NTT Journal for Theology and the Study of Religion - Volume 52, Issue 1, 1998

This is the second part of an article that reviews recent developments in the study of first century Judaism. Analyzing archaeological evidence bearing on notions of ritual purity as reflected in the use of miqvaot and chalk stone vessels, the author maintains that there is no good archaeological or literary evidence to show that the Pharisees formed the single most important group in Jewish society during the first centuries B.C. and A.D.

Traditionally, the primary evidence for Jesus has been assumed to be the NT gospels, especially the synoptics. Recent studies have questioned this, arguing that non-canonical gospels may be just as important in Jesus research. In this debate, the Gospel of Thomas (GTh) has played a key role with some arguing that it is independent of the synoptics and could radically alter our views about Jesus. It is however argued here that GTh is probably dependent on the synoptics; moreover, its evidence probably does not change the more traditional picture of Jesus as a figure heavily influenced by Jewish eschatology. GTh should be seen rather as a later product of heterodox Christianity.

In Spinoza-research the question has always been central how to harmonize Spinoza’s rejection, in his Ethics, of speaking philosophically of a personal God, with his descrip-tion in his Theologico-Political Treatise of God as one who forgives the remorseful. This question will be treated here from the dilemma evoked by Theo de Boer in his De God van de filosofen en de God van Pascal: a dilemma between the philosophical God and the biblical God. Not only De Boer, but also the Spinoza-scholar Van Bunge, holds that Spinoza chooses unequivocably for the philosophical God, and thus for the view-point of modern rationalism. This interpretation will be challenged here, by reading Spinoza’s works as an answer to the fragmentation of the ‘cosmos’ in modernity. The conclusion of the argumentation is that Spinoza departs, in his different works, from different, complementary, philosophical perspectives: the perspective of speculative reason on the one hand, and that of practical reason on the other. Within the lastmentioned perspective Spinoza can take seriously the idea of a personal God, who is a moral example to the believer.