Jewish Context of Jesus' Miracles, The

The Jewish Context of Jesus'Miracles. By Eric Eve. JSNTSup 231. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002, 420 pp., $125.00.

This book reflects the ground swell of interest in miracles in antiquity-not least the miracles of Jesus. In a study that has grown out of his Oxford D.Phil, dissertation supervised by John Muddiman, Eve seeks to illuminate the miracles associated with and conducted by Jesus. In contrast to the usual approach of treating the Jewish context as background to studies of Jesus' miracles, Eve places the Jewish context squarely in the foreground as the main focus of investigation. "The purpose of this change of perspective is to enable Jesus' miracles to be seen in their Jewish context, rather than viewing the Jewish context through the lens of Jesus' miracles" (p. 18). This enables Eve to avoid the danger, which he sees particularly in the work of Vermes, of a distorted picture that arises from taking into account only those snippets of Jewish background that most closely resemble or contrast with Jesus' miracle working (pp. 18-19).

Recognizing the impossibility of examining every available text, Eve restricts his treatment to the main bodies of second Temple Jewish literature: Josephus (chap. 2), Philo (chap. 3), the Wisdom of Solomon and Ben Sira (chap. 4), Pseudo-Philo (chap. 5), the Book of Watchers in 1 Enoch and Jubilees (chap. 6), selected Qumran texts including the Genesis Apocryphon (IQapGen), the Prayer of Nabonidus (4QprNab) and the Messianic Apocalypse (4Q521; chap. 7), and Tobit andArtapanus (chap. 8). Even though the treatment is acknowledged to be selective, there remains an immense amount of detailed work for an argument that is cautious, balanced, and full to the point of being over cooked with many, often too many, examples given in extenso. Yet, there is generally too little interaction with secondary literature, which is needed for a book that intends to engage in scholarly debates.

In chapter 9, a critical central chapter, Eve draws together the threads of his discussion so far, beginning with four general observations: (1) that most of the Jews who produced second Temple literature were little preoccupied with the miraculous; (2) that where there is an interest in miracles it is usually through an interest in biblical miracles, especially the miraculous events surrounding the exodus; (3) that, outside Josephus, stories of post-biblical miracles are rare; and (4) that the passages that come close to describing Jesus' career in miracles come to us in Christian recensions (cf. AJOOC. Elij. 3:5-13; Matt 11:5) describing not a messiah but the coming of an anti-God figure. Eve notes the obvious irony that, if this is so, "the figure in the Pseudepigrapha and Apocrypha that Jesus' miracle-working make him most resemble is that of Beliar" (p. 245).

In more detail, Eve notes that, in what he terms the Enochic-Qumran traditions, there seems to be slightly more interest in healing miracles and even more interest in exorcism. He reasonably suggests, therefore, that "perhaps the best way of understanding the context of Jesus' healing and exorcism is at the creative confluence of three streams within Judaism: the widespread traditions about prophets like Elijah and Elisha, the Enochic-Qumran traditions concerned with the eschatological defeat of demonic powers, and popular folk-religion" (p. 259). In considering whether there are any parallels to the Gospel "nature miracles" in this literature Eve concludes that, with the exception of the miracles taken over from the OT, there are no stories that significantly resemble those attributed to Jesus. Also of significance is his corroboration of the conclusion of others that, although it would not be beyond the bounds of possibility to associate the two, "there was no automatic connexion between healing and eschatology in Jewish thought" (italics his). From this Eve goes on to suggest that this strengthens the idea that Jesus made creative use of individual healings as an acted metaphor (or parable) of the coming of the kingdom of God (p. 266). However, a careful examination of such sayings as Matthew 12:28/Luke 11:20 may show Jesus had a different view: that they embodied the kingdom of God.

The remaining four chapters look at evidence relating to Jesus' miracle-working contemporaries. Over against Vermes, Eve concludes (chap. 10) that the traditions about Honi the Circle-Drawer and Hanina ben Dosa do not exemplify a class of charismatic holy men with which Jesus is connected. Nevertheless, Vermes's point is allowed to stand that Judaism and the Gospel tradition associated miracle-working and prophets, not least Elijah and Elisha. The conclusion to chapter 11 on the sign prophets is similarly negative: whereas they were looking back to the exodus-conquest traditions as a type of imminent future salvation, Jesus was tapping into a different stream of expectation-that of the bountiful provision of God rather than the punishment and defeat of foes. Jesus was characterized by healings and exorcisms, miracles that seem to have formed no part of the program of the sign prophets. Chapter 12 deals with the evidence that other Jews around the time of Jesus practiced exorcism. Eve draws attention to the fact that, given the comparative wealth of material on angels and demons in general, it is significant that there is a comparative paucity of material on possession and exorcism so that, as others have shown, while not being unique, Jesus "may nevertheless have been remarkably unusual, not least in his claim to be doing so by the spirit of God" (p. 349). In the final main chapter, "Healers, Magicians and Spirits," which explores some insights from medical and social-scientific anthropology, the author is the least sure-footed, and the results are thin and not as convincing. Notwithstanding, the discussion on the distinction made in a Jewish context between magic and miracle-whether the source of a feat was God or not-warrants attention.