The Work
Alfred Edersheim's The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah was published in two volumes by Longmans, Green and Co. in 1883 and is one of the most comprehensive studies of the Jewish background of the Gospel narratives ever written. Running to nearly 1,700 pages in the original edition (with appendices), the work moves chronologically through the life of Jesus as presented in the four Gospels, pausing at each major episode to provide detailed historical, geographical, social, and above all Rabbinic background. Its unique feature is Edersheim's unrivaled command of the Rabbinic literature - the Mishnah, the Talmud, the Midrashim - which he uses to illuminate every aspect of the first-century Jewish world in which Jesus lived and taught.
Edersheim's command of these sources was genuine and first-hand: he was himself a Jewish convert to Christianity, born in Vienna in 1825 into a prosperous Jewish family, educated in traditional Jewish learning before his conversion in 1843 under the ministry of John Duncan in Budapest. This background gave him access to Hebrew and Aramaic primary sources that no contemporary Christian scholar possessed in the same degree. The book went through multiple editions in Edersheim's lifetime and remains in print; it was the standard evangelical reference work for the Jewish background of the New Testament from its publication through most of the twentieth century.
Biblical Engagement
John 11:35 ('Jesus wept') is the shortest verse in the English Bible and one of the most theologically significant. Edersheim's treatment of the Lazarus narrative (John 11) in its Jewish context is one of the most celebrated passages in the book. He explains in detail the Jewish mourning customs of the first century: the seven-day mourning period (shiva), the professional mourners, the obligation to weep with the bereaved, the belief that the soul of the dead remained near the body for three days before finally departing (which gives significance to the detail that Lazarus had been dead four days). This context transforms the narrative: Jesus's weeping (verse 35) is not a private emotional response but a public participation in the communal mourning that Jewish custom required; his hesitation in coming until the fourth day ensures that no one can question that Lazarus is genuinely dead. Edersheim's explication gives the familiar story a historical depth that makes it simultaneously more human and more miraculous.
Luke 15:2 ('And the Pharisees and scribes murmured, saying, This man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them') introduces the three parables of Luke 15 (the lost sheep, the lost coin, the Prodigal Son). Edersheim's treatment of these parables in their Rabbinic context is essential reading: he demonstrates that there were parallel parables in Rabbinic literature but that Jesus's parables consistently differ from them in their perspective. Rabbinic parables about lost objects and repentance typically celebrate the return of the sinner to the community and God's law; Jesus's parables celebrate God's initiative in seeking the lost. The difference is not the fact of forgiveness but the theological grammar of how it operates.
Matthew 5:20 ('For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven') is one of the most important and most misunderstood verses in the Sermon on the Mount. Edersheim's treatment of Pharisaism - always controversial, as he was accused of presenting a caricature - attempts to describe the specific virtues and characteristic failures of the Pharisaic movement from the inside. He acknowledges the genuine piety of the Pharisees while arguing that their righteousness was primarily external compliance with a multiplying system of legal requirements, in contrast to Jesus's demand for inner transformation.
John 7:37-38 ('In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink. He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water') is the occasion for Edersheim's celebrated account of the Feast of Tabernacles, particularly the water-drawing ceremony (Simchat Bet HaSho'evah) in which water from the Pool of Siloam was poured on the altar to the accompaniment of great rejoicing. Edersheim's description of this ceremony - which Talmudic tradition said was so joyful that a person who had never seen it had never seen true joy - makes Jesus's cry ('If any man thirst, let him come unto me') explosively dramatic: it was uttered on precisely the day when this water ceremony reached its climax, and was heard by a crowd already singing psalms about water and divine provision.
Author and Context
Alfred Edersheim was born on March 7, 1825, in Vienna, and raised in a prosperous Jewish family. He received an excellent secular and Jewish education in Vienna before going to Budapest to continue his studies in 1840. There he came under the influence of John Duncan, a Scottish Presbyterian missionary to the Jews, and in 1843 was baptized. His subsequent education at the Free Church of Scotland's New College in Edinburgh and the University of Berlin shaped his scholarly formation. He was ordained as a Presbyterian minister and served in Scotland and England before taking Anglican orders in 1875. He was Grinfield Lecturer on the Septuagint at Oxford from 1886 to 1891.
Edersheim's own experience as a Jewish convert gave him a unique sensitivity to the ways in which Christian scholars had misrepresented Judaism in the service of anti-Jewish polemics. While he believed that the Judaism of Jesus's time had departed from the spiritual intentions of the Hebrew prophets, he took care to present Rabbinic sources accurately and to credit the genuine achievements of the Pharisaic tradition.
The Rabbinic Material
Edersheim's use of Rabbinic sources has been both the book's greatest strength and the source of its most significant scholarly criticisms. His strengths: he was the first scholar to make the wealth of Rabbinic literature systematically available to English-language readers interested in the Gospel narratives, and his quotations from the Talmud and Midrash remain valuable even where his interpretation is contested. His weaknesses: he sometimes used later Rabbinic material (from the Babylonian Talmud, compiled in the fifth-sixth centuries AD) to illuminate the first century without adequate attention to the problems of anachronism; and his apologetic purpose - demonstrating that Jesus transcended the Judaism of his day - sometimes distorted his presentation of that Judaism.
The twentieth-century Jewish scholarship of G.F. Moore, E.P. Sanders, and Jacob Neusner has corrected many of Edersheim's specific claims about Pharisaism and has established more rigorous methodological standards for the use of Rabbinic material in New Testament scholarship. But Edersheim's book retains value as a comprehensive reference work and as a demonstration of the importance of Jewish background for Gospel interpretation.
Reception History
The book was immediately recognized as a landmark work. Charles Haddon Spurgeon cited it; evangelical preachers and teachers across the English-speaking world used it as their primary reference for Jewish background material. It has remained in continuous print since 1883, an extraordinary record for a scholarly work of its period.
The twentieth-century development of New Testament scholarship - particularly the Dead Sea Scrolls discoveries (1947 onward) and the revolution in Pauline studies associated with E.P. Sanders's Paul and Palestinian Judaism (1977) - has superseded Edersheim in important respects and requires that his work be used with appropriate critical attention. But his fundamental contribution - the demonstration that the Gospels can only be fully understood in the context of first-century Jewish life, thought, and practice - remains permanently valid.
Theological Significance
The book's theological significance lies in its demonstration that Jesus was not simply the founder of a new religion discontinuous with Judaism but the fulfillment of the specific hopes and practices of first-century Jewish life. Edersheim's Jesus is Jewish through and through, and his ministry makes sense in the context of synagogue worship, Passover seder, Temple pilgrimage, and Rabbinic debate. This contextual reading deepens rather than diminishes the theological claims of the Gospels.
Legacy
Edersheim's work established the importance of Jewish background studies for New Testament interpretation and influenced every subsequent generation of biblical scholars and preachers. Contemporary successors - Kenneth Bailey's work on the parables in Middle Eastern context, David Instone-Brewer's Rabbinic studies, N.T. Wright's reconstruction of first-century Jewish worldviews - work in the tradition he established, however much they correct his specific conclusions.
Reading Alongside Scripture
Readers should work with John 11 (Lazarus), Luke 15 (three parables of the lost), John 7:37-39 (living water at Tabernacles), Matthew 5:17-20 (law and righteousness), Mark 12:28-34 (the greatest commandment in its Rabbinic context), and Exodus 12 (Passover - whose ritual significance Edersheim illuminates throughout his treatment of the Last Supper).
Further Reading
- E.P. Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief, 63 BCE-66 CE (1992) - the standard modern alternative to Edersheim for first-century Jewish background, representing post-Sanders scholarship's more positive assessment of Pharisaism. - Craig Evans, Jesus and His World: The Archaeological Evidence (2012) - integrates recent archaeological discoveries with the background study tradition Edersheim established. - Joachim Jeremias, The Parables of Jesus (1947, revised 1972) - the twentieth century's most important treatment of the parables in their Jewish context.