What kind of “Judean” was Jesus?

Abstract

Reconstructions of the historical Jesus are analyzed in terms of a proposed socio-cultural model of Judean ethnicity. At first an overview is given of the work of Meier and Crossan to establish the content they assigned to Jesus’ Judean ethnicity. Drawing on the insights of ethnicity theory, biblical scholarship and the work of Berger and Luckmann, a socio-cultural model of Judean ethnicity is proposed and explained. The reconstructions of Meier and Crossan are then compared with the proposed model. It is argued that none of their reconstructions allow for Jesus to be seen as profoundly Judean.