...Aided by finds like the Dead Sea Scrolls, scholars have made great strides in reconstructing the centuries surrounding the Crucifixion. In addition to restoring the fully Jewish context of Jesus's career, they have also shown how some early Christians attempted to distance their founder and his movement from their Jewish roots.

Geza Vermes, emeritus professor of Jewish studies at Oxford University, is arguably the dean of this recent scholarly enterprise. Three decades ago, with his book Jesus the Jew, he led the way by reading the Gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke as part of what he calls a "continuously evolving Jewish religious and literary creativity." Among other things, Vermes showed how these three narratives drew on many of the same sources that later rabbinical writings would draw on. In one such source, the first-century B.C. Psalms of Solomon, for example, the psalmist evokes the coming kingdom of God and anticipates a "Jewish savior-king establishing divine rule over the gentiles." Vermes's reading yields a figure who "fits perfectly into the first-century Galilee," an exemplar of the "charismatic Judaism of wonder-working holy men" of the time. The Gospels can be read in many ways, Vermes acknowledges, and he does not disparage orthodox Christian interpretations. "But if you read them literally," he cautions, "without knowledge of what they describe in terms of institutions and politics, then suddenly the Jews can become different, the enemies, the opposition. What is really going on in them is a family quarrel within Judaism."...