Géza Vermes | |
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.jpg) Vermes in 2007 | |
| Born | (1924-06-22)22 June 1924 |
| Died | 8 May 2013(2013-05-08) (aged 88) |
| Nationality | British |
| Academic background | |
| Alma mater | |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | |
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| Institutions | |
| Notable works | The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English (1962) Jesus the Jew (1973) Jesus and the World of Judaism (1983) The Religion of Jesus the Jew (1993) |
Géza Vermes,FBA (Hungarian:[ˈvɛrmɛʃˈɡeːzɒ]; 22 June 1924 – 8 May 2013) was a Britishacademic,Biblical scholar, andJudaist ofJewish–Hungarian descent—one who also served as aRoman Catholic priest in his youth—and scholar specialized in the field of thehistory of religion, particularlyancient Judaism andearly Christianity. He is best known for his complete translation of theDead Sea Scrolls into English;[1] his research focused on the Dead Sea Scrolls and otherAncient Hebrew writings inAramaic such as theTargumim, and on thelife and religion of Jesus. Vermes was one of the most important voices incontemporary Jesus research,[2] and he has been described as the greatest Jesus scholar of his time.[3] Vermes' written work on Jesus focuses principally on theJewishness of the historical Jesus,[4] as seen in the broader context of the narrative scope ofJewish history andtheology, whilequestioning and challenging the basis of theChristian doctrine on Jesus.[5]
Vermes was born inMakó,Kingdom of Hungary, in 1924 to a family ofHungarianJewish descent:[6][7] Terézia Riesz, a schoolteacher, and Ernő Vermes, a liberal journalist.[8][9] The Vermes family was of Jewish background but had given up religious practice by the mid-19th century.[8][10] All three were baptised asRoman Catholics when he was six;[6] referring to his parents' conversion, he defined it as a way to escape from therising tide of anti-Semitism in Europe[6][7][10] (see alsoInterwar period). In an interview with Rachel Kohn of theAustralian Broadcasting Corporation in 1999 he stated: "In fact, I never was anything but a Jew with a temporary sort of outer vestment. I realised I ought to recognise my genuine identity."[7] Nonetheless, his mother and father were murdered inthe Holocaust in 1944.[6][7]
Vermes attended a Catholic seminary.[6][7] When he was eligible for college, in 1942, Jews were not accepted into Hungarian universities.[7] After theSecond World War he became a Catholic priest, but was not admitted into the Jesuit or Dominican orders because of his Jewish ancestry.[10][11] Vermes was accepted into theOrder of the Fathers of Notre-Dame de Sion,[8] a French-Belgian order which prayed for the Jews.[7] Later he moved toParis, where he studied under the Hungarian bornFrench Jewish scholarGeorges Vajda, a graduate of theRabbinical Seminary ofBudapest.[7]
He studied then at the College St Albert and theCatholic University of Leuven inBelgium, where he specialised inOriental history, civilisations and languages. In 1953, Vermes obtained aDoctorate of Theology with the first dissertation written on theDead Sea Scrolls and its historical framework.[8] In 1962 he completed a first translation of the Dead Sea Scrolls, later revised and much augmented.[7][10] Also in Paris, Vermes befriended and worked withPaul Demann, a scholar, like him, of Hungarian Jewish origins.[7] Together with a third collaborator,Renee Bloch, they battled doggedly against theanti-Semitic content in Catholic education and ritual of the time.[7] TheSecond Vatican Council would later accept many of the trio's theological arguments.[7]
After researching the Dead Sea Scrolls in Paris for several years,[8] Vermes had met Pamela Hobson Curle,[7][10][12] a poet and scholar, disciple of theNeo-HasidicJewish philosopherMartin Buber,[7][10] and the two fell in love. She was married and the mother of two children, but her marriage was in the process of ending.[7][10] In 1958, after her divorce, and after Vermes left the priesthood, they married, remaining together and often collaborating on work, until her death in 1993.[7][10] He alsorenounced Christianity and embraced hisJewish identity,[7][10] although not religious observance.[10] He took up a teaching post at theUniversity of Newcastle upon Tyne.[8]
In 1965, after teachingBiblical Hebrew for several years at University of Newcastle upon Tyne in the north ofEngland,[7] he joined the Faculty of Oriental Studies at theUniversity of Oxford, rising to become the first Oxford Professor ofJewish Studies before his retirement in 1991;[6][7] he subsequently directed the Oxford Forum for Qumran Research at theOxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies.[6] In 1970 hereconverted to Judaism as aliberal Jew,[6] and became a member of theLiberal Jewish Synagogueof London.[6][13] After the death of his first wife in 1993, he married Margaret Unarska in 1996 and adopted her son, Ian. Vermes died on 8 May 2013 at the age of 88.[6][7]
Vermes was one of the first scholars to examine the Dead Sea Scrolls after their discovery in 1947, and is the author of the standard translation into English of the Dead Sea Scrolls:The Dead Sea Scrolls in English (1962).[14] He is one of the leading scholars in the field of the study of the historical Jesus (see Selected Publications, below) and together withFergus Millar andMartin Goodman, Vermes was responsible for substantially revisingEmil Schurer's three-volume work,The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ,[15] HisAn Introduction to the Complete Dead Sea Scrolls, revised edition (2000), is a study of the collection atQumran.[16]
Until his death, he was a Professor Emeritus of Jewish Studies and Emeritus Fellow ofWolfson College, Oxford, but continued to teach at theOriental Institute inOxford. He had edited theJournal of Jewish Studies[17] from 1971 to his death, and from 1991 he had been director of the Oxford Forum for Qumran Research at theOxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies.[18] He inspired the creation of the British Association for Jewish Studies (BAJS) in 1975 and of the European Association for Jewish Studies (EAJS) in 1981 and acted as founding president for both.
Vermes was a Fellow of theBritish Academy; a Fellow of the European Academy of Arts, Sciences and Humanities; holder of an Oxford D. Litt. (1988) and of honorary doctorates from theUniversity of Edinburgh (1989),University of Durham (1990),University of Sheffield (1994) and the Central European University of Budapest (2008). He was awarded the Wilhelm Bacher Memorial Medal by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (1996), the Memorial Medal of the city of Makó, his place of birth (2008) and the keys of the cities of Monroe LA and Natchez MS (2009). He received a vote of congratulation from the US House of Representatives, proposed by the Representative of Louisiana on 17 September 2009.
In the course of a lecture tour in the United States in September 2009, Vermes spoke at theUniversity of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, atDuke University in Durham NC, atJohns Hopkins University in Baltimore MD, and at theUniversity of Louisiana at Monroe and at Baton Rouge.
On 23 January 2012 Penguin Books celebrated at Wolfson College, Oxford, the golden jubilee of Vermes'sThe Dead Sea Scrolls in English, which has sold an estimated half-a-million copies worldwide. A "Fiftieth anniversary" edition has been issued in thePenguin Classics series.
Vermes was a prominent scholar in the contemporary field of historical Jesus research.[19] The contemporary approach, known as the "third quest", emphasisesJesus's Jewish identity and context.[19] It portrays Jesus as founding a renewal movement within Judaism.[19]
Vermes described Jesus as a 1st-century Jewish holy man, a commonplace view in academia but novel to the public when Vermes began publishing.[8] Contrary to certain other scholars (such asE. P. Sanders),[20] Vermes concludes that Jesus did not reach out to non-Jews. For example, he attributes positive references toSamaritans in the gospels not to Jesus himself but to early Christian editing. He suggests that, properly understood, the historical Jesus is a figure that Jews should find familiar and attractive.[19] This historical Jesus, however, is so different from the Christ of faith that Christians, says Vermes, may well want to rethink the fundamentals of their faith.[19]
Important works on this topic includeJesus the Jew (1973), which describes Jesus as a thoroughly Jewish Galilean charismatic,The Gospel of Jesus the Jew (1981), which examines Jewish parallels to Jesus's teaching[16] andChristian Beginnings (2012), which traces the evolution of the figure of Jesus from Jewish charismatic in thesynoptic Gospels to equality with God in theCouncil of Nicea (325 CE). He also expounded this theme in the controversial television miniseries,Jesus: The Evidence (Channel 4, 1984).
Vermes believed it is possible "to retrieve the authentic Gospel of Jesus, his first-hand message to his original followers."[21]
The historical Jesus can be retrieved only within the context of first-century Galilean Judaism. The Gospel image must therefore be inserted into the historical canvas ofPalestine in the first century CE, with the help of the works ofFlavius Josephus, the Dead Sea Scrolls and earlyrabbinic literature. Against this background, what kind of picture of Jesus emerges from the Gospels? That of a rural holy man, initially a follower of the movement of repentance launched by another holy man,John the Baptist. In the hamlets and villages of Lower Galilee and the lakeside, Jesus set out to preach thecoming of the Kingdom of God within the lifetime of his generation and outlined the religious duties his simple listeners were to perform to prepare themselves for the great event.[22]
For more details see his autobiography,Providential Accidents, London, SCM Press, 1998ISBN 0-334-02722-5; Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham MD, 1998ISBN 0-8476-9340-6.
Geza Vermes, Hungarian-born British religious scholar (born June 22, 1924, Mako, Hung.—died May 8, 2013, Oxford, Oxfordshire, Eng.), was a leading interpreter of the "historical Jesus" as a Jewish holy man and of the Dead Sea Scrolls; Vermes's volumeThe Dead Sea Scrolls in English (1962) was generally considered one of the finest translations of those ancient manuscripts.
The historical Jesus can be retrieved only within the context of first-century Galilean Judaism. The Gospel image must therefore be inserted into the historical canvas of Palestine in the first century CE, with the help of the works of Flavius Josephus, the Dead Sea Scrolls and early rabbinic literature. Against this background, what kind of picture of Jesus emerges from the Gospels? That of a rural holy man, initially a follower of the movement of repentance launched by another holy man, John the Baptist. In the hamlets and villages of Lower Galilee and the lakeside, Jesus set out to preach the coming of the Kingdom of God within the lifetime of his generation and outlined the religious duties his simple listeners were to perform to prepare themselves for the great event. [...] The reliability of Josephus's notice about Jesus was rejected by many in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but it has been judged partly genuine and partly falsified by the majority of more recent critics. The Jesus portrait of Josephus, drawn by an uninvolved witness, stands halfway between the fully sympathetic picture of early Christianity and the wholly antipathetic image of the magician of Talmudic and post-Talmudic Jewish literature.
Quotations related toGeza Vermes at Wikiquote