Géza Vermes

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Géza Vermes (2007)

Géza Vermes (IPA: [ˈvɛrmɛʃ ˈɡeːzɒ]) (born June 22, 1924 in Makó , Hungary ; died May 8, 2013 in Oxford , England ), occasionally also Geza Vermes or Géza Vermès , was a British religious scholar , theologian and Orientalist , best known for his work on Jesus of Nazareth and the Dead Sea Scrolls .

Jesus was not described by him as the Messiah or Son of God , but rather as a typical Jewish scholar of his time who only worked on Jews, did not want to missionize or found a new religion.

Life

Fragments of the scrolls on the display cabinet in the Archaeological Museum, Amman. Photo by Gary Jones, taken in 2002

Géza Vermes was the son of Jewish parents: the journalist Ernő Vermes and his wife Terézia Riesz, who converted to Catholicism when he was seven . Both parents perished in the Holocaust . After the end of the Second World War , Géza Vermes was ordained a priest. Since both the Jesuits and the Dominicans refused to join their order because of his Jewish origin, he became a member of the Brothers of Notre-Dame of Sion , a Catholic priestly community founded by two Jewish converts. As a result, he began to be interested in his Jewish roots, campaigned against anti-Semitism in the Catholic Church, resigned from the Church in 1957 and reaffirmed his Jewish identity.

Géza Vermes studied oriental studies and languages in Budapest and Louvain . In 1953 he did his doctorate on the Dead Sea Scrolls, which he was one of the first scientists to examine and partially translate after their discovery. From 1957 to 1981 he taught at the University of Newcastle and Oxford . Because of his research, considered by some to be groundbreaking, he was the first to receive the Chair of Jewish Studies at Oxford. From 1991 he was head of the Forum for Qumran Research at the Oxford Center for Hebrew and Jewish Studies . In 1985 he was elected a member ( Fellow ) of the British Academy .

From 1958 to 1993 he was married to Pamela Hobson Curle, who was previously married to Adam Curle . After his first wife died, he married Margaret Unarska in 1996, whose son Ian he adopted.

Publications (selection)

As an author
  • Scripture and tradition in Judaism. Haggadic studies. ( Studia post-biblica. Vol. 4). 2nd Edition. Brill, Leiden 1983, ISBN 90-04-07096-6 .
  • Jesus the Jew. A historian reads the Gospels ( Jesus the Jew. A Historian's Reading of the Gospels , 1973). Neukirchener Verlag, Neukirchen-Vluyn 1993, ISBN 3-7887-1373-9 .
  • The Dead Sea Scrolls. Qumran in Perspective . JSOT Press, Sheffield 1994, ISBN 0-334-02565-6 .
  • The Religion of Jesus the Jew. Fortress Press, Minneapolis 1993, ISBN 0-8006-2797-0 .
  • The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English. Penguin, London 1997, ISBN 0-14-044952-3 .
  • The Changing Faces of Jesus. Penguin, London 2001, ISBN 0-14-026524-4 .
  • Jesus in his Jewish Context. Fortress Press, Minneapolis 2003, ISBN 0-8006-3623-6 (formerly called Jesus and the World of Judaism ).
  • The Authentic Gospel of Jesus. Penguin, London 2004, ISBN 0-14-100360-X .
  • The passion. The true story of the last days of Jesus' life ( The Passion , 2005). Primus Verlag, Darmstadt 2006, ISBN 3-89678-291-6 .
  • Anno Domini. A who's who in Jesus' day ( Who's Who in the Age of Jesus , 2005). Lübbe, Bergisch Gladbach 2008, ISBN 978-3-7857-2347-0 .
  • The birth of Jesus. History and Legend ( The Nativity. History and Legend , 2006). Primus-Verlag, Darmstadt 2007, ISBN 978-3-89678-348-6 .
  • The Resurrection. History and Myth. Penguin, London 2010, ISBN 978-0-14-104622-8 .
  • From the Jesus of history to the Christ of dogma ( Christian Beginnings: from Nazareth to Nicaea, AD 30–325 , Penguin 2012). Translated from the English by Klaus-Jürgen Thornton. Berlin: Insel Verlag / Berlin: Verlag der Weltreligionen, 2016. ISBN 3-458-71040-X .
As editor

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Mark Goodacre : Geza Vermes, 1924-2013 , NT Blog, May 8, 2013, accessed May 9, 2013.
  2. ^ Hershel Shanks, Geza The Jew , Biblical Archeology Society, Bible Review 15: 3, June 1999.
  3. ^ Fellows: Geza Vermes. British Academy, accessed August 13, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Vermes, Géza
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Vermes, Geza
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British theologian and orientalist
DATE OF BIRTH June 22, 1924
PLACE OF BIRTH Mako
DATE OF DEATH May 8, 2013
Place of death Oxford