Jesus was(n’t) a rabbi
Was Jesus a rabbi? The definite answer is - Yes and No. Wayne Meeks, along with others, points out that the earliest we can trace Rabbinic Judaism is to the academy at Yavneh in the second century CE. To refer to anyone before then as a Rabbi in the big-R sense is anachronistic.1 Now, Jesus was called rabbi to be sure, but this referred to anyone who taught and was viewed as an authority on the law - it was much more of a general term, sorta like teacher is today.
There really is no good answer as to the currents behind the formation of the Rabbinical school, and by good I mean an answer predicated by definite evidence. We have the experts in the interpretation of the Law, Pharisees, till 70 and then in 170(?) we suddenly have the Rabbis, new interpreters of the Law. It is most likely that P->R happened, but there is no concrete evidence showing that transition. This is not to say that good ole JC was not an expert in the Law, just that we should not throw all of the connotations we have of current Rabbis onto him.
I often loose sight of that distinction when I hear the term Rabbi thrown about, especially in conjunction with Jesus and Paul. I don’t think this is limited to just myself.
- Meeks, Wayne A. The First Urban Christians. 2nd Edition. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2003. p. 33. [↩]
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Comments
I’ve got an electronic version of the Soncino translation of the Talmud, which helps in research. The Mishnah does have some references (English translation, hoping it’s faithful) to, say, "R. Gamaliel" (Paul’s teacher), with "R." being the standard abbreviation for Rabbi. But as the Mishnah wasn’t put down til late compared to the life of that particular Gamaliel, it’s hard to know whether the "R." was how people would have addressed him at the time, or how the compiler(s) of the Mishnah retroactively viewed him, or even a translation deal since I don’t have the original language …
I would probably say P -> R is probably right since the Jewish War of AD 70 basically wiped out the Sadducees and Essenes and/or the Qumran community, leaving only Pharisees. Thus it would seem that their leading scholars or "teachers" would have become Rabis and not just rabis. That makes sense to me, at least.
Does Meeks deal with the use of rabi in the Mishnah and other early Jewish writings that refer to major teachers as Rabis? I’m curious.