Les idées religieuses en Palestine à l'époque de Jésus-Christ (1876 Stapfer), book
Les idées religieuses en Palestine à l'époque de Jésus-Christ (1876) is a book by Edmond Louis Stapfer.
Abstract
The pretension of this work is to describe not only Christianity’s roots, but according to the author, also the ground and the nature of the ground in which the Christianity is rooted. Stapfer uses a historical and critical method and an appropriate analysis of sources. He exposes in deepened way, totality of his time’s knowledge about the biblical and extra-biblical literature. The text is concerned with the period of the first century BCE, up to the end of first CE. In the introduction he present’s his sources, the knowledge about this sources, and a personal opinion. Until the eighth chapter he present’s a historical and sociological analysis about some concept he think be important in period of the Jesus’s time, and about the manner in which this concept has been concretized in Jews’ history: God, God’s Word, Angel, Demons, Man, Law and Prophets, Messiah, Eternity. After he present’s the sociological fact of the Judaism’s sects: Pharisians, Essenians, Sadduceans and Liberals. This last sect is a Stapfer’s proposition: in the Pharisian’s movement he distinguishes some rabbis like Hillel and his school, as opened minds and Jesus’ precursors. The last chapter is about John the Baptist. The conclusions show that if a Christian movement is rooted in this ground and receipt some aspects of Jews thought, above all of “liberal” Pharisaism, the Jesus’ person has an irreducible originality and his assertions about him-self is anti Jewish. Thus, if his analysis of source and about Judaism is objective, with a certainly sympathy for Jews people, his conclusions is tributary of his theological conceptions. For him in the Jesus’ times the Judaism is a religion that has passed his peak. In summary his conclusions present a type of anti-Jewish polemics common to much theologians of the XIX century. - Matteo Silvestrini, University of Lausanne -