Jesus The Man: Originally Published In Hardcover As Jesus And The Riddle Of The Dead Sea Scrolls: New Interpretation from the Dead Sea Scrolls [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

While the broad thesis presented in the TV documentary sounded unlikely at best to me I knew that popularisations of complex academic theories can often come across that way in summary, so when a local book review magazine asked me to review Thiering's book 'Jesus the Man' I was keen to get a more detailed understanding of her position.

I should note that I am NOT a Christian - in fact I am an atheist - and that the historical background to Christianity, Intertestamental Judaism and the Dead Sea Scrolls are all topics I have studied for many years from a purely secular perspective. I was expecting Thiering's book to be a closely argued private theory, and though I already knew her thesis had been rejected by all other scholars (Christian, Jewish or secular), she seemed in interviews to be an intelligent and learned person. So I sat down with the review copy of her book and a notepad to take notes for my review as I read, expecting an challenging and well argued work.

After three chapters I put my notepad away. Far from being a scholarly and closely argued work, this book is little more than a bizarre collection of unsubstantiated assertions, all 'revelations' uncovered by Thiering's so-called 'pesher technique'. While her highly confident style and interesting (fantasy) narrative might be convincing to non-specialists, anyone who has studied the Scrolls or the Gospels from a historical perspective will find themselves wondering whether to laugh or cry at this fairly ridiculous book.

Firstly, Thiering argues that the Dead Sea Scrolls should be dated to the first century AD, despite virtually every other scholar of the Scrolls material disagreeing with her. More recently, radiocarbon dating of the Scrolls has also cast extreme doubt on this position. Ignoring this - indeed, she never acknowledges that absolutely *no-one* agrees with her theory at all, she simply ignores this fact - Thiering pushes on to argue that the 'Teacher of Righteousness' and the 'Wicked Priest' of the Scrolls are Jesus and John the Baptist respectively.

For this, and for all of the rest of the fantasy story she goes on to tell in the remainder of her book, she relies on her belief that the Gospels were written on two levels - a 'surface' level and an 'encoded' *pesher* level. Thiering honestly believes that she is the first person in 2000 years to have uncovered the 'true' meaning of the gospels and maintains that her 'technique' which 'decodes' the gospels is internally consistent and can be used by anyone.

While Thiering may be uncritical enough of her own thesis to believe this, no other scholars agree with her. Thiering is described as a 'leading authority' on the Scrolls in her marketing material - in fact she is regarded as an embarrassing crackpot and ludicrous ... by the academic community. Far from being 'internally consistent', he *pesher* technique has been repeatedly shown to be rubbery, subjective and able to 'demonstrate' virtually anything, however unlikely.

Despite this, Thiering uses it to construct a Jesus who is non-divine, non-miraculous and highly accessible to many liberal-thinking modern readers - which is possibly why her books have sold well despite being regarded as a little more than a joke by the academic community. Non-divine, non-miraculous pictures of Jesus are common in many areas of research into early Christianity these days, but Thiering's 'technique' doesn't simply veer wildly from any reading of the gospels, it also diverges sharply from any historical understanding of the period. When her *pesher* technique contradicts historical evidence from Josephus or Tacitus, Thiering simply ignores that fact or argues that it's the ancient sources which are wrong!

For a historian's view of Thiering's many flaws ....At one point in a TV debate about Thiering's views the interviewer turned from Thiering, who had just made a series of bizarre statements about Intertestamental Judaism based on her *pesher* fantasies, and asked a Jewish rabbi on the panel "What do you make of that." The rabbi was literally speechless for a moment and then said "I hardly know where to begin."

This is exactly how most people who have studied this subject feel when confronted by Thiering's blithe, unsubstantiated, arrogant and downright fantastic assertions. There seems to be an audience for this kind of junk pop-scholarship, largely made up of curious but poorly read sensation seekers who like the idea of iconoclasts overturning the ideas of the academic establishment. More cautious and wisely sceptical readers might like to ponder why Thiering is completely isolated by the academic community. It may, of course, be because she is shaking their beliefs to their very foundations.

Or she may be a ridiculous .... Take your pick.

If you buy this book, I'd say read it with caution and then do some reading on what the rest of academia believes on this subject. And keep in mind the that enthusiasm of some of the reviewers below may be genuine, but it may also be genuinely misguided.

Not recommended.

What is more puzzling is the seeming complete lack of objective scepticism on the part of many of those who have posted positive reviews here. Even if you found this odd book exciting (I found it amusing myself) and even if you found her reasoning persuasive (though there is actually little *reasoning* and a lot of bald asserting in the book), surely the fact that NO-ONE else in the academic world agrees with Thiering would ring just the teeniest-tinest of alarm bells.

I would like to think that anyone with half a brain would ask themselves "Can it really be that she is the only person in 2000 years who has noticed this 'pesher code' in the gospels? Maybe there is a reason no-one else takes her theory seriously? Could it be that she is seeing things in the gospels that just aren't there? Maybe she is building an alternative story and then 'finding' the validation for it as she goes?" Surely the fact that her book is a string of assertions, piled on suppositions stacked on hypotheses, all backed up by nothing more than her entirely SUBJECTIVE interpretation of what this pesher-technique of hers "reveals" would make a few more people question her objectivity.

You would think people would be more discerning, intelligently sceptical and analytical, but no - it seems there are rather more people who "WANT to believe".

Despite what the book's blurb and marketing material tries to claim, Thiering has absolutely no standing in the academic world and her theory has been described by leading authorities in the field - secular, Jewish and Christian - as "a fairy tale". ...

To the True Believers, all I can say is when someone like Theiring is completely rejected by every other scholar in their field, it's usually because they have got things wildly and spectacularly wrong. One of Theiring's amateur supporters once tried to compare her to Galileo, but as the philosopher Paul Kurtz once observed wryly, "To be a Galileo it's not enough to be disagreed with, you also have to be RIGHT." There is no evidence that Theiring's subjective fantasy story is anything remotely close to being right in any way.

If you want to learn about the Dead Sea Scrolls the intertestamental period, buy something by Geza Vermes. Avoid this silly book.