Abstract
Emeritus professor of Theology at the School of Religions and Theology at Trinity College Dublin, Seán Freyne, who died in early August 2013, was one of Ireland’s most respected theologians and biblical scholars. He was also one of its most prolific, which earned him international standing and regular invitations to lecture at universities across the globe, including a visiting professorship of early Christian history and literature at Harvard Divinity School in 2007–8. In significant ways this, his last major work, should be seen as an accessible, yet always insightful, vademecum of the fruits of a lifetime of research. Its accessibility lies in Freyne’s ability to write well (something that is not always the gift of those working in academia); at first, this same accessibility might be regarded as belying its deep scholarship, but the reader is very soon made aware that here we have a scholar who is in full command of his field and yet can manage to distil this scholarship in ways that can satisfy the general reader and seasoned biblical scholar alike.
Freyne’s task is to situate the rise and expansion of the Jesus movement within the social, geographical, political, and religious context of the Graeco-Roman world; one of the running themes, through the volume, therefore, is that context is key.
The first three chapters, in particular, seek to establish a wider context for the growth of the Jesus movement. The first chapter examines the epithet ‘Galilee of the Gentiles,’ asking to what extent it can be justified. Freyne finds that Jews in Galilee certainly did not fully turn their backs on the Greek world but, likewise, there was also a long-lasting attachment to Jerusalem and its temple. The second chapter examines the Roman presence in Galilee and Judaea, the Herodian influence on the region, and the effects of the Jewish revolts on Jewish and Christian communities alike. The third chapter turns to socio-economic questions and concludes that while no trace can be found of economic or social decline in the larger villages, it is likely that social differentiation increased during the reign of Herod Antipas.
Chapters four and five proceed to discuss questions pertaining to the historical Jesus and the rise of the Jesus movement, respectively. In Chapter four, Freyne challenges Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan’s assertion that once Jesus broke with his mentor, John the Baptist, he adopted a different outlook for his mission, moving from the apocalyptic tradition to the wisdom tradition, and refashioning himself as a teacher of wisdom or Cynic-like preacher. Freyne is much more comfortable in viewing these stands as co-existing, side by side, in Jesus’ ministry; he agrees, for instance, with Dale Allison that Jesus expected the end to come soon. Freyne highlights Jesus’ seeming indifference to regulations concerning the Jewish Law, while not taking a formal position on these that might have been appealed to in disputes later on. He also points to how his encounter with the Syro-Phoenician woman ‘changed his views’ as to when and where Gentiles should be admitted to the great banquet. In this, Freyne notes, ‘his view was more Abrahamic than Mosaic, following the promptings of Isaiah, which envisages a universal rather than purely ethnic role for Israel’s restoration’ (p. 182). In his discussion of the nascent Jesus movement in Chapter five, Freyne defends, up to a point, the historicity of Luke-Acts against recent rhetorical analysis, claiming that Luke succeeded in recapturing ‘the texture and tone of original incidents and speeches, as he considered “suitable to the occasion”—in best Thucydidean fashion.’ Freyne succeeds, time and again, in proving to be a wise commentator on the scholarship relevant to his subject, in Chapter five demonstrating how the views of Martin Hengel, who claims that Stephen and the Hellenists shaped Greek-speaking Christianity, and those of more recent scholars such as Todd Penner, who takes a far more sceptical approach to the historicity of the Book of Acts, need not be considered as far removed from each other as some might wish to claim. Here also we find an extended treatment of the figure of James in early church writings, including those of Nag Hammadi. In his approach to literary evidence, Freyne prefers to cast his net wide, and repeatedly emphasizes the value of finds such as those at Nag Hammadi which open up our minds to voices which had previously been filtered through the works of heresiologists. In other respects, too, he adopts a broad approach; in Chapter six on the sayings sources such as Q and the Gospel of Thomas, he navigates his way between historical-critical and narrative approaches, wisely stating that ‘in dealing with ancient texts, we need to recognize that there can be multiple perspectives present, perspectives that can only be uncovered when we adopt multiple reading strategies that include both literary and historical considerations’ (p. 247). In this chapter he departs from Richard Horsley’s view that Q was a purely oral collection of sayings. Freyne also posits that the Q community, if once based in the Capernaum area, had since moved on from there on the basis of the evidence of the sharpness of their critique of Capernaum. He is more favourable to Q having emerged from the area of upper Galilee/southern Syria.
In Chapter seven, Freyne returns to a discussion of the gospels of Mark and Matthew. Here he is sympathetic to the view that Matthew evidences outreach missions to both Jews and Gentiles, which continued side by side, and are represented in two different mission accounts of 10:5–6 and 28:16–20, respectively. This avoids the conclusion that the universal mission superseded the failed mission to Israel. Freyne displays antipathy elsewhere in the volume to the replacement theory in ethics regarding the Sermon on the Mount. For Freyne, Jesus does not replace the Law, but intensifies it. Chapter eight moves into a consideration of events in the second century; here he discusses the Christian movement’s relations with the Roman state on the one hand, and with Jews on the other. Freyne uses the language of ‘parent Judaism’ quite frequently, forgoing the sibling analogy that is favoured by others. In his discussion of the ‘parting of the ways’ he, like many other recent scholars, prefers to speak of this in terms of a protracted development and, while accepting the reality of local disturbances, nevertheless rejects the idea of a universal ban of Messianists from the synagogue in the late first century.
In sum, this volume will be read profitably by students and scholars alike, who will find in Freyne a sure-footed guide to the study of Galilee and the early Jesus movement in its broadest context. It fittingly crowns a lifetime of teaching, research, and writing and will be an important resource for years to come.