John P. Meier has died

[Ken Olson]

John P. Meier, Roman Catholic Priest and retired Professor of Theology and the University of Notre Dame, died yesterday (October 18, 2022). He was best known (at least on this list) for his work on the Historical Jesus. His multi-volume Marginal Jew series is perhaps the classic example of the criteria-based approach to historical Jesus research, and his reconstruction of the Testimonium Flavianum is probably the most widely cited and widely accepted representative of the partial authenticity position.

Best,

Ken

[StephenGoranson]

Thanks for this notice, Ken.

John P. Meier surely wrote some quite learned and welcome contributions to scholarship.

Regarding one subset of his publications, I wrote here just on Oct. 15, "...I do not regard Meier's Marginal Jew books to be entirely reliable on subjects of Essenes and Pharisees...." So, I'll explain, by quoting a footnote I wrote, without meaning to make small of his many fine achievements.
We disagreed on one thing. I lost our email exchange--about an article, not his magnum opus--during a computer crash of a hard drive many years ago.

Footnote from "Jannaeus, His Brother Absalom, and Judah the Essene"
https://people.duke.edu/~goranson/jannaeus.pdf

"67 It bears repeating that there is no “halakha” in Qumran text, but rather legal views
which reject halakha as the determinations of another group. The article by J.P. Meier, “Is
There Halaka (The Noun) at Qumran?” JBL 122 (2003) 150-55 in an apparently
distorting way brackets off directly-relevant evidence: “I do not intend to engage the
larger question of whether the ‘seekers of smooth things’ should be identified with the
Pharisees [154, n.20].” But then, nevertheless, he goes on to offer supposed “problems
with this reasoning,” [154]—allowing only a negative conclusion. Unless I
misunderstand, and unlike various of his other fine publications, Meier here sets up an
effective Catch-22 type exclusion of this view whether the noun is considered attested or
not. In other words, if a certain word is attested, then it’s accepted, so how could they pun
against it; and if a word is not attested, then how could they know to pun against it? Of
course they knew the root, and the pun is not far to seek; that’s the third, here disallowed,
option. I prefer the quite informative and history-accepting and illuminating research in J.
VanderKam, “Those Who Look for Smooth Things, Pharisees, and Oral Law,” Emanuel:
Studies in Hebrew Bible, Septuagint, and Dead Sea Scrolls in Honor of Emanuel Tov (ed.
S. Paul et al.; SuppVT 94; Leiden: Brill, 2003) 465-77."

But this is a mere footnote compared to his substantial, excellent offerings.

[Giuseppe]

Did he retreat, at least partially, from a massimalist historicist position, in his last days?

Or was he until to the end extremely persuaded that by mere criteriology one could extract a historical Jesus from the Gospels?

The question is vain, since he was already persuaded by the partial authenticity of the TF, so for him the discussion about historicity ended there.

[Giuseppe]

Only I can't explain to myself why he wrote:

In my conversations with newspaper writers and book editors who have asked at varioys times to write about the historical Jesus, almost invariably the first question that arises is: But you can prove he existed? If I may reformulate that sweeping question into a more focused one, 'Is there extra-biblical evidence in the first century A.D. for Jesus' existence?' then I believe, thanks to Josephus, that the answer is yes.

(Marginal Jew: I, 68, quoted in Thomas L. Brodie, Beyond the Quest, p. 160)

If for him the criteriology applied on the Gospels was enough to prove the historicity, then why did he introduce Josephus in an answer to (I presume) skeptical people?

He could refer those people to criteriology applied on the Gospels...

[gryan]

RIP John P. Meier

I didn't read much of the massive amount that he wrote, but I did do a close reading of his interpretation of Mark 6:3 (Cf Matt). Meier was of the opinion that, historically, Jesus and James and the other brothers and sisters, named and unnamed, were probably natural children ("true" siblings) of Mary and Joseph.

Here is an extended quotation of some of Meier's exegesis (some that I happen to find very convincing):

"Matthew often points forward and backward in his text to foreshadow and recapitulate. Such is the case here. The author who tells us in 1:25a that Joseph did not have relations with Mary until she bore a son is the same author who tells us in 13:55 that Jesus' mother is called Mary and his brothers James, Joseph, Simon, and Jude. Putting aside for the moment the special question of the meaning(s) of "brother" in NT Greek, we must admit that, at first glance, the combination of the "until" statement in Matt 1:25a with the naming of Jesus' mother and brothers all in the same verse (13:55) creates the natural impression that Matthew understood 1:25a to mean that Joseph and Mary did have children after the birth of Jesus.

This initial impression of the redactional intention of Matthew is strengthened when we examine the way Matt 13:55 recasts Mark's version of the question hurled at Jesus by the unbelieving townspeople of Nazareth. In Mark 6:3, the citizens of Nazareth ask: "Is this not the woodworker, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Jude and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us?" Notice the structure of Mark's questions: there is no mention of Jesus' father; the designation "woodworker" (applied to Jesus), the name of the mother, and the name of the four brothers are all placed in one question; and the (unnamed) sisters are referred to in a separate question. In Matthew, things are sorted out differently. First, perhaps in deference to Jesus dignity, Matthew shifts the slur about being a mere woodworker to Jesus father. But since Matthew has made clear in the Infancy Narrative that Joseph is merely Jesus' putative father, the reference to the (unnamed) father is cordoned off in a separate question: "Is this not the son of the woodworker?" (13:55). Then, beginning a separate question, Matthew puts together and names—apart from the putative father—the mother and brothers of Jesus: "Is not his mother called Mary and his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Jude?" The one mother and the four brothers, treated separately from Jesus' merely legal father, are all the subject of the one verb, "is called." Then, as in Mark, the unnamed sisters are mentioned by the androcentric audience as an afterthought: "And are not all his sisters with us?" Thus, simply on the level of Matthew's redaction, it is difficult to maintain that the brothers are thought of only as step-brothers or cousins of Jesus..."

"The brothers and sisters of Jesus in ecumenical perspective"
By: Meier, John P. Source: The Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 54 no 1 Jan 1992

[Sinouhe]

Sad news.
I had bought the 5 volumes of his series "A marginal jew" and I read the first two.
Then I lost faith and became a mythicist so there was not much point in reading the others. Although I often disagreed while reading them because I found him not critical enough at times, I still learned a lot from these two volumes.
I had corresponded briefly by email with him 2 yrs ago and he told me that he was working on a sixth volume. I don't know if it will ever come out.

[StephenGoranson]

One of the admirable features of A Marginal Jew is that Meier gave lots of annotated bibliography in the notes, including differing points of view.
He did not do the odious thing of pretending that every scholar agreed with all of his statements.

[gryan]

From a eulogy titled: "The search for consensus"

"Father Meier ultimately earned his doctorate (S.S.D.) at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in 1976,
with a dissertation written under Maximilian Zerwick
on Tradition and Redaction in Matthew’s Gospel,
again honored summa cum laude and again winning a gold medal."

It was above all his remarkable mastery of Gospel traditions,
however, along with his meticulous, methodological care,
that made a formative impression on those who studied with him.

https://www.osvnews.com/2022/10/20/the- ... n-p-meier/

Yes, his mastery in the study of "tradition and redaction in Matthew's Gospel" deserves a gold medal!
viewtopic.php?p=144512#p144512

[StephenGoranson]

an obituary:

https://cruxnow.com/church-in-the-usa/2 ... rginal-jew