Hyam Maccoby
Hyam Maccoby (
1924-
2004) was a
British scholar, dramatist, and
Orthodox Jew specializing in the study of the
Jewish and
Christian religious tradition. He held an academic position at the Centre for Jewish Studies,
University of Leeds. Maccoby was widely known for his theories of the historical
Jesus and the historical origins of
Christianity.
Maccoby also wrote extensively on the phenomenon of ancient and modern
Anti-Semitism. He considered the Gospel traditions blaming the Jews for the death of Jesus and especially the legend of
Judas Iscariot (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
Talmudic tradition and the history of the Jewish religion.
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 claimant whose life and teaching were within the mainstream first-century
Judaism. He believed that Jesus was executed as a rebel against the
Roman occupation of
Judaea. 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 prophetic writings, were expecting a
supernatural 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.
However, many of the disciples of Jesus did not lose their hopes, believing that Jesus would soon be miraculously resurrected by
God, 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. According to Maccoby, the founding of
Christianity as a religion separate from Judaism was entirely the work of
Paul of Tarsus.
Maccoby claimed that Paul was a
Hellenized Jewish convert or perhaps even a
Gentile, coming from a background exposed to the influence of
Gnosticism and the pagan
mystery religions such as the
Attis cult, which were the dominant religious forms in the Hellenistic world of that age. Maccoby derived this theory from fragments of the writings of opponents of
Ebionites, particularly in the treatise on
Heresies by
Epiphanius of Salamis.
Maccoby considered Paul's claims to an orthodox Pharisaic Jewish education to be false. As proof, Maccoby demonstrated that many statements in Paul's writings betray his 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 Pharasee 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, such as the
Trinity and the
Last Supper,in an attempt to find justification for his newly created myth in the
Old Testament. Paul came to present Jesus as a dying and rising savior deity similar to those from the Hellenistic mystery cults, 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 passages (for example Paul's account of his quarrel with
Peter in the
Epistle to Galatians) as remnants of authentic accounts of this hostility. However, the
Roman-Jewish War of 66-70 CE soon brought a violent end to the Jerusalem sect, and the Gentile Church founded by Paul emerged as the winner. 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 reaching back to the original disciples of Jesus. He also conjectured that the Jewish-Christian sect of
Ebionites may have been an authentic offshoot of the original Jerusalem community.
Maccoby focused his work on tracing the roots of
anti-Semitism back to a Christian origin and disassociating Christianity from a Jewish background. Maccoby attributed 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 as an invention of the Pauline Church, and that Jesus himself subscribed to Pharisaic Judaism as revealed in such texts as the Sermon on the Mount.
Maccoby's play,
The Disputation is a critically acclaimed reenactment of the dramatic confrontation between the Spanish Rabbi Moshe ben Nachman, better known as
Nachmanides (1194-1270), and the Spanish apostate Pablo Christiani before King Jaime I of Aragon in 1263.
Much of the play is drawn from Nachmanides' account of the disputation, and much is inferred by 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 dramatized by the
BBC.
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Barabbas*
Gnosticism and the New Testament*
Jesus as myth*
The Day God Laughed: Sayings, Fables and Entertainments of the Jewish Sages (with Wolf Mankowitz, 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)
*
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 (1999)
*
The Philosophy of the Talmud (2002)
*
Jesus the Pharisee (2003)
*
Anti-Semitism and Modernity (2004)
*
Hyam Maccoby's obituary from The Guardian*
Hyam Maccoby at Peter Kirby's page "Theories of the Historical Jesus" - contains links to Maccoby's books on Amazon*
A long excerpt from Revolution in Judaea*
A long excerpt from The Mythmaker*
Another excerpt from The Mythmaker*
Criticism of Maccoby's theories
