My friend, Peter Keenan, has recently written a fascinating trilogy on the Birth, Death and Resurrection of Jesus. The last one of the trilogy, under the above title, has just been published by Columba Books.
I publish here the press release that goes with the publication. It makes for a fascinating read.
The Resurrection of Jesus the Jew – Press Release – The Resurrection of Jesus the Jew
How are we to understand the resurrection of Jesus? Is the narrative of the resurrection largely shaped by Jewish storytelling traditions?
The accounts of Jesus’ resurrection appearances in the four gospels were never intended to be understood in narrow historical categories. They are an interpretation, not a literal description, of this seminal event (notionally 9th April 30 CE), for the simple reason that, apart from the apocryphal Gospel of Peter, there are no eyewitnesses to it. St Paul, writing c. 50, is our first canonical attestant to the resurrection, based on his mystical experience of the Risen Jesus, though some women and Peter were most likely the original recipients of a similar ecstatic vision.
In the final book of his “Jesus trilogy”, Peter Keenan, in this thought-provoking study, explores how Jewish traditions – particularly the enriching genre of midrash – have shaped the evangelists’ accounts of Jesus’ death and resurrection. Midrash works by employing earlier stories and traditions to elucidate later situations: “on the third day”, for example, first appears in the Book of Genesis (22:4; cf. 1Cor. 15:4).
Drawing on extensive Christian and Jewish scholarship, and mindful of the consideration that ‘resurrection’ was peripheral to the authentic teaching of Jesus, he examines whether its origins can be traced back to Persian Zoroastrianism. It later became prominent in one stream of Jewish thought, represented by the Pharisees, the group to which Jesus was closest in his beliefs.
Keenan challenges literalist readings of the New Testament, arguing that post-Holocaust Christianity necessitates radical transformation. ‘Improvement’ is no longer a viable option, if this great religious tradition, after Darwin, is to weather deceitful fundamentalism(s) andpopulism. Furthermore, he shows how centuries of Christian misinterpretation of Jewish texts has contributed to anti-Semitism, calling for more historically responsible and theologically rigorous approaches to the understanding of Judaism as a living faith, beloved of Jesus the Jew, born in Nazareth.
A self-described ‘post-Holocaust Christian’, Keenan contends that belief in Jesus’ resurrection is not “proof” of his divinity, no more than it can ever justify the dangerous claim that Christianity replaces Judaism. Instead, it is to be understood as an expression of faith and hope, deeply rooted in Jewish thought rather than a radical departure from it.
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The Resurrection of Jesus the Jew: Midrash and the First Easter (RJJ) is published by Columba Books; ISBN: 9781782184065, €16.99, and also available from bookshops. In the UK, RJJ is available from Amazon (and other outlets), £13.99 rrp.
(See reverse of this sheet, p. 2)
Peter Keenan is a former secretary to the Committee for Catholic-Jewish Relations of the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales. His The Birth of Jesus the Jew: Midrash and the Infancy Gospels was published in 2021 by Columba Books, followed by The Death of Jesus the Jew: Midrash in the Shadow of the Holocaust, in 2023. A second, expanded, edition of The Birth of Jesus the Jew, with a new subtitle (‘Midrash and the First Christmas’), is in preparation. It develops the claim that the virginal conception tradition (the “virgin birth”) is an exclusive function of Diaspora, not Palestinian, Jewish-Christianity; and a new chapter includes an assessment of the scandals still affecting the Catholic Church, with recommendations for reform.
The Resurrection of Jesus the Jew – endorsements – The Resurrection of Jesus the Jew
The challenge posed to Catholics by Keenan is to become aware of, and shed, the traces of anti-Semitism that continue to poison their faith. He shows the way forward by drawing out the meaning of the New Testament’s texts as they would have been understood in their Jewish contexts. In doing so, he models how Christians can retain the central tenets of their faith, in this case the Resurrection, while also changing how they have been taught to understand them. This will be a helpful book to any person or community that takes anti-Semitism seriously, because it allows Christians to see how their beliefs align with and don’t “replace” Jewish norms.
Siobhán Garrigan, Loyola Professor of Catholic Theology, Trinity College Dublin
I am tempted to think of the final volume of Peter Keenan’s Jewish Jesus trilogy as bookending the half-century of Jewish scholarship inaugurated by Geza Vermes’ Jesus the Jew. More even than the previous books in the trilogy, The Resurrection of Jesus the Jew is distinguished by a philosophical refusal to confuse mythology with history, a regenerated argument for the profound affinity between gospel narratives and Jewish midrash; an ethical refusal of both theological anti-Judaism and racial anti-Semitism; and a take-no-hostage writing style that is page-turningly lively.
Stephen D. Moore, Edmund S. Janes Professor of New Testament Studies, The Theological School, Drew University, New Jersey
‘You, a wild olive shoot, were grafted … to share the rich root of the olive tree, … remember that it is not you that supports the root, but the root that supports you’ (Rom. 11:17-18). St Paul (d. circa 58 CE)
‘The German responsibility for these crimes, as overwhelming as it has been, is only a derivative responsibility, grafted like a most hideous parasite onto a centuries-old tradition, which is a Christian tradition. … Anti-Judaism will retain its virulence as long as the Christian Churches do not have the heart to wipe it out. Latent anti-Semitism exists everywhere, and the contrary would be surprising: for the perennial source of this latent anti-Semitism is none other than Christian religious teaching in all its forms, the tendentious interpretation of Scripture, the interpretation which I am absolutely convinced is contrary to the truth and love of him who was the Jew Jesus. … I urge Christians to undertake this effort of renewal. … Such is the major lesson that emerges from meditation on Auschwitz, which I cannot release myself from. The glow of the Auschwitz crematorium is the beacon that lights, that guides all my thoughts. Oh, … my Christian brothers, do you not think that it mingles with another glow, that of the Cross?’ Jules Isaac (d. 1963, in his 1948 Jesus and Israel)
‘If ever it comes to a choice between Jesus and truth, we must always choose truth, because disloyalty to truth will always prove in the long run to have been disloyalty to Jesus.’ Simone Weil (d. 1942)
‘The Church repudiates and deplores the hatred, persecutions and displays of anti-Semitism directed against the Jews at any time and from any source.’ Vatican II (1965)
