Jesus against the Scribal Elite: The Origins of the Conflict

Description

How did the controversy between Jesus and the scribal elite begin? We know that it ended on a cross, but what put Jesus on the radar of established religious and political leaders in the first place? Chris Keith argues that an answer to these questions must go beyond typical explanations such as Jesus's alternative views on Torah or his miracle working and consider his status as a teacher. Keith examines Jesus' own likely educational background, and situates Jesus within his first-century context, showing readers that some of the tensions between Jesus and the scribal authorities may have originated in Jesus' own lack of formal education. Keith builds on his earlier work on Jesus' literacy and uses insights from memory theory and ancient media studies to consider how Jesus' actions and teachings may have specifically been seen to challenge an elitist scribal culture.

Chris Keith is Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity and Directory of the Centre for the Social-Scientific Study of the Bible at St. Mary's University Twickenham, UK.

Keith's investigation is informative, readable and engaging. ... Recommended! * Journal for the Study of the New Testament * Professor Keith's book commendably combines comprehensiveness with concision: in less than two hundred pages, he covers literacy in Jesus' time, Jesus' own literacy and an overview of historical Jesus studies, all to bolster his argument about the origins of the conflict between Jesus and the scribal elites. It is an excellent, insightful and thorough work of scholarship, on which the author is to be congratulated. * Biblische Notizen * In this updated version of his instant classic, Chris Keith, one of the foremost and most exciting New Testament scholars working today, creatively weaves together piercing historical analysis, sensitive social analysis, and insights from the broader ancient world to answer the question 'how literate was Jesus?' Though informed by rigorous scholarship, this important book is accessible to and indispensable for anyone who wants to know more about Jesus, his preaching, and the circumstances that led to his death. * CANDIDA MOSS, University of Birmingham, UK * In this book, as lucid and accessible as it is compelling, Chris Keith exposes the issues that lay at the very heart of Jesus's engagement with the scribal elite. This is written for upper-level students, but scholars too will find much to consider in this excellent treatment. * HELEN BOND, Centre for the Study of Christian Origins, University of Edinburgh, UK * This well-written study by Chris Keith puts Jesus as a public teacher into new light. The attention this book devotes to Jesus in relation to the social context of his day not only challenges assumptions about what it means for Jesus to be God's Messiah and Son of God but also offers a fresh way to understand what it meant for Jesus to have given instructions at all and to have debated them with his Jewish contemporaries. Readers with any interest in the historical Jesus will have a hard time putting the book down. * LOREN STUCKENBRUCK, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat Munchen, Germany * Chris Keith is one of the leading scholars of literacy in Christian antiquity, especially as it relates to the historical Jesus. In this new contribution, he makes his views accessible to the nonspecialist who is interested in knowing, was Jesus a well-educated teacher who could read and write? And if not, why did he fall afoul of the powerful scribes-the readers, writers, and teachers of his world-leading to his demise? Clearly written and coherently argued, this will be a book for scholar and layperson alike. * BART D. EHRMAN, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA *