried’s education also introduced him to French language and culture. He pursued French studies at the Universiteit van Amsterdam, after which he became a lecturer at the Hogereburgerscholen in Purmerend. The rise of Nazism may have prompted a move to Brussels in 1936, and was definitely the reason why Van Praag and his family left the continent for England in 1940. In London he worked for the Dutch and Belgian radio programmes of the BBC. The war and the shoah made a considerable impression on Van Praag, and his consequent preoccupation with Jewish culture and identity—specifically Dutch Jewish culture and the newly formed country of Israel—can be noted in the published works that follow this period.

      Lew Kaplan, a published translator in America of Brazilian and later Dutch novels was struck by the importance and beautiful prose of this novel when he first read it. He translated a large part of the novel and outlined the remainder while he was searching for a publisher. In a letter addressed to a “Mr. Weinstock” on July 25, 1952, my father described the book as containing “profound discussions, beautiful language, and deeply moving dramatic scenes.” My father died of complications from childhood rheumatic fever in 1958 before he was able to find a publisher. The uncompleted translation lay dormant in my possession for many years. In the late 1980s, I met Dr. Herman M. van Praag, then chief of psychiatry at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, in the course of my work in suicide and in psychology and religion. I recognized his last name as the same as the author of this book, Siegfried van Praag, and inquired as to whether the two van Praags were related. Herman M. van Praag informed me that Siegfried was his uncle and was then living in Belgium. As it turned out, I was going to a conference that year in Brussels and had the honor to meet Siegfried. He remembered my father’s work from years past, but had not realized my father died, and thought he had lost interest in the project. Many years after the work originally began, I was able to finally sign a contract in 2004 with the children of Siegfried, Dr. Herman J. van Praag and Dr. Ganna J. Ottevaere-van Praag, to complete this project. It has taken me many years to finish my father’s translation, and I have now done so with the wonderful help of Pieter Uys, a talented student of mine from South Africa. Thanks are also due to Larry ten Harmsel for his resolving of certain translation inconsistencies.

      And of course this book is important in placing Yeshua of Nazareth in the context of the Judaism and Israel of his time. While fictional, this book introduces the character of Menachem in an attempt to deepen the understanding between the Jewish people and the Christian world to foster an intelligent understanding of a Biblical approach towards life.

      Kalman J. Kaplan

      Preface

      Completed in 1947, Jesus and Menachem generally reflects the knowledge available at that time regarding the life of Yeshua of Nazareth during the period of Second Temple Judaism. Since then, historical research and textual analysis have contributed significant contextual insight and revealed contradictions in the earliest sources that remain unresolved. For example, a reputable corpus of scholarship suggests that the negative stereotyping of the Pharisees (and hence of the Jewish people throughout the Christian era) was invented and the conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees exaggerated or even manufactured to facilitate the spread of the new religion throughout the Roman Empire.

      Some historians even hold that Yeshua was a Pharisee himself, albeit a messianic one, and have highlighted the difference between the Hebrew “Moshiach” and the Greek “Christos.” Prominent experts have also pointed to the tolerance of the Pharisees for messianism, illustrated by the great Pharisaic teacher Gamaliel, among both Jews and non-Jewish God-fearers (Noahides) among them. They have also raised serious doubts about the Judas Iscariot narrative and the exoneration of Pontius Pilate, who crucified thousands of Jews in his term as Procurator of Judea, for the murder of Yeshua. They also raise questions about the involvement of the Sanhedrin and the true teaching of Yeshua.

      The letters I. N. R. I. (Iēsus Nazarēnus, Rēx Iūdaeōrum), denoting “Jesus the Nazarene, King of the Jews” at the top of the cross on which Yeshua was crucified, provide compelling evidence that his offense in Roman eyes was political and not religious—specifically his claim to kingship of Israel, a correlate of messianism. In other words, Jesus’s messianic claim and that of the Nazarenes was no real religious threat to the Pharisees but was seen as a political threat both to Rome and her Sadducee allies to Rome’s occupation of Judea.

      Finally, the character Paul (Saul) of Tarsus occurs in this fictional text as a contemporary of Yeshua—a scenario explicitly denied by the existing theological sources. It has become increasingly clear that Paul never met Yeshua, was not part of the Jerusalem Nazarene Church led by James and Peter, and only entered the picture later, as a rival claimant, after his reported vision of Jesus on the road to Damascus. It is likely that new scholarship emerging in the reborn state of Israel and elsewhere will shed even further light on the emergence of Christianity from Judaism in the Second Temple period.

      Kalman J. Kaplan

      Book One

      1

      Once again Menachem set out alone. Although his parents had never lacked a circle of friends, no one had yet come close to seeking his friendship. Wealth attracted only adults, not the young, he thought. Especially here in this dump of Nazareth in the middle of Galilee where his father had moved for the sake of business. Menachem had not fared much