The authors are listed in alphabetical order. For convenience, the authors are also listed by the general view that each has on the historical Jesus. Much information is lost when a person's view is reduced to a slogan, and even scholars placed under the same rubric have different views on Jesus. The information on this web page is no substitute for reading what these writers have to say. The recent publications of each writer on the historical Jesus are indicated, with links to amazon.com to view reader reviews and buying information. Online articles by or about the author are also listed. The editor's favorites are shown in pictures on the right-hand side, and these titles are recommended for further reading on the historical Jesus.
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| Jesus the Myth: Heavenly Christ
Jesus the Myth: Man of the Indefinite Past Jesus the Hellenistic Hero Jesus the Revolutionary Jesus the Wisdom Sage
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Jesus the Man of the Spirit
Jesus the Prophet of Social Change
Jesus the Apocalyptic Prophet
Jesus the Savior
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Borg makes two negative claims about the historical Jesus: he was
nonmessianic, which means that he didn't claim to be the Messiah or have
a message focused on his own identity, and he was noneschatological,
which means that he did not expect "the supernatural coming of the Kingdom of
God as a world-ending event in his own generation" (Meeting Jesus Again for
the First Time, p. 29). Borg summarizes his view of the historical Jesus in
these words: "he was a spirit person, subversive sage, social prophet, and
movement founder who invited his followers and hearers into a transforming
relationship with the same Spirit that he himself knew, and into a community
whose social vision was shaped by the core value of compassion" (op. cit., p.
119). By "spirit person," Borg means that Jesus was a "mediator of the sacred"
for whom the Spirit or God was a reality that was experienced. Based on his
experience of the sacred, for the historical Jesus compassion "was the
central quality of God and the central moral quality of a life centered in God"
(op. cit., p. 46). Jesus spoke against the purity system in sayings like
"blessed are the pure in heart" and in parables like that of the Good Samaritan.
The historical Jesus challenged the purity boundaries in touching lepers as well
as hemorrhaging women, in driving the money changers out of the temple, and in
table fellowship even with outcasts. Jesus replaced an emphasis on purity with
an emphasis on compassion. The historical Jesus spoke an alternative wisdom in
aphorisms and parables that controverted the conventional wisdom based upon
rewards and punishments. The earliest Christology of the Christian movement
viewed Jesus as the voice of the Sophia. The images of Jesus as the Son of God
and the Wisdom of God are metaphorical, just as much as the images of Jesus as
the Lamb of God and the Word of God.
In the work of John Dominic Crossan, there is a refreshing
emphasis on methodology. To this end, Crossan has compiled a database of the
attestation for the Jesus traditions by independent attestation and
stratification, provided by Faith Futures Foundation in the links above. Crossan
in The Historical Jesus explains that his methodology is to take what is
known about the historical Jesus from the earliest, most widely attested data
and set it in a socio-historical context. The bulk of the common sayings
tradition shows itself to be specific to the situation that existed in the 20s
of the first century in Galilee in which the agrarian peasantry were being
exploited as the Romans were commercializing the area. The historical Jesus
proves to be a displaced Galilean peasant artisan who had got fed up with the
situation and went about preaching a radical message: an egalatarian vision of
the Kingdom of God present on earth and available to all as manifested in the
acts of Jesus in healing the sick and practicing an open commensality in which
all were invited to share. The historical Jesus was an itinerant whose mode of
teaching can be understood on analogy with the Cynic sage but who was
nonetheless a Jew who believed that the kingdom was being made available by the
God of Israel to his people. The revolutionary message of Jesus was seen to be
subversive to the Roman vision of order and led to the fateful execution of
Jesus by Pilate on a hill outside of Jerusalem.
In The Birth of Christianity, Crossan re-iterates an
emphasis on methodology in laying out his presuppositions about the gospel texts
as forming the basis for all of his other judgments about the historical Jesus
and early Christianity. Among these are the existence of an early Cross Gospel
reconstructed from the Gospel of Peter as elaborated in his tome The Cross
that Spoke as well as his belief that the Gospel of John is dependent upon
Mark. Crossan also explores the development of two different traditions from the
historical Jesus, the Jerusalem tradition in which Jesus is believed to be the
resurrected Christ, and the Q Gospel tradition in which Jesus is remembered as
the founder of a way of life. For the former, Crossan reconstructs a group in
the city of Jerusalem who shared everything in common and awaited the coming of
Christ in power. For the latter, Crossan identifies Q, the Gospel of Thomas, and
the Didache in which itinerants preach the teachings of Jesus and are supported
by sometimes-critical communities. Both traditions are connected in their
practice of share-meals and their origins in the historical Jesus.
As the other tributary to early Christianity, we have the "Galilean
Tradition," a separate Kingdom of God preaching movement located in
Syro-Palestine. According to Doherty, the earliest version of Q had no mention
of any kind of founder of the Q community but rather was an anonymous wisdom
collection. Doherty maintains that the final redaction of Q as well as the
Gospel of Thomas derived from this original document and added the "Jesus said"
references only at a subsequent stage. Doherty sees the author of the Gospel of
Mark as one who had been brought up in the "Galilean Tradition" and devised a
brilliant bit of religious syncretism in identifying the fictional Q founder
with the exalted Pauline Christ in fashioning the passion story whole cloth.
Mark's narrative (c. 85-90 CE) was the sole basis upon which the later
evangelists retold the story: Matthew (c. 100 CE), Luke (c. 125 CE), and John
(c. 125 CE) all depended upon Mark. The book of Acts is a catholicizing fiction
of the mid second century. Although certain second century apologists continued
to espouse a purely divine Christ, the Gospel myth eventually came to dominate
Christian thought.
Ancient tradition has it that the first Jewish revolt was sparked by the
unjust execution of James the Just. In order to disassociate James the Just from
his brother Jesus, the Gospels split him into two: on the one hand, the family
of Jesus including James think Jesus is mad; on the other hand, James the son of
Zebedee is one of the trio of James, Peter, and John as found in the Gospels.
Yet the fiction is exposed when we look at the earlier letters of Paul, in which
the trio is James the brother of the Lord, Peter, and John - what an odd
coincidence, which so many scholars take at face value, that one James the son
of Zebedee should have died only to be conveniently replaced by another by the
name of James, the brother of Jesus! Yet, Eisenman argues, the Gospels and Acts
are full of this kind of misinformation designed to obscure the significance of
the James faction and to domesticate Christianity for Gentile consumption.
In addition to propounding his central thesis that the original Christianity
of James was a Jewish nationalist resistance movement and that Paul transformed
it into a Hellenistic cult, Eisenman has an auxiliary theory that has likely
drawn both impressive book sales and scholarly derision, which is his attempt to
bring the Dead Sea Scrolls into the mix. Eisenman identifies James the Just with
the Teacher of Righteousness and Paul with the spouter of lies, figures vaguely
identified in some of the Dead Sea Scrolls. However, in so doing, Eisenman must
strenuously argue against the use of carbon-dating and paleographical methods
which suggest that the documents in question were written prior to the Christian
era. Fortunately, his identifications for the characters in the Dead Sea Scrolls
need not be seen as essential to his thesis.
In addition to arguing that the earliest Christians believed their Jesus to
have lived in the past (the time of the Teacher of Righteousness depicted in the
Dead Sea Scrolls), Ellegård argues for a redating of several Christian
documents. Ellegård argues that 1 Clement, the Pastor of Hermas, the Didache,
the Epistle of Barnabas, the Letter to the Hebrews, and the Revelation of John
were contemporary to Paul. Ellegård argues that Ignatius (c. 110 CE) represents
a halfway point between Paul and the Gospels, which were written well into the
second century. Ellegård concludes that the story of Jesus of Nazareth,
crucified by Pilate, was a fictional construction.
Fredriksen summarizes her position in three paragraphs (Jesus of Nazareth,
King of the Jews, pp. 266-267):
Further, what distinguished Jesus' prophetic message from those of others
was primarily its timetable, not its content. Like John the Baptizer, he
emphasized his own authority to preach the coming Kingdom; like Theudas, the
Egyptian, the signs prophets, and again like the Baptizer, he expected its
arrival soon. But the vibrant conviction of his followers even decades after
the Crucifixion, together with the unprecedented phenomenon of the mission to
Israel and the inclusion of Gentiles, suggests that Jesus had stepped up the
Kingdom's timetable from soon to now. By actually naming the day
or date of the Kingdom's coming, perhaps even for that very same Passover that
proved to be his last, Jesus galvanized crowds gathered in Jerusalem who were
not socialized to his mission - its pacifist tenor, its emphasis on divine
rather than human action - and who in praising the approaching Kingdom
proclaimed him Son of David and Messiah. It was this combustible mix of
factors - the excited popular acclaim, in Jerusalem at its most densely
populated pilgrim festival, when Pilate was in town specifically to keep his
eye on the crowd - not his teaching as such, nor his arguments with
other Jews on the meaning of Sabbath, Temple, purity, or some other aspect of
Torah, that led directly to Jesus' execution as King of the Jews.
Finally, a Jesus whose itinerary is sketched primarily not from the
Synoptics but from John - a Jesus, that is, whose mission extended routinely
not only to the Galilee but also to Judea, and specifically Jerusalem - can
speak to the anomaly that has propelled this investigation, namely, that Jesus
alone was killed as an insurrectionist on that Passover, but none of his
disciples were. A repeated mission in Jerusalem, especially during the
pilgrimage holidays when the prefect, too, of necessity, was there, explains
how Caiaphas and Pilate would both already know who Jesus was and what he
preached, and thus know as well that he was not in any first-order way
dangerous. Just as the crowd's enthusiasm for Jesus as messiah accounts for
the specific manner of his death, so Jesus' dual focus - Judea, especially
Jerusalem in and around the Temple, as well as the Galilee - accounts for the
high priest's and the prefect's familiarity with his mission, and thus
explains why Jesus was the sole focus of their action. Although Fredriksen does not make an argument for its authenticity, the
authenticity of the saying in Mark 14:25 as defended by Lüdemann and Meier would
support Fredriksen's contention that Jesus expected the end to come immediately,
a contention which Fredriksen defends as the best explanation for the fact that
Jesus was crucified. For, as Fredriksen argues, the point of the crucifixion as
a mode of execution was the display for the crowds, and the eschatological
fervor surrounding a specific prediction of immediate cataclysm would have been
enough for Jesus to excite the imagination of the crowds. Fredriksen maintains
that Jesus did not present himself as the Messiah but that such a claim was made
for Jesus by the crowds in Jerusalem, which led to the expedient of Pilate to
contain the situation by crucifixion.
One claim of the Jesus Seminar is that the historical Jesus was not
apocalyptic: "The views of John the Baptist and Paul are apocalyptically
oriented. The early church aside from Paul shares Paul's view. The only question
is whether the set of texts that represent God's rule as present were obfuscated
by the pessimistic apocalyptic notions of Jesus' immediate predecessors,
contemporaries, and successors. If Jesus merely adopted the popular views, how
did sayings such as Luke 17:20-21 and Luke 11:20 arise? The best explanation is
that they originated with Jesus, since they go against the dominant trend of the
unfolding tradition. Fellows of the Jesus Seminar are convinced that the
subtlety of Jesus' sense of time - the simultaneity of present and future - was
almost lost on his followers, many of whom, after all, started as disciples of
John the Baptist, and are represented, in the gospels, as understanding Jesus
poorly." (The Five Gospels, p. 137) The Fellows also note that most of
the parables do not evince an apocalyptic view of the kingdom.
Horsley describes his view of the historical Jesus in these words (Jesus
and the Spiral of Violence, pp. 207-208):
The principal thrust of Jesus' practice and preaching, however, was to
manifest and mediate the presence of the kingdom of God. In the gospel
traditoins of Jesus' words and deeds, we can observe the kingdom present in
the experience of the people in distinctive ways. Jesus and his followers
celebrated the joys of the kingdom present in festive banqueting. In the
healings and forgiveness of sins and in the exorcisms, individual persons
experienced the liberation from disease and oppressive forces and the new life
effected by God's action. Jesus' interpretation of the exorcisms, moreover,
points to the broader implications of God's present action among the people.
That is, since the exorcisms are obviously being effected by God, it is clear
that the rule of Satan has been broken. But that meant also that the
oppressive established order maintained by the power of Satan (according to
the apocalyptic dualistic view of reality that was shared by Jesus and his
contemporaries) was also under judgment. The old order was in fact being
replaced by a new social-political order, that is, the "kingdom of God," which
Jesus was inviting the people to "enter."
Indeed, Jesus was engaged in catalyzing the renewal of the people, Israel.
Far from being primarily a "teacher" of timeless truths or a preacher of
cosmic catastrophe calling for authentic "decision," Jesus ministered "to the
lost sheep of the house of Israel." He summoned the people to recognize the
presence of the kingdom and to enter the kingdom, but if they did not respond
to the historical crisis, he did not hesitate to pronounce judgment. It is
precisely in the pronounced woes against whole villages or against the whole
(sinful) "generation" that we can discern that Jesus was not simply addressing
individuals but was calling for collective, social response. While not saying that Jesus was antifamily, Horsley says that Jesus called
for "renewed local covenantal communities conceived of in nonpatriarchal
familial terms" (op. cit., p. 240). Unlike Cynics, Jesus' disciples "focused
their activities on the revitalization of local community life" (op. cit., p.
231). These communities were called to be egalitarian. Horsley argues that there
is no evidence for a continuous "Zealot" movement founded in 6 CE but rather
that the Zealots themselves emerged only in the middle of the Jewish revolt.
Attempts to use Zealots as a foil for an apolitical Jesus are misguided. Horsley
argues that the passages in which Jesus associates with tax collectors and
sinners are apologetic inventions against the false charge that Jesus consorted
with the wicked. Because all belonged to God in Jewish thought, the "render"
saying of Jesus in Mark 12:17 was ostensibly noncommital while actually
advocating nonpayment of tribute. Jesus called for a social revolution in which
the people "the people were to enter a new spirit of cooperation and mutual
assistance, even in relation to their local enemies" (op. cit., p. 325), while
in anticipation of the political revolution to be effected by God.
Luke Timothy Johnson criticizes the Jesus Seminar and scholars such as Burton
Mack for what he considers to be unchecked optimism (or pessimism, depending on
your feelings about the Jesus Seminar) about what can be known about early
Christianity and about the historical Jesus. Johnson calls for a more cautious
approach to history that states what few facts that can be known - for example,
the baptism and the crucifixion - and does not venture to speculate about what
cannot be known. In place of such speculation, Johnson advocates a fideism in
which we accept any additional items - for example, the resurrection - on the
basis of the tradition and the authority of the church. Johnson believes that
Jesus is who the New Testament and the creeds say he is: the Son of God who came
to suffer willingly and die for our sins.
Lüdemann sets out four criteria of inauthenticity and five criteria of
authenticity in The Great Deception, which is something of an abridged
and popular version of his subsequent comprehensive work Jesus After 2000
Years. The first criterion of inauthenicity is that sayings presupposing
Jesus as the exalted Lord are not from the earthly Jesus. The second is that
actions that presuppose the violation of natural laws are unhistorical. The
third states that sayings that appear to be devised to answer the problems of
later communities are inauthentic. The fourth criterion of inauthenticity says
that sayings or actions that presume a Gentile rather than a Jewish audience do
not go back to Jesus. The first criterion of authenticity says that sayings or
actions that are offensive to Christian sensibilities are not likely to be
fabrications. The criterion of difference states that sayings that do not appear
to reflect the ideas of post-Easter communities likely go back to the historical
Jesus. The criterion of growth says that material around which additional
traditions have accumulated may be old enough to go back to Jesus. The criterion
of rarity indicates that sayings with few parallels in the Jewish sphere are
likely to be distinctive to Jesus. The fifth criterion of authenticity, that of
coherence, says that a saying or action that fits in seamlessly with other
identified authentic material may also be deemed authentic. An examination of
the authenticity of all the Jesus traditions with use of criteria such as these
can be found in Jesus After 2000 Years.
According to Lüdemann, Jesus like many first century Palestinian Jews went to
be baptized for the remission of sins and believed in the imminent end of the
world preached by John the Baptist. Lüdemann says that Jesus developed the
Baptist's ideas in a new direction in three ways: "first, in the long term he
did not like John's fundamentally ascetic attitude. In keeping with this,
secondly, he had a tremendous experience of the kingdom of God which was
prefigured in meals with him to which anyone could come. And thirdly, he found
his capacity to heal an overwhelming experience which he also associated with
the coming of the kingdom of God." (Jesus After 2000 Years, p. 689)
Lüdemann thinks that Jesus saw himself in battle against Satan in healing
sickness and sin, which were inextricably linked.
Lüdemann writes (Jesus After 2000 Years, p. 690): "In its decisive
phase, Jesus' life was shaped by the unshakable faith that he had to interpret
God's law authoritatively in God's name. Broadly speaking, his interpretation
was to be perceived as an accentuation of the will of God. Thus he forbade
divorce with an appeal to God's good creation, by which in marriage man and
woman irrevocably have become one flesh (Mark 10.8). He focussed the commandment
to love on the demand to love one's enemy (Luke 6.27). He forbade judging (Matt.
7.1) and swearing (Matt. 5.34). Now and then he reduced the law in sweeping
manner and by so doing in fact made the food laws irrelevant (Mark 7.15); he
focussed the sabbath on human well-being (Mark 2.27). But anything that - in
modern terms - looked like autonomy was grounded in theonomy. Jesus could ordain
this free and at the same time radical interpretation of the law only because he
had received the authority to do so from God, who he addressed lovingly, as Paul
did later, as Abba (a term denoting deep intimacy and affection). At this point
Jesus and his heavenly Father were almost one, and that must have been most
offensive to his Jewish hearers."
Against those who would make a strict dichotomy between the timeless wisdom
and eschatological expectation in the words of Jesus, Lüdemann insists that
wisdom and apocalyptic exist side by side in the thought of Jesus as it does in
the thought of Paul. That Jesus expected an imminent end is indicated, for
example, by Mark 14:25, which Lüdemann deems authentic, saying "Only Jesus'
expectation of the future kingdom of God stands at the centre, and not Jesus was
redeemer, judge, or intercessor" (The Great Deception, p. 77). On Luke
11:20, Lüdemann writes: "The flight of the demons is a sign that the power of
the evil one has been overcome, even if a final destruction of the evil powers
will only take place in the final judgment, which is imminent" (The Great
Deception, p. 83).
Lüdemann comments on passages such as Thomas 98, Luke 16:1-7, Matthew 13:44,
Luke 12:39, and Luke 18:2-5 as being stories of immoral heroes: "However, Jesus
did not just make immoral heroes the main characters in his parables. In a way
his own life was that of an immoral hero. Occasionally he deliberately
transgressed the sabbath commandment (cf. Mark 2.27). He taught those who should
have taught him. He called on the people to love those whom they really should
have hated. In public he was regarded as a friend of tax-collectors and sinners,
as a glutton and a drunkard (Luke 7.34). The life of Jesus was not that of a
hero who went his way to victory without hindrance; his life was not the kind
that had a happy ending. Jesus' condemnation, his death on the cross and the
immediate failure of his activity formally made him the opposite of a hero.
Putting all existing values in question and thus turning them upside down, he
became an extremely immoral anti-hero." (The Great Deception, pp. 96-97)
Thus, out of the soil of the Jesus movements, an entirely different movement
sprouted up in the congregations of the Christ. According to Mack, the Gospel of
Mark effected a reduction of the Christ myth into terms comprehensible to Jesus
people. For the author of Mark, the "lord's supper" is merely the last supper,
"not intended as an etiological script for ritual reenactment" (p. 222). Mark
stayed a course between the Christ myth and the Jesus traditions and succeeded
in getting people in the Jesus traditions to think of Jesus as the Messiah and
to think of his death as a martyrdom for the cause. A different combination was
effected by the Johannine tradition, in which the cross of Christ "revealed a
divine world of life and light that had always been present but never clearly
seen until Jesus as the son of God had made it known" (p. 223) Later second
century documents such as Acts created the notion of an apostolic age in which
true doctrine was handed down once for all.
Patterson suggests "that Jesus was a wisdom teacher, and that the early Jesus
movement thought of itself as a kind of wisdom school" (op. cit., p. 232).
Patterson continues, "By moving the wisdom mode of discourse in a more
speculative direction, one could account, on the one hand, for the
wisdom-oriented opponents of Paul reprimanded in 1 Corinthians, and on the
other, for the emergence of the descending/ascending revealer Christology that
comes to predominate later in the Gospel of Thomas and in John." (op. cit., p.
233) Patterson also sees social radicalism as an essential part of the earliest
Jesus movement and, by extension, of the historical Jesus: "Utterly destitute,
the wise sage is called upon to dispose of his or her money (Thom 95, par. Matt
5:42//Luke 6:34-35a, Q), and to take no care for such necessities as clothing
(Thom 36 [Coptic], par. Matt 6:25-33//Luke 12:22-30, Q) or food (Thom 69:2, par.
Matt 5:6//Luke 6:21a, Q). Their poverty is to be a sign of blessing (Thom 54,
par. Matt 5:3//Luke 6:20b, Q)." (op. cit., p. 234) Patterson thus paints the
historical Jesus as an itinerant wisdom sage with a message of social
radicalism.
From the title of One Jesus, Many Christs, one might expect three
themes in the text: the first theme is the identity of the one and only
historical Jesus, the second theme is the diversity of Christian images of
Christ, and the third theme is how one gets from the former to the latter.
Instead, we find that the first and third themes are missing entirely. The book
by Riley is solely about the different ways in which early Christians viewed
Christ and particularly in how these views of Christ are all based on the model
of the Hellenistic hero.
Riley concludes his first chapter with these words (p. 14): "The story of
Jesus was the story of a kind and righteous man, a man from God, the son of God,
whatever was meant by the phrase, who followed the will of God against evil to
the death and thereby not only gained resurrection for himself, but could offer
it to others who would do the same. And in so doing, the early Christians
brought new meaning to the word 'martyr.' I think that Tertullian was right: the
blood of the martyrs was the seed of the Church. That is the kind of energy
necessary to start a world religion and call forth the commitment that requires
one's whole life. That energy is ofund in only one place in the Greco-Roman
world - in the tales of the heroes that had been told for a thousand years. The
very culture was founded on them, and the people lived and died imitating them.
For those who heard the story of Jesus in the ancient world, whichever doctrinal
form it came to them in, Jesus was a hero. He was also, of course, many other
things to his followers far more familiar to us arising out the many doctrinal
formulations. But why the story of Jesus was able to inspire so many people in
the ancient world, why they imitated him and followed him to the grave, was
that, in some way lost to us, he was their hero."
Chapter 3 of the book is quite valuable, in which Riley explains "The Story
of the Hero and the Ideals of Antiquity." Riley begins with an exploration of
the different types of living beings according to Plutarch and Hesiod. Hesiod
combined the story of the Four Ages of gold silver, bronze, and iron with the
concept of the types of living beings: gods, daimones, heroes, humans, and
animals. According to Hesiod, gods and humans came from the same source, and the
Golden race was happy and favored by the gods. Hesiod says that the souls of
those living in the Golden age became daimones, "agents of Zeus who now
invisibly watch over human affairs, kindly spirits who guard and deliver us from
harm (Works and Days, 122-24)" (p. 33). The daimon was not to be seen as purely
evil until the rise of dualism after the Exile in intertestamental Jewish
literature. After the golden age comes the silver age and the bronze age, which
are successively more unhappy and violent. The bronze age destroys itself, and
instead of leading to a further degeneration (in line with the ANE myth of the
Four Ages), there comes the Age of Heroes: "they are not degenerates, but
righteous demigods, literally hemitheoi, 'half gods,' again to be ruled over by
Kronos in his new capacity as sovereign of the blessed afterlife. Yet they are
curiously human like ourselves; they fight the battles and suffer the pains and
death of the famous epics of Greece, the battles of Thebes and the Trojan War.
These are the classical heroes of antiquity." (p. 34) After the age of heroes,
comes the age in which we live, the worst of all ages, known as the Age of Iron.
Yet, according to the myth, the age to come will be a return to the Golden Age.
Riley notes that the hero is typically "the offspring of the union between
divine and human parents," as reflected in Greek literature and even in Gen.
6:4. The hero is known to be a person of remarkable talent, such as a Homer or
Alexander the Great. The fate of the hero is interwoven with the fate of the
hero's people; "their very genetics placed them in the mids of destiny on a
larger-than-human scale" (p. 43). Continuing his exploration of the hero in
Greek culture, particularly in the Illiad, Riley notes: "This choice to die for
principle and with honor became one of the most famous heroic events to be
imitated in the entire tradition." (p. 47) And Riley says: "The issue of
destiny, often fatal destiny, points to another aspect of the heroic career -
heroes have divine enemies." Riley observes that heroes have rulers as human
enemies and that the rulers who abuse the hero bring suffering on their cities
(such as Troy and Thebes in Greek legend, or Jerusalem in Christian). Riley
states: "Common to all stories of heroes is the test of character - the critical
situation that is the hero's destiny and shows forth the true character of the
soul," as is most obvious in the choice of Heracles between Vice and Virtue and
subsequently in the labors (p. 51). Riley claims: "The fate in which the hero is
bound while alive often forms a complex pattern of divine justice in which the
gods themselves are partners: the hero suffers humiliation, privation, and even
death as a kind of bait in a larger divine trap designed to catch and destroy
the wicked." Riley points out the example of Odysseus, whose wanderings
eventually led to the destruction of the wicked suitors. Riley also argues that
the hero dies "in the prime of life, in the midst of the very test, the crisis
for which they were destined" (p. 54). The prize of immortality is a theme among
some stories of heroes: "One may see here the concept that among the ancient
heroes suffering led to a prize. The prize for Heracles was immortality, but for
the rest of us, in spite of the assurances of the philosophers, the prize was an
uncertain remembrance of bravery among our friends and family, or perhaps
nothing at all." (p. 58) The hero could act as an intermediary: "What remained
after death was the right of the hero to stand on behalf of his or her
worshipers who themselves passed the test. This was true because through death
the hero became a transformed being." (p. 58) Riley also notes: "Heroes not only
offered help - their stories also provided understanding of the proper modes of
action. They were models, examples, and ideals." (p. 59) This sums up the
concept of the hero.
Riley boldly declares: "If one is not a New Testament scholar, one may see
with little difficulty from the preceding chapters that stories of the life of
Jesus were very much set in the mold of the stories of the ancient heroes." (p.
61)
E. P. Sanders provides this list of things we know about Jesus (Jesus and
Judaism, pp. 326-327):
Sanders writes of the 'connecting link' (op. cit., p. 334):
Sanders believes that this reconstruction is the one that gives the most
natural explanation of the life of Jesus and of the birth of Christianity.
Stein writes: "Without an openness to the supernatural, the result of any
investigation of the life of Christ has predetermined that the resulting Jesus
will be radically different from the Jesus who was born of a virgin, was
anointed by the Spirit, healed the sick, raised the dead, died for the sins of
the world, rose from the dead and ascended into heaven. Yet it is this
supernatural Jesus that humanity desperately needs, for only this supernatural
Jesus can bridge the gap between human sin and God's holiness. What the world so
critically needs is a Savior, but only a supernatural Jesus can be a Savior."
(Jesus the Messiah, p. 13) Stein continues: "In writing this work I have
assumed the presence of the supernatural in the life of Jesus. In other words,
this life of Christ has been written from a believer's viewpoint." (op. cit., p.
13)
Stein considers the virgin birth, Herod's slaughter of the children, and the
visit of the three wise men to be historical incidents. Stein contends that
Jesus was sinless although his family did not notice this fact. Stein believes
that Jesus, assured of his status as Christ at the baptism administered by John,
worked out what it meant to be the Messiah when tempted by the devil in the
wilderness: "He would not use his messianic powers for his own ends. Jesus
rejected all political concepts of messiahship and especially the path of the
Zealots. Instead he would accept the path of the suffering servant that God had
ordained for him." (op. cit., p. 110) Jesus chose the twelve disciples to be the
foundation of the church. Stein recognizes that "the ethic of the kingdom" is
realized in living as God's children and loving outcasts, sinners, and enemies.
Stein writes: "The events of Caesarea Philippi were clearly the watershed and
turning point of Jesus' ministry. It is at this point that the disciples came to
acknowledge, despite their own misconceptions, that Jesus was indeed the Christ.
Upon receiving this confession Jesus began to prepare the disciples for his
forthcoming passion. This new teaching would cause even more confusion during
Jesus' ministry, but after the resurrection the disciples would be able to see
clearly that the cross was not a tragedy or mistake but part of the divine
mystery. The resurrection would not create a new understanding of the person and
work of Jesus, the Christ. Rather, it would confirm what he had taught all
along: Jesus of Nazareth was indeed the Christ, the Son of God, the Savior of
the world." (op. cit., p. 165)
Stein writes that Jesus "claimed authority to purify the temple and to
pronounce judgment on it" in the action of the cleansing of the temple (op.
cit., p. 196). Jesus instituted the Eucharist as a memorial of his redeeming
sacrifice. Stein emphasizes that God was fully in control in the betrayal of
Judas, the desertment of the disciples, the denials of Peter, and the execution
of Jesus, all of which were predicted by Jesus. Stein rejects any attempt to
deny the involvement of the Jewish leaders in the death of Jesus. Stein reviews
the arguments against the idea that Jesus was not crucified and for the idea
that his tomb was found empty by the women on the third day. Stein concludes by
saying that the life of Jesus did not end with the crucifixion, as Jesus rose
from the dead and will return on the last day.
"After his death Jesus appeared first either to Peter or to Mary Magdalene,
then to several disciples together. They became convinced that he was alive.
Their expectation that God would finally intervene to bring about salvation had
been fulfilled differently from the way for which they had hoped. They had to
reinterpret Jesus' whole fate and his person. They recognized that he was the
Messiah, but he was a suffering Messiah, and that they had not reckoned with.
They remembered that Jesus had spoken of himself as 'the man' - specifically
when he was confronted with excessively high hopes in himself. He had given the
general term 'man' a messianic dignity and hoped that he would grow into the
role of this 'man' and would fulfil it in the near future. Now they saw that he
was 'the man' to whom according to a prophecy in Dan. 7 God would give all power
in heaven and on earth. For them Jesus took a place alongside God. Christian
faith had been born as a variant of Judaism: a messianic Judaism which only
gradually separated from its mother religion in the course of the first
century." (op. cit., p. 572)
See also my review of The Historical Jesus linked above.
However, in his latest books, Wells allows that such a complex of tradition
as we have in the synoptic gospels could not have developed so quickly (by the
end of the first century) without some historical basis; and so some elements
ascribed there to the life of Jesus presumably derive ultimately from the life
of a first century Galilean preacher. The essential point, as Wells sees it, is
that this personage is not to be identified with the dying and rising Christ of
the Pauline and other early documents, and that the two have quite separate
origins. The Jesus of the earliest Christians did not, on this view, preach and
work miracles (or what were taken for such) in Galilee, and was not crucified by
Pilate in Jerusalem.
In The New Testament and the People of God, N. T. Wright sets forth a
critical realist account of knowledge. By this, Wright means that it is
impossible to do "mere history" from a supposed objective standpoint, just as
much as it is impossible to see an object without using one's eyes. Wright
states that the text and our own worldview stand in dialogue, with historical
knowledge as the interplay of text and worldview in public dialogue.
Wright sketches Second Temple Judaism as telling the story of Israel's
relationship to God and as using the symbols of Temple, Land, Torah, and Ethnic
Identity. Jews held to creational monotheism over against henotheism, pantheism,
deism, and Gnosticism. Jews held to providential monotheism, according to which
God is continually active in the world. And Jews held to covenantal monotheism,
in which God plans to restore the world through Israel. Jews rejected the forms
of dualism in which there are a source of all that is bad and a source of all
that is good, in which the material world is a shadow of the ideal world, and in
which human beings are composed of body and spirit in opposition. Wright
contends that Jews hoped for the revolution of the current world order but not a
destruction of the material world in a final conflagration as depicted in Stoic
philosophy.
Wright writes, "it should be quite clear that what united early Christians,
deeper than all diversity, was that they told, and lived, a form of Israel's
story which reached its climax in Jesus and which then issued in their
spirit-given new life and task." (The New Testament and the People of
God, p. 456, emphasis original) Wright turns the typical form-critical
assumption on its head in saying that it is likely that pericopes originally
contained narrative contexts but were stripped of them in a process of
Hellenization, as is seen in the Gospel of Thomas. Wright rejects the
"Q-plus-Thomas hypothesis" of a non-eschatological Jesus movement and
states that Q, if it existed, was in form much like Community Rule from
Qumran in containing both future and realized eschatology.
Wright elaborates on his disagreement with scholars such as Crossan and Mack
in his book Jesus and the Victory of God. Wright uses as his principal
tool the criterion of double similarity, according to which material that makes
sense in a Jewish context and explains the rise of the church is likely to be
historical. Wright maintains that Jesus planned for his own death: "Jesus, then,
went up to Jerusalem not just to preach, but to die . . . Jesus believed that
the messianic woes were about to burst upon Israel, and that he had to take them
upon himself, solo" (Jesus and the Victory of God, p. 609). Wright
believes that the development of soteriology in the church cannot be explained
adequately unless it had its seed on the far side of Easter.
Go to the Early Christian
Writings web site.Stevan Davies
Doing away with the unproductive model of the historical Jesus as
a teacher, Stevan Davies proposes that spirit possession played a crucial role
in earliest Christianity. The texts themselves - Acts, John, Paul - tell us as
much. Davies uses current anthropological research on spirit possession in order
to shed new light on the history of early Christianity. Davies speculates that
Jesus developed an alternate personality as "the spirit of God," by which he
expelled demons in his healings. In this way, it is possible that much of the
sayings material in John and sayings like Q's "No one knows the Father but the
Son" reflect a tradition of the sayings of Jesus as possessed by the spirit of
God. Davies explains the origins of Christianity in theorizing that took place
concerning the disassociative experiences. For the idea that Jesus was divine,
it took only a simple equation of identifying Jesus with his alter-ego as the
spirit of God. In this way, Davies's theory fulfills a criterion that is
overlooked in many reconstructions, that of explaining the development of
Christian theology from the life of the historical Jesus. For fuller commentary,
see Davies's own summary linked above.
Earl Doherty
Earl Doherty holds that Christianity began with a mythical Christ.
Earl Doherty argues that the diffuse undercurrent of religious thought called
early Christianity can be shown to be a plausible descendant or cousin of Jewish
mystical speculation on the scriptures (found in such writings as the Odes of
Solomon, the Wisdom of Solomon, and Philo of Alexandria) and was probably
well-received by those converts to early Christianity who were influenced by
Platonism and Hellenistic soteriological ideas of the day. According to Doherty,
religious thinking of the time saw the heavens as multi-layered and would
understand the descent of a heavenly Christ to be sacrificed in the lower
spheres of the heavens before being raised to the right hand of the Father. This
is called the "Jerusalem Tradition," and it is exemplified by the epistles of
Paul, seven of which are accepted as authentic.
Bart Ehrman
Bart Ehrman compares the historical Jesus to the apocalyptic
prophets that have appeared throughout history proclaiming the end of the age.
Ehrman argues that since John the Baptist was apocalyptic and since Paul was
apocalyptic and since the Palestinian Jewish milieu was apocalyptic, it only
makes sense that the historical Jesus was apocalyptic too. Ehrman argues that
those documents with elements of realized eschatology - the Gospel of Luke, the
Gospel of John, and the Gospel of Thomas - prove to reflect the softening of
apocalyptic expectation at the end of the first century or in the early second
century. Ehrman proposes that the teachings ascribed to Jesus make sense as an
"interim ethic" that is intended to apply to the short period of under a
generation between the time of Jesus and the end of the age. Ehrman also makes
sense of the cleansing of the Temple in the context of the eschatological
expectations of the historical Jesus. Ehrman believes that the model of Jesus as
an apocalyptic prophet is the best lens with which to understand the life of the
historical Jesus and the history of the movement that continued his legacy.
Robert Eisenman
In the tradition of S. G. F. Brandon and Robert Eisler, Robert
Eisenman has argued that the original Jamesian Christianity consisted of
Torah-observant and nationalistic Jews of insurrectionist bent. In order to
reconstruct the historical James, Eisenman peers behind the texts as we have
them to get to the source of things; for example, Acts and the Pseudoclementine
Recognitions are maintained to be both dependent on a source, now lost, which is
better preserved in the Pseudoclementines. The Gospels are seen to be
pro-Gentile, pro-Roman fictions which deliberately portray Jesus as a
pacifistic, spiritual Messiah. In the Gospels, the original Heirs of Jesus are
played down for political reasons.
Alvar Ellegård
Ellegård believes that first century Christianity developed within
the Jewish matrix of the Essene Church of God: "Thanks to the 'evangelisation'
carried out by the earliest apostles, Paul and his contemporaries, the
communities were made to realise that the great teacher and prophet whom they
took to be the founder of their Church, and who they believed had been dead for
over a hundred years, had now been seen in Heaven, and should be regarded as the
Messiah, their Saviour. In the Qumran texts - largely unknown to the Diaspora
communities - he was never named, but referred to by the title Teacher of
Righteousness. But after the apostles had been overwhelmed by the experience of
seeing him in Heaven, they began to use instead, exclusively, the name Jesus, a
name meaning, roughly, Salvation, and therefore very appropriate for somebody
they had now come to look upon primarily as their Saviour. The designation
Teacher of Righteousness disappears completely." (Jesus: One Hundred Years
Before Christ, p. 120)
Paula Fredriksen
The Jesus encountered in the present reconstruction is a prophet
who preached the coming apocalyptic Kingdom of God. His message coheres both
with that of his predecessor and mentor, John the Baptizer, and with that of
the movement that sprang up in his name. This Jesus thus is not
primarily a social reformer with a revolutionary message; nor is he a
religious innovator radically redefining the traditional ideas and practices
of his native religion. His urgent message had not the present so much as the
near future in view.
Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy
Freke and Gandy argue for the Jesus Mysteries Thesis: "Could
Gnosticism be the original Christianity, which developed from the Pagan
Mysteries with the Jesus story as a Jewish version of the perennial myth of the
dying and resurrecting Mystery godman?" (The Jesus Mysteries, p. 110)
Freke and Gandy explain the development of the Gospel story like so: "The
Messiah was expected to be a historical, not a mythical, savior. It was
inevitable, therefore, that the Jesus story would have to develop a
quasi-historical setting. And so it did. What had started as a timeless myth
encoding perennial teachings now appeared to be a historical account of a
once-only event in time. From this point it was unavoidable that sooner or later
it would be interpreted as historical fact. Once it was, a whole new type of
religion came into being - a religion based on history not myth, on blind faith
in supposed events rather than on a mystical understanding of mythical
allegories, a religion of the Outer Mysteries without the Inner Mysteries, of
form without content, of belief without Knowledge." (The Jesus Mysteries,
p. 207) The authors support their thesis by drawing parallels between the Christ
of the Gospels and the Osiris-Dionysus myth.
Robert Funk
Robert Funk is founder of the Jesus Seminar, a group of scholars
whose purpose was to examine the historicity of the sayings and deeds of Jesus.
The reports of their deliberations are available in The Five Gospels and
in The Acts of Jesus. The premises and rules of evidence are available in
the link above, and some of the deliberations in favor of authenticity are also
linked above.
Although Robert Funk does so in Honest to Jesus, the Jesus
Seminar did not attempt to make a sketch of the historical Jesus on the basis of
their decisions on individual sayings. Yet a distinctive portrait does emerge
from the data, as indicated for example in the comments on Lk 12:22-31: "In
these sayings, Jesus depicts the providence of God who cares for all creatures -
birds, lilies, grass, and human beings. Fretting about food and clothing does
not produce food and clothing. Serene confidence that God will provide
undergirds Jesus' lifestyle as an itinerant, without home or bed, without
knowing where the next meal will come from. This is the same sage who advocates
giving both of one's everyday garments to someone who sues for one; who advises
his followers to give to every beggar and to lend to those who cannot repay; who
humorously suggests that a rich person can no more get into God's domain than a
camel can squeeze through the eye of a needle; who sends his disciples out on
the road without money, food, change of clothes, or bag to carry them in; who
claims that God observes every sparrow and counts the hairs on every head. This
bundle of sayings, all of which commanded red or pink designations by the
Fellows of the Jesus Seminar, indicate why they also believe the heart of this
collection on anxieties originated with Jesus, although not precisely in the
words preserved for us in Q. When these sayings are taken together, a portrait
of the historical Jesus begins to emerge." (op. cit., p. 340)
Richard Horsley
The focal concern of the kingdom of God in Jesus' preaching and
practice, however, is the liberation and welfare of the people. Jesus'
understanding of the "kingdom of God" is similar in its broader perspective to
the confident hopes expressed in then-contemporary Jewish apocalyptic
literature. That is, he had utter confidence that God was restoring the life
of the society, and that this would mean judgment for those who oppressed the
people and vindication for those who faithfully adhered to God's will and
responded to the kingdom. That is, God was imminently and presently effecting
a historical transformation. In modern parlance that would be labeled a
"revolution."
Luke Timothy Johnson
Gerd Lüdemann
Hyam Maccoby
Hyam Maccoby writes (8/5/01): "I write on Christian origins from
the standpoint of a scholar of the ancient Jewish writings, including the Dead
Sea Scrolls, the Mishnah, the Talmud, and the Midrashim. My view on Christian
origins is that Jesus was a Jewish messiah-figure who had no intention of
starting a new religion. The real founder of Christianity as a separate religion
was Paul. Jesus died on a Roman cross because he was considered a threat to the
Roman occupation of Judaea, not because he was regarded as heretical or
blasphemous by the Jewish religious authorities, the Pharisees. His Jewish
opponent was the High Priest, who was a Roman appointee, who acted for
political, not religious motives, in arresting Jesus. Jesus was not a military
figure, but, like Theudas, and some other contemporary messiah-figures, relied
on the hope of divine intervention, which he thought would take place on the
Mount of Olives." Maccoby has a book to be published in 2002 titled The
Pharisee Jesus from SCM Press.
Burton Mack
Following up on earlier suggestions, such as by Koester and
Robinson in Trajectories through Early Christianity, Mack identifies
numerous social groups lurking behind the scenes of early Christianity. Quoting
from The Lost Gospel, p. 214: "The Q people were not the only group that
formed within the Jesus movement. To take five additional groups as an example
of the experimental nature of the Jesus movement, there is some evidence for (1)
a group of Jesus people distinguished by its allegiance to Jesus' family, (2)
Jewish followers who took up residence in Jerusalem for a time, (3) the people
who designed sets of (five) miracle stories as their myth of origin, (4) the
Jesus movement in which Mark was at home and in which the pronouncement story
genre was highly developed, and (5) the tradition within which Luke was at home,
a tradition with a sketchy history but one in which a distinctively human view
of Jesus prevailed." Famously, Mack reconstructs the social history of the early
Q people on analogy with the Cynics, libertines with a fondness for paradox and
humor who traveled lightly and used their sharp words to controvert social
conventions. Although Mack is hesitant to make pronouncements of knowledge
concerning the historical Jesus, there is the distinct possibility that these
early Cynic-like Jesus people were following the practice of their founder. Mack
is among those who stratify Q, and the apocalyptic polemics characteristic of Q2
are thought to reflect anger and disappointment over the failure of their Jewish
brethren to repent and live in the kingdom of God.
Mack views these Jesus movements as the earliest expressions of
incipient Christianity. In a particular group of Jesus people in northern Syria,
the kerygma of Christ developed. In the mix of Hellenistic Jews and converted
Gentiles, these congregations began to view Jesus as an innocent who had died
"for us," for the congregations of Christians, in line with Greek traditions of
the noble death. This martyrology, in which Jesus died for the kingdom of the
God of Israel, allowed the first Christians to think of themselves as belonging
the new configuration of "Israel," the people of God, justified in the inclusion
of gentiles. The same first Christians developed the notion "that God raised
Jesus from the dead as a vindication for his faithfulness to the cause for which
he had died" (p. 218). Then came the idea that "Jesus was recognized by God as
the rightful heir to his kingdom," as the "son of God whom God designated as a
king." Jesus became the Christ, the lord of God's people, the Christians. "With
such a dramatic mythology focused on the death and resurrection of Jesus as the
Christ, the congregations of the Christ no longer needed to cultivate the
memories of Jesus as a teacher." (p. 219) Mack continues, "The evidence from
Paul's letters is that the congregations of the Christ were attractive
associates and that their emerging mythology was found to be exciting. A
spirited cult formed on the model of the mystery religions, complete with
entrance baptisms, rites of recognition (the holy kiss), ritualized meals (the
lord's supper), the notion of the spiritual presence of the lord, and the
creation of liturgical materials such as acclamations, doxologies, confessions
of faith, and Christ hymns." (pp. 219-220)
John P. Meier
In the first volume, Meier looks at "the roots of the problem and
the person." Meier distinguishes between the real Jesus, the actual person who
walked the sands of Palestine, and the historical Jesus, an abstraction
representing what we can know about Jesus. Meier identifies Q, Mark, special
Matthew, special Luke, and John as representing five independent sources within
the New Testament. Bucking a trend of the "Third Quest," Meier rejects the
attempts to argue that the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Peter, and other
noncanonical material may be independent of the New Testament. Meier argues that
Josephus provides independent confirmation of the historicity of Jesus, but the
other references in Jewish and pagan literature have little value. Meier lays
out his criteria of historicity; five primary criteria of embarrassment,
discontinuity, multiple attestation, coherence, and "rejection and execution" as
well as four dubious criteria of traces of Aramaic, Palestinian environment,
vividness of narration, and tendencies of the developing synoptic tradition.
Meier argues that Nazareth is a more likely birthplace than Bethlehem as well as
that Jesus had real brothers. Meier argues that Jesus was unlike many of his
contemporaries in that he was literate. Meier attempts an analogy for the
economic status of Jesus as "a blue-collar worker in lower-middle-class America"
(p. 282), by which he means that Jesus' economic situation was typical of
Galileans, though this in itself was not great.
In the second volume, Meier examines "mentor, message, and
miracles." Meier argues strongly for the baptism of Jesus by John. Meier also
argues that the historical Jesus, like the historical John, preached the Kingdom
with a future sense, not just a present sense. "Jesus not only presented himself
as the eschatological prophet of the coming kingdom of God, not only presented
himself as the Elijah-like miracle-worker who made the future kingdom already
effective and palpable to his followers, but at the same time presented hmself
as a teacher who could tell Israelites how to observe the Law of Moses - indeed,
who could even tell Israelites what they should or should not observe in the
Law." (p. 1046) Meier states that an Elijah-like miracle-working eschatological
prophet is not so readily relevant to us today as a domesticated "kindhearted
rabbi who preached gentleness and love" (p. 1045). Yet, Meier says, the
historical Jesus was such a prophet.
Stephen Patterson
Stephen Patterson writes: "Of particular importance is
Kloppenborg's influential study of the redaction of Q. Just as we have already
seen that Thomas and Q1 agree in opting for a non-apocalyptic interpretation of
Jesus preaching, so also now it is to be noticed that neither Thomas nor Q1 seem
to be much interested in Jesus' death. It is, at any rate, not a primary point
of departure in their respective theological orientations. The convergence of
Thomas and Q1 on these points is very important, for it helps us clearly to
locate reflection upon the death of Jesus and the use of apocalyptic scenarios
in the sayings tradition to the synoptic trajectory alone, and to its later
stages at that. It is becoming ever more difficult to imagine a Jesus who
reflected upon his own death, and preached an imminent apocaylptic judgment to
be visited upon the world." (The Gospel of Thomas and Jesus, p. 231)
Gregory Riley
E. P. Sanders
I. Certain or virtually certain:
1. Jesus shared the world-view
that I have called 'Jewish restoration eschatology'. The key facts are his
start under John the Baptist, the call of the twelve, his expectation of a new
(or at least renewed) temple, and the eschatological setting of the work of
the apostles (Gal. 1.2; Rom. 11.11-13, 25-32; 15.15-19).
2. He preached the
kingdom of God.
3. He promised the kingdom to the wicked.
4. He did not
explicitly oppose the law, particularly not laws relating to Sabbath and
food.
5. Neither he nor his disciples thought that the kingdom would be
established by force of arms. They looked for an eschatological
miracle.
II. Highly probable:
1. The kingdom which he expected would
have some analogies with this world: leaders, the twelve tribes, a functioning
temple.
2. Jesus' disciples thought of him as 'king', and he accepted the
role, either implicitly or explicitly.
III. Probable:
1. He thought that
the wicked who accepted his message would share in the kingdom even though
they did not do the things customary in Judaism for the atonement of
sin.
2. He did not emphasize the national character of the kingdom,
including judgment by groups and a call for mass repentance, because that had
been the task of John the Baptist, whose work he accepted.
3. Jesus spoke
about the kingdom in different contexts, and he did not always use the word
with precisely the same meaning.
IV. Possible:
1. He may have spoken
about the kingdom in the visionary manner of the 'little apocalypse' (Mark 13
and parr.), or as a present reality into which individuals enter one by one -
or both.
V. Conceivable:
1. He may have thought that the kingdom, in all
its power and might, was present in his words and deeds.
2. He may have
given his own death martyrological significance.
3. He may have identified
himself with a cosmic Son of man and conceived his attaining kingship in that
way.
VI. Incredible:
1. He was one of the rare Jews in his day who
believed in love, mercy, grace, repentance and the forgiveness of sin.
2.
Jews in general, and Pharisees in particular, would kill people who believed
in such things.
3. As a result of his work, Jewish confidence in election
was 'shaken to pieces', Judaism was 'shaken to its foundations', and Judaism
as a religion was destroyed. We went in search of a thread which connects Jesus' own intention,
his death and the rise of the movement. We found first a general context which
embraces both Jesus and the movement which succeeded him: hope for the
restoration of Israel. Second, we found a specific chain of conceptions and
events which allows us to understand historically how things came about. Jesus
claimed that the end was at hand, that God was about to establish his kingdom,
that those who responded to him would be included, and (at least by
implication) that he would reign. In pointing to the change of eras, he made a
symbolic gesture by overturning tables in the temple area. This is the crucial
act which led to his execution, though there were contributing causes. His
disciples, after the death and resurrection, continued to expect the
restoration of Israel and the inauguration of the new age, and they
continued to see Jesus as occupying first place in the kingdom. Also,
as we saw in ch. 8, they continued to look for an otherworldly kingdom
which would be established by an eschatological miracle, although its locale
may have shifted from this world to the heavenly one. The person of Jesus
himself was also progressively interpreted: he was no longer seen just as
'Messiah' or 'Viceroy', but as Lord. Some who were attracted to the movement
began to win Gentiles to it. The work of the early apostles, which is so well
reflected in Paul's letters, fits entirely into known expectations about the
restoration of Israel.
Robert H. Stein
Gerd Theissen
Jesus joined up with John the Baptist to confess his sins. "Like
everyone else he, too, expected the imminent judgment of God." (The
Historical Jesus, p. 569) In his own ministry, the historical Jesus taught
that the time before the end had been extended by the grace of God but that evil
had already been overcome, as shown in his exorcisms. Jesus chose twelve
disciples to rule the soon-to-be-restored Israel. The belief in a God who would
bring deliverance to the poor, weak, and sick stood at the center of his
message. Theissen writes, "his vision of the future rule of God was that of a
great shared meal in which Jews and Gentiles were no longer divided by
commandments about food and cleanness" (op. cit., p. 571). Jesus was an
itinerant with a "radical ethic of freedom from family, possessions, home and
security" (op. cit., p. 571) Jesus foretold that God would substitute a new
temple in place of the old, and he deliberately attacked the legitimacy of the
temple in the symbolic action of cleansing the temple. The Jewish aristocracy
arrested him for his criticism of the temple but accused him before Pilate of
the political crime of seeking to be a royal pretender. He was condemned to be
executed, and his disciples fled.
Geza Vermes
Geza Vermes portrays the historical Jesus as a charismatic
teacher, healer, and exorcist who believed in the soon-to-be-realized Kingdom of
God. Jesus was a Hasid, a Galilean holy man, on analogy with other holy
men such as Hanina ben Dosa. Jesus was also a prophet, one who expected decisive
action from the God of Israel in the near future. Jesus used the term "son of
man" only as a circumlocution for his own person or for people in general. Along
with other Galileans, Jesus had little interest in the halakhic matters that
consumed the Pharisees; indeed, Jesus flaunted them "in his table-fellowship
with publicans and whores" (Jesus and the World of Judaism, p. 11). The
conflict between Jesus of Galilee and the Pharisees would "merely have resembled
the in-fighting of factions belonging to the same religious body, like that
between Karaites and Rabbanites in the Middle Ages, or between the orthodox and
progressive branches of Judaism in modern times" (op. cit., pp. 11-12). Like
John the Baptist, Jesus was arrested and executed because he was seen to be
popular with the people, and this alone justified suspicion of seditious intent.
G. A. Wells
Wells argues that most of what is said of Jesus in the canonical
gospels is put in question by the fact that it is not confirmed by extant
Christian documents which are either earlier than the gospels or early enough to
have been written independently of them, i.e. composed before they or the
traditions underlying them had become generally known in Christian circles.
Paul, for instance, wrote before any gospel existed, and his Jesus lived on
earth as a shadowy figure of the indefinite past. Such early Christians
developed their beliefs in the tradition of Jewish Wisdom speculation about a
supernatural personage who sought an abode on earth but was rejected by man and
who then returned to heaven.
N. T. Wright
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