ROBERT PRICE

To Whom It May Concern:

Over the past six years I have had the distinct privilege of studying the research of Stephan Hermann Huller on the historical Jesus, Paul, Judas, et. al., and their roles in Christian Origins (my major subject area as well). He asked me to evaluate his bold hypotheses and to advise him on publication if I thought his work worthy of it. From the start, I was astonished at the breadth, depth, and easy command of all relevant ancient sources—including some which one might not have thought relevant until Huller brought them to bear. Immediately I was eager to help his works see print. I have accepted (and even commissioned) shorter pieces by him for the Journal of Higher Criticism (which I edit). But I have also made suggestions for book publishers.
I always find Huller’s proposals, the connections and identifications he draws, and the resultant rethinking of absolutely major questions to be eye-opening, forcing me to set aside my comfortable assumptions and to scrutinize everything all over again. It is very rare for me to find myself in complete agreement with the novel theses of any pioneering scholar, but I seek such books out especially because it is evident to me they are the ones who most likely have something genuinely new to teach me. Things are going to look different henceforth. I have incorporated several of Huller’s suggestions in my Pre-Nicene New Testament, and I very much want other interested readers to have the opportunity of learning from this most impressive independent scholar.
In his “Marcus Agrippa: From Messiah to Pariah” Huller focuses on a series of theological figures and names, hypothetically connecting them to real-world historical figures, arguing in effect that the gospel story is much more historical than anybody thought—and that several of the larger-than-life figures of early Christianity were various theological reflections of a much smaller cast of historical characters, the links between whom (even their common identity) he painstakingly restores. Huller takes seriously the Coptic tradition that the gospel writer Mark was not only present for the scenes he describes in the Gospel of Mark but that he has depicted his own presence in some. Scholars have traditionally speculated as to whether Mark might have intended himself as the “youth” who barely escapes arrest in Gethsemane, leaving his tunic behind in a Roman fist (Mark 14:51-52), and possibly even the similarly clad youth in the tomb (Mark 16:5-7). Huller identifies him also as the child to whom the twelve are unfavorably compared in Mark 9:36-37). He believes that this lad, Mark, was Jesus’ choice to succeed him as the messiah. In concert with Rudolf Bultmann, Huller argues that, when Jesus speaks of the Messiah and Son of Man, he is always referring to him in the third person (“When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” “Whoever is ashamed of me and words, of him will the Son of Man be shamed.”) and therefore intending someone else. As Huller reads Jesus’ eschatological warning (“Many will come in my name saying I am he”), it means self-styled Christian prophets will preach that Jesus is ‘he,’ i.e., the Messiah when in fact he isn’t! Those who follow Jesus’ intent will instead “welcome this child in my name” (Mark 9:36), namely young Mark. How then did Jesus replace Mark as the savior in his own religion?
Huller says that young Mark did rise to centrality in the late first century and on into the second. History splits him into several figures, each a surviving vestige or fragment of an originally more important, even pivotal personage. First, there is the relatively unimportant Catholic Christian John Mark (Acts 12:12; 13:13; 15:37), who did write a gospel, but only as Peter’s scribe. Second is the “heresiarch” Marcion (= “Little Mark”), remembered as author or editor of a gospel and founder of his own highly successful Pauline sect. Marcion’s anti-Torah stance, Huller shows, reflects his project of reform but has also been exaggerated to the neglect of other evidence preserving the essentially Jewish sectarian character of his enterprise. Third, he was remembered as the Samaritan reformer Marqeh, a second Moses to the Samaritan community. Certain rabbinic traditions about Johanon ben Zakki seem originally to have concerned John Mark as well. Last but not least, he was known to history as a Herodian prince and king, Julius Marcus Agrippa, commonly called Herod Agrippa II. Philo (Against Flaccus) tells us this man was acclaimed king of the Jews by Gaius Caligula and acclaimed as such (though Philo makes it mockery) by the crowds, using the very same Aramaic title Mara early Christians used for Jesus (1 Corinthians 16:22).
Huller is plainly “dreaming dreams no mortal ever dreamt before,” but his detailed review and reevaluation of the evidence leave no room for the reader, daunted by the seeming strangeness of the argument, to turn away, dismissing it with the shake of a head. Stephan Huller has found a whole new way to put the puzzle peaces together, and the jigsaw of early Christianity, plus its adjacent religions, looks quite different by the end of the book. It is all aftershocks from a figure like Alexander the Great, one who shook everything up like an earthquake, leaving behind an altered landscape, the violence of the eruption no longer allowing any easy reconstruction of the land’s previous contours. Huller’s hero, Julius Marcus Agrippa, is set forth for the reader’s scrutiny much as Pilate set Jesus before the crowd dressed in a purple robe. This Agrippa assumes the proportions in retrospect of a uniter and reformer of all the major Semitic religions of Palestine during the Roman occupation: a reformer of Rabbinism, Samaritanism, Nazoreanism, etc. He claimed the right to such powers because, on the one hand, he was the messianic youth ordained by Jesus, and, on the other, he was a prince of the house of Herod.
Many collateral issues come in for new treatment in this book as well, the most important perhaps that of the priority of something like what we call the Diatesseron to our familiar gospels: is it possible that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John represent redactional abstractions from an earlier writer’s work? It is a hard case to argue, but then Huller produces evidence no one, to my knowledge, has ever noticed. In whole and in part, then, Huller’s “Marcus Agrippa: From Messiah to Pariah” is one of those too-rare achievements: a completely new paradigm that reshuffles the scholarly deck, and that by a genuine reconsideration of the evidence, not by substituting fantasy for evidence. I do not know why it is not on the Jesus-hungry shelves already.

Robert M. Price
Professor of Theology and Scriptural Studies,
Johnnie Colemon Theological Seminary

Fellow of the Jesus Seminar

Member of the Jesus Project

Author of Deconstructing Jesus and The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man