Jesus a Pharisee? …

I CONCUR heartily with Jason Byassee's pleasure at seeing the Christian-Jewish blend achieved by "The Cradle of Christianity" exhibit, currently at the Maltz Museum in a Cleveland suburb ("Double take," July 25). I also found the display of the temple fragment in Greek forbidding gentiles from entering to be a highlight. My second choice was the chiseled stone describing, in Latin, Pontius Pilate. It presents us with the society Jesus faced, marked by Hellenism in public places and occupation by Latin-speaking Romans.

As for the reference to Paul being wrongly accused of bringing gentiles into the Temple (Acts 21:27-29), Byassee might have gone on to Acts 22, where Paul is defended by the Pharisees, of whom he asserts he is one. Obviously the confession of Jesus as Messiah was not nearly as offensive to Pharisees in that time as we think, contrary to the adverse view which has too long obtained about them. It is no secret that a considerable body of Christian scholarship sees Jesus as a radical Pharisee, not unlike Paul's corresponding claim in Acts.

Harold Ticktin

Shaker Heights, Ohio

COPYRIGHT 2006 The Christian Century Foundation
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