What is Reddit's opinion of Jesus and the Forces of Death: The Gospels' Portrayal of Ritual Impurity within First-Century Judaism?

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u/melophage, I decided to instead directly link to a scholar who is credentialed in the relevant fields.

I recommend people read Thiessen's excellent book <em>Jesus and the Forces of Death</em>. I suggest listening his interview over at the <em>OnScript</em> podcast. Thiessen reminds me of Paula Fredriksen, the author of Paul: The Pagans’ Apostle (Yale University Press, 2017).

Thiessen recently posted over on his academia.edu profile his contribution to the recently released edited volume Understanding the Jewish Roots of Christianity: Biblical, Theological, and Historical Essays on the Relationship Between Christianity and Judaism (Lexham Press, 2021). In his essay “Did Jesus Plan to Start a New Religion?” Thiessen argues that on the basis of the data we have in the Synoptic Gospels, we can at least say that as far as their authors were concerned Jesus had no interest in starting a religion apart from Judaism. Jesus valued the temple as the dwelling place of Israel’s god, YHWH, the ritual purity system as the means by which the impure can deal with their impurities and approach God, and the Sabbath as the day prescribed by God to rest. Poignantly, Thiessen notes that if the historical Jesus had rejected these as passé then why do the Evangelists “depict him in a way that contradicts this truth? Could the gospel writers ‘really have understood nothing’?” (p. 31) This question has implications for the study of the historical Jesus since if the Gospel writers were wrong then their historical value is potentially undermined to some extent.