Book Club Discussion: The Meaning of Jesus--All Welcome to Join
Posted June 2nd, 2008 by Gary Chartier
image:
The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions is a dialogue between two New Testament scholars, Marcus Borg and N.T. Wright. The book focuses primarily, though not exclusively, on the historical figure of Jesus. The authors irenically articulate and defend their respective accounts of who Jesus was, what he did, how he understood himself, how he was born, why he died, what became of him after his death, what we can expect from him in the future, and what he means to us today. They also explain how they believe we should reach historical conclusions about him.
The book is a well-written and engaging introduction to the contemporary historical study of Jesus by scholars who are both friends and fellow Christians. To understand The Meaning of Jesus and its context, it may be useful to begin with an overview of the development of modern Christian thinking about Jesus as a figure of history.
It is a commonplace that Jewish faith and Christian faith are historical, not only in the sense that they have developed over time but in the sense that they concern themselves with historical events. Jews and Christians have characteristically believed that God does things in history, that divine action changes both our understanding of the human situation and the human situation itself. For Jews, God’s paradigmatic historical action is Israel’s exodus from slavery in Egypt. Whatever her precise understanding of this exodus, a traditionally-minded Jew will see God’s will behind the liberation of Israel and the consequent creation of a new nation. Because of what God has done, history is different, importantly different.
In the same way, Christians have traditionally seen the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus as God’s decisive, definitive actions in human history. They continue to disagree about just what God accomplished in and through these events. Some Christians see them primarily as media of divine self-disclosure; others interpret them as the means by which a substitutionary atonement was effected; still others understand them as unleashing a powerful dynamic that has transformed human social, cultural, and political history. The majority Christian view has been, in any case, that they matter profoundly.
Christian belief in the centrality of these events for human history has come under increasing attack since the eighteenth century. It has seemed incredible to many people that a set events occurring over the course of a few years in Palestine two millennia ago could be the prime instance of God’s activity in human affairs. Not unreasonably, critics have asked: Why there? Why then? What about the rest of the world?
Also problematic from the standpoint of many historians and philosophers has been the idea that we could be confident that the sorts of wondrous events reported in the gospels actually occurred. David Hume famously argued that such an event is a priori improbable—so improbable that it will always be more likely that evidence purporting to establish that it occurred should be discounted than that it did, in fact, take place.
Related to this epistemological challenge has been a metaphysical one. If the world operates in accordance with orderly natural laws, what room is there—critics in an era increasingly dominated by a mechanistic worldview that reflected popular understandings of Newtonian physics asked—for acts that seem so clearly to violate these laws? Given our understanding of the world, are the accounts offered in the gospels genuinely believable?
Some theologians and philosophers asked whether history could bear the weight Christianity seemed to place on it. Faith seemed to require absolute, unswerving commitment. But historical reconstruction was always tentative, probabilistic. Historical claims could always be falsified and were never, in any case, certain. How could Christians rely on the gospels as they made firm commitments to Jesus if their knowledge of him was always provisional?
A clear implication of this challenge was that the gospels themselves were to be studied like other ancient historical documents. Though so-called “historical-critical” study of the gospels is as old as the patristic period (consider, for instance, the careful work of Theodore of Mopsuestia), it took off in earnest in the nineteenth century. Scholars focused on the textual pre-histories of the gospels, their relationships with each other and with other biblical books, parallels between them and various non-biblical sources, the role of archæology and ancient history in confirming or disconfirming the portraits of Jesus they offered, and so forth. And they sought increasingly to offer comprehensive portraits—biographies—of Jesus. They often sought to depict Jesus in terms that might appear winsome to nineteenth-century liberal readers. They also attempted, regularly enough, to explain away the strange and the miraculous. Jesus didn’t rise from the dead; he swooned and revived in the tomb. He didn’t feed the five thousand with miraculously multiplied loaves and fishes; he encouraged his hearers to share their food with each other.
The story of their efforts has famously been told in Albert Schweitzer’s The Quest of the Historical Jesus. Schweitzer noted the domestication of Jesus in the work of his contemporaries, who had failed, he believed, to take the measure of Jesus’ essential strangeness. Understood in historical context, Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet who incorrectly anticipated—and sought to precipitate—the end of the world. Powerfully moved by the spirit of Jesus, Schweitzer devoted his life to medical missionary work in Africa. But before his academic career in Germany had ended, he had effectively lowered the curtain on the first act in the drama of modern study of the “historical Jesus.”
Writing during the same period as Schweitzer, Martin Mahler argued—in The So-Called Historical Jesus and the Authentic Biblical Christ—that it was ultimately the Christ encountered in Scripture and the preaching of the church who was the real Christ, not the Christ reconstructed by secular historical method. Kähler sought to leapfrog over the difficult or impossible task of ascertaining what Jesus was really like by suggesting that what mattered was the experience of Christ mediated to us in the Bible.
Approaches resembling Kähler’s were dominant during the first half of the twentieth century. Rudolf Bultmann maintained that the sheer fact—the “that”—of Jesus’ existence mattered for faith. But he sought to insulate faith from the corrosive acids of historical skepticism by declaring everything else about the historical figure of Jesus irrelevant to the Christian life. Bultmann was quite prepared to engage in serious historical inquiry into Jesus’ ministry and message, but he maintained that what mattered for contemporary Christians was nothing but the transformation effected by the grace of God encountered in the church’s preaching about Jesus. Whatever the results of historical research, Bultmann said, it was the preached Christ who changed lives, who was ultimately important.
Karl Barth was much more prepared than Bultmann to affirm the historicity of the broad outlines of the gospel narrative of Jesus. For Bultmann, it was necessary, for instance, to say only that Jesus was “risen in the kerygma”—that Christians should be concerned with the life-changing power of the story of the resurrection rather than with the question, What happened on the Sunday after Jesus was crucified? Barth wanted to say much more than this, to affirm with other orthodox Christians that Jesus was truly made alive by God in exalted but embodied form after his death on the cross. But he wanted to do so in a way that rendered Christian historical claims immune to historical challenge. By placing key Christian claims off-limits to historical verification or falsification, he fed the unwarranted suspicion of some evangelical critics that he did not believe the gospel’s central events had really happened.
But many other scholars found themselves increasingly uneasy with the abandonment of critical history as a resource for Christian faith which the work of each had, in different ways, encouraged. Comforting as it might be to protect the gospel from the potentially negative consequences of historical scrutiny, it seemed nonetheless as if safety from historical refutation was being purchased at the price of abandoning the central Christian conviction that God made a difference in and for history. Thus, Bultmann’s student, Ernst Käsemann, argued that Christians needed to demonstrate the existence of at least some meaningful continuity between the Jesus of history and the Christ proclaimed by the church. Käsemann’s brief for this position is often seen as the charter for a second quest—the so-called “New Quest” for the historical Jesus.
Chastened by the failure of the original quest, the New Questers opted for a relatively minimalist approach. They sought, not to construct elaborate biographies of Jesus that focused on his inner life and the minute details of his career, as they understood their predecessors as having done, but to spell out what they believed could be affirmed with confidence about him on the basis of sober historical research. Based on their understanding of the origins of the gospels and the history of the early church—often mutually reinforcing and developed in tandem—they offered careful reconstructions of Jesus’ sayings and actions. Some articulated criteria designed to help them distinguish authentic words of Jesus from ones created by the early church. And they began to publish a flood of books and articles. The results of their inquires were mixed. Some believed that historical reconstruction provided a firm basis for the confident affirmation of the church’s historic convictions. Some were satisfied with showing the existence of minimal continuity between the Jesus of history and the Jesus proclaimed by the church. Some wondered if even this was possible.
Where the New Questers had concerned themselves primarily with the gospels and had seen their task as, at root, theological, those who undertook the so-called Third Quest, beginning in the 1970s, adopted a somewhat broader focus and, often enough, a different self-understanding. They attempted to situate Jesus within the context of the ancient Mediterranean world, seeking in particular to learn about him by studying the history, culture, and texts of his Jewish contemporaries. Many of them saw themselves less as theologians than as historians, intent on bracketing religious concerns professionally, if not personally. Their work proved fruitful and instructive. It offered richer portraits of Jesus that began to make increasing sense of his behavior in light of the dynamics of life in Israel under Roman occupation during what we now call the first century.
The scholars who have undertaken the Third Quest have included Jewish historians, like Geza Vermes, as well as Christians, including A. E. Harvey, Ben F. Meyer, E. P. Sanders, Marcus Borg, and Tom Wright. While today’s Jesus scholars find themselves speaking with confidence about some matters, they also disagree dramatically about others. Some of their disagreements are narrowly historical; others are simultaneously historical and theological. The Meaning of Jesus highlights both.
This book is hardly “the definitive debate on the historical Jesus,” as the promotional copy on its rear cover proclaims. It is a gracious exchange between two moderate scholars with a good deal in common. Both are Anglicans—Borg an American, Wright and Englishman. Both studied under G. B. Caird at Oxford. Both are skeptical of the reductive, materialistic, scientistic cast of mind that has dominated post-Enlightenment intellectual life in the West. Both are representatives of the Third Quest (a term Wright coined), committed to understanding Jesus in the context of first-century Judaism. And both believe that faith in Jesus can and should play a key role in Christian life today.
It is certainly true that Borg is (again, per the jacket copy) a “leading liberal . . . Jesus scholar[]”; but his liberalism is of an overtly pious variety, rather different from that of, say, Sanders, John Dominic Crossan, or Burton Mack. And while Wright is certainly a conservative, he is no fundamentalist. He is wedded neither to an inerrantist view of the gospels (215) nor (witness his understanding of eschatological language in the New Testament) to traditional doctrinal formulations. Borg and Wright certainly belong on anyone’s short list of candidates for inclusion in a debate about the historical Jesus, but in “the definitive debate,” other voices need to be heard as well: the voices of other scholars—including those I’ve mentioned and, doubtless, others as well, including Jewish voices, women’s voices.
Despite their similarities, Borg and Wright differ on a variety of important and interesting issues, and their gracious exchanges make The Meaning of Jesus a useful starting point for the reader interested in formulating an adequate personal understanding of the Jesus of history. Several issues about which they disagree are particularly significant.
Both believe that we can and should use the tools of modern historiography to construct a reasonably accurate portrait of Jesus. But they differ on the question of how these tools should be employed. Borg seems to believe that we can be relatively confident in the validity of the dominant consensus regarding the pre-history and development of the gospels. According to this consensus, Mark and the hypothetical sayings source, Q, are our principal bases for historical judgments about Jesus. It’s unlikely that the other gospels add a great deal to our understanding of Jesus; rather, they should be viewed as—often theologically-motivated—elaborations on the material found in Mark and Q. Borg also emphasizes the importance of cross-cultural anthropological insights for our understanding of Jesus.
By contrast, Wright leaves open the possibility that all of the traditions found in the gospels might be able to contribute to our picture of Jesus; he is not prepared to rule out the historicity of a given narrative or saying on the basis of a hypothetical reconstruction of the pre-history of the gospels. And he emphasizes the importance of using distinctively Jewish categories to understand Jesus’ mission and message, fearing that cross-cultural analyses run the risk of obscuring Jesus’ particularity and his responsiveness to specific concerns present in his immediate social, political, and religious world.
Borg and Wright both see Jesus as actively involved in confronting the social and political realities of first-century Judaism. For both, Jesus saw Jewish opposition to Rome, and the boundary-consciousness that opposition expressed, as self-destructive. According to Wright, “Jesus’ clash with the Pharisees came about . . . because his kingdom agenda for Israel demanded that Israel leave off its frantic and paranoid self-defense, reinforced as it now was by the ancestral codes, and embrace instead the vocation to be the light of the world, the salt of the earth” (43-4). Jesus called his followers to way of life marked by the renunciation of “xenophobia toward those outside Israel” (39). Similarly, Borg focuses on Jesus negative assessment of first-century Jewish purity rules (73), also clearly concerned with boundaries. Both see Jesus as vocally opposed to social injustice (44, 71-3). But they differ sharply over the question whether Jesus thought or spoke of himself as Israel’s messiah. Where Borg sees the retrojection of later Christian conclusions—conclusions he maintains are correct in light of Jesus’ resurrection—Wright sees Jesus’ own words and deeds.
Borg and Wright disagree, not surprisingly, regarding the historicity of Jesus’ virginal conception. Wright believes the best explanation for the appearance of the story of the virginal conception in Matthew and Luke is that Jesus was, in fact, conceived when Mary was a virgin. Borg argues that the stories are theologically meaningful but lack historical warrant. But Borg concedes that “[t]he birth narratives have no impact on . . . [his] reconstruction of Jesus’ public agendas and his mindset as he went to the cross” (172). “If,” he says, “the first two chapters of Matthew and the first two of Luke had never existed, I do not suppose that my own Christian faith, or that of the church to which I belong, would have been very different” (178). Borg says he does “not see the story of the virginal conception as a marvel of biology that, if true, proves that Jesus really was the Son of God” (186). But neither does Wright, and neither does the Christian Church. (Aquinas was doubtless not the first to acknowledge that incarnation does not entail virginal conception.)
For Borg, the notion that Jesus deliberately sought out death and that he understood his death as salvific is problematic. He is also doubtful that Jesus’ followers had any first-hand information of his trial, so he doesn’t think we can be certain about the value of any of the trial accounts in the gospels. He suggests that the view that Jesus was crucified because he claimed to be the Messiah seems to track later Christian beliefs so closely that it’s likely to be a post-hoc creation; it’s most likely that Jesus was actually crucified because he was “a social prophet who challenged the domination system in the name of God” (91). That doesn’t mean he is unwilling to credit any of the Passion narratives in the gospels. He is confident that Jesus and his disciples shared a meal immediately before his arrest and execution, that Jesus was betrayed by Judas, that Jesus was arrested in Gethsemane, that Jesus was crucified, that his crucifixion resulted “from collaboration between the . . . Roman governor and a small circle of Jewish temple authorities” (90).
Wright sees the passion narratives as much more reliable. News travels fast in traditional societies, he suggests; for instance, then, if “scholars argue . . . that because Jesus’ hearings before Caiaphas and Pilate were in secret nobody would have known what happened, they are living in a make-believe world” (95). Jesus thought of himself as Israel’s messiah and, in line with the convictions of many of his contemporaries and predecessors, believed his messianic vocation would be accomplished through his own suffering and death. If Israel challenged Rome, as it seemed increasingly poised to do, Rome would retaliate brutally; and Rome “would be the unwitting but effective agent of the wrath of Israel’s own God” (98). Jesus, says Wright, “seems to have construed his vocation in terms familiar in the stories of the martyrs. He would go ahead of the nation to take upon himself the judgment of which he had warned, the wrath of Rome against revel subjects” (98). Jesus did not seek death; but “he went to Jerusalem determined to announce his particular kingdom message in word and (particularly) in symbolic action, knowing what the inevitable reaction would be, and believing that this reaction would itself be the means of God’s will being done” (99).
For Wright, the resurrection validated “Jesus as messiah” (125); and Borg suggests that their resurrection experiences rightly led the early Christians to confess Jesus as Lord. But when the early Christians spoke of resurrection, Wright suggests, they had a relatively clear meaning in mind; they weren’t talking about a vague “spiritual presence” or about the immortality of the soul. The best explanation, he maintains, of the early church’s belief in the bodily resurrection of Jesus is thus precisely that Jesus’ tomb was empty and that his disciples encountered him, embodied but exalted—“neither resuscitated nor left to decay in the tomb but . . . rather transformed into a new mode of physicality”—after his death (122). Borg sees the empty tomb stories as irrelevant; Jesus can be alive and exalted no matter what happened to his body. What matters is that “the followers of Jesus . . . continued to experience Jesus as a living reality after his death” (135).
Borg regularly differentiates between the pre-Easter and post-Easter Jesus. But he is not concerned, like many liberals, to see the post-Easter Jesus as simply a creation of the church’s faith. He affirms, in light of the resurrection, that “Jesus lives, and Jesus is Lord” (129). But he wishes to underscore the difference between Jesus as proclaimed after the resurrection and Jesus as he might reasonably have been characterized—or as he spoke about (or, likely, understood) during his lifetime. Borg denies that “Jesus thought of himself as divine” or knew “more than his contemporaries . . . because . . . he had a divine mind” (145; I take it that by “mind,” Borg means “consciousness”). However, he is equally clear that the post-Easter Jesus is a “divine reality” and “one with God” and that the pre-Easter Jesus was “the embodiment or incarnation of God” (146).
When Borg says that he believes the historical Jesus was the embodiment or incarnation of God, he apparently intends to defend a view of incarnation in accordance with which being God incarnate is a matter of being supremely inspired by God; for Borg, Jesus was “open to the presence of God” in a way that made it possible for him to “be filled with the Spirit” (147-8). He would not, I think, be comfortable with a more traditional incarnational view of Jesus that held that the will of God and the will of Jesus were numerically identical, that God was the personal subject of the life of Jesus. But it is important to emphasize that, even if he held such a traditional view, he could still quite consistently maintain that Jesus lacked the knowledge he says he believes Jesus didn’t possess. A “high Christology,” like the one articulated in the so-called Nicene Creed, has no particular implications regarding the extent of Jesus’ knowledge. It is perfectly consistent to claim both that Jesus was God incarnate and that he did not know he was.
Toward the end of The Meaning of Jesus, Borg and Wright move increasingly away from narrowly historical questions, focusing instead on Christian hope and the dynamics of Christian living. Both look to an eternal future with God, but neither quite shares the views of many conservative Christians regarding the end of history. Borg argues tentatively that belief in Jesus’ second coming is a product of the early Church, prompted by Jesus’ resurrection and his exalted status as Lord. He can, he says, conceive of an end to the world and a final judgment, but not a “return of Christ.” If we try to imagine that, we have to imagine him returning to some place. To be very elementary, we who know the earth to be round cannot imagine Jesus returning to the whole earth at once. And the notion of a localized second coming boggles the imagination” (195). But he wishes to retain the language of the second coming as an affirmation of Jesus’ present and future lordship.
For Wright, too, the language of biblical apocalyptic is metaphorical. He understands Jesus’ language about judgment in light of his conviction that Jesus’ focus was quite directly on contemporary events. While other scholars have seen “the so-called Little Apocalypse of Mark 13 and its parallels” as concerned with the end of the world (41), Wright suggests that Jesus’ real focus was on the impending fall of Jerusalem:
Many have traditionally read Jesus’ sayings about judgment either in terms of the postmortem condemnation of unbelievers or of the eventual destruction of the space-time world. The first-century context of the language in question, however, indicates otherwise. Jesus was warning his contemporaries that if they did not follow his way, the way of peace and forgiveness, the way of the cross, the way of being the light of the world, and if they persisted in their determination to fight a desperate holy war against Rome, then Rome would destroy them, city, temple, at all, and that this would be, not an unhappy accident showing that YHWH had simply forgotten to defend them, but the sign and the means of YHWH’s judgment against his rebellious people. (41)
However, Christian hope for the future doesn’t depend on a particular reading of the apocalyptic passages in the gospels. Thus, Wright urges us to look for hope for God’s creatures beyond death and for a transformed and renewed world, and for “Jesus’ royal presence within God’s new creation” (202).
The genteel debate between Borg and Wright in the The Meaning of Jesus will introduce the reader to a variety of issues in the historical study of Jesus. It will not, of course, resolve them. Their book will encourage the reader to think clearly about the Jewish background to Jesus’ ministry, about the social and political significance of what Jesus said and did, and about the importance of thinking outside the confines of the currently popular scientistic, materialistic worldview. But it will leave numerous questions on the table. Perhaps the single most pervasive disagreement between Borg and Wright concerns the relevance of history for faith. How important is it that what we believe now is rooted in what Jesus and the early Christians saw and did and experienced? May we think of Jesus as Lord if he didn’t think of himself this way? May we think of Jesus as risen whether or not his tomb was empty? And these are not, of course, historical questions in the narrow sense; they are theological and philosophical ones.
Neither Borg nor Wright is trained primarily in philosophy or Christian doctrine, though each has obviously studied both. Those who want their theology straight may wish to consult any or all of the recent good books on Christology, including Wolfhart Pannenberg, Jesus: God and Man; John B. Cobb, Jr., Christ in a Pluralistic Age; David Brown, The Divine Trinity; Hans Frei, The Identity of Jesus Christ; William C. Placher, Jesus the Savior; and John Macquarrie, Jesus Christ in Modern Though and Christology Revisited.
Serious theological and philosophical reflection will help us make effective use of historical insights. It will aid us in understand just what significance a given historical conclusion might have for our beliefs. It is important, therefore, to read contemporary historical Jesus scholarship in tandem with serious doctrinal analysis. But our theology cannot proceed in abstraction from serious history. If we are to construct an adequate Christology for the twenty-first century, we will need to take work like that of Borg and Wright into account.
Gary Chartier is Assistant Professor of Law and Business Ethics at La Sierra University. He holds a PhD in Christian theology and ethics from the University of Cambridge (1991) and a JD from the University of California (2001). He is the author of The Analogy of Love: Divine and Human Love at the Center of Christian Theology (Exeter: Imprint Academic 2007) and of two forthcoming books: Economic Justice and Natural Law and Radicalizing Rawls.
Search
- David Salem on Reviewing the Review: A year of magical thinking edition
- Don Rhoads on Why Mathematics, Science, and Humanities (including Religion) Don’t Have a Quarrel
- PhilJ Alcide on Denouncing Sabbath Worship
- bevin on Why Mathematics, Science, and Humanities (including Religion) Don’t Have a Quarrel
- Hansen on Reviewing the Review: A year of magical thinking edition
- PhilJ Alcide on Denouncing Sabbath Worship
- Tom Zwemer on Why Mathematics, Science, and Humanities (including Religion) Don’t Have a Quarrel
- PhilJ Alcide on Denouncing Sabbath Worship
- Don Rhoads on Why Mathematics, Science, and Humanities (including Religion) Don’t Have a Quarrel
- Tom Zwemer on Why Mathematics, Science, and Humanities (including Religion) Don’t Have a Quarrel
Comments
Gary, a very excellent review that describes the book for those who haven't the time to read it.
I have just completed G.B. Caird's book "Imagery of the Bible" with an introduction from his former student, N.T. Wright. It has been extremely helpful in understanding all the literary usages in the Bible and gives meaning to many of the confusing passages.
He makes this observation:
"whatever their differences of approach, Old and New Testament scholars were agreed about one thing: that biblical man was prescientific and therefore naive, that he inhabited a mythical world, and that his intellectual development was at the stage which some of them have designated 'the mythopoeic mind.' This was the presupposition which prompted, for example, Bultmann's influential essay on dymthologising. In the opening paragraphs he summarised 'the cosmology of the New Testament', the pictorial framework within which men tried to make sense of their existence and history."
There is no reason that belief in the virgin birth should be, or needs to be a requirement for a Christian. Its origin reaches further back into pre-Christian history and was used as legal device used to give legitimacy to kings and rulers. Matthew and Luke used this story to give added impetus to their birth stories; stories that had they been true would have given Jesus a far different title.
What is important, and which John Shelby Spong speaks of so eloquently, it that the disciples BELIEVED the resurrection, but even the NT writers never assure us that it is complete bodily resurrection, but to a different state. Spong emphasizes, and I agree with him, that following Christ's teachings is a far superior evaluation of Christianity than belief in the miraculous events surrounding his birth and life and death.
A great context-setting review, Gary. Your question:
"How important is it that what we believe now is rooted in what Jesus and the early Chris-tians saw and did and experienced?" gets to the crux of the Biblical literalism debate which is generating lively comment on this site in the blog thread:http://www.spectrummagazine.org/blog/2008/06/01/would_you_swallow_this_literalism. While there are those who view literalism as problematic, others see the historical Jesus as very important. As you show, that is a division that has existed for a very long time. Would that these discussions of it could lead us to a better understanding of how Christ can transcend the differences among us. Following his example of acceptance, forgiveness and love can bring peace to our lives now in the midst of chaos.
I would second that Bonnie,"Following his example of acceptance, forgiveness and love can bring peace to our lives now in the midst of chaos."
But to do that I need to know who the real Jesus is. More than just an "example" I need a "personal" savior.
My experience with the "historical Questers" is that they find an "unsupernatural, naturalistic" Jesus described by fallible "uninspired writers" that I personally really don't need and a Jesus that is foreign to The Jesus of scripture I know.
Non the less,Thanks Gary for your very well written review.
pat
"But to do that I need to know who the real Jesus is. More than just an "example" I need a "personal" savior."
Pat, where and how do you expect to find this "real" Jesus? There is only the reports of the Gospel writers, none of who saw or talked with Jesus, and the earlier writers also had no "personal" relationship with Jesus.
There is also no secular historical writer who ever saw or talked with Jesus.
We are left with reports of reports and many of them were contrived, especially Matthew and Luke, who attempted to show that because of a magical confluence of events (none ever mentioned in any other place) that Jesus was the "promised" Messiah. They misused OT texts, wrote of an eclipse, a darkness, the curtain in the temple torn, none of which were ever documented by contemporary writers. These were written with a very strong agenda: Matthew, especially was written to confirm to the Jews that their long-awaited Messiah had come.
So, good luck in finding a historical and "real" Jesus. If you accept the belief that God is love, when you look in the eyes of your firstborn, or a baby, you will find love. You will find love wherever you look for it; you will find Jesus in the face of the poor, the abused, the impoverished, the war-stricken and more. Look in the right places and you will find him.
I am sorry Elaine but I don't find a Savior in my first born,the face of the poor, the abused, the impoverished, the war-stricken and more. I do find those needing mercy and help however and "faint images" even though fallen of our Creator.
And, I reject your "contrived" uninspired concepts of the scripture. So back to square one. There is no need to argue "in my book" because if the Bible I have is "contrived and incorrect" I do not want modern man's understanding of him. I don't need "their Jesus".
I am much more likely to reject the ability, objectivity and accuracy of the "Questers" to be able to uncover "the truth" of Jesus 2000 yrs.after the fact.
Regards,
pat
Thanks Gary. This is indeed a very good review and a great overview of the book. I found that Borg and Wright did a very good job of discussing their distinct perspectives, but like you say, it's a polite exchange, not a debate (I enjoy that). Like Bonnie, I find it quite interesting that this conversation has been going on so long--and, witness many current conversations on our site--is still going strong.
Thanks to Pat, Elaine, Daneen, and Bonnie for getting the conversation going--and for the kind words from all sides.
As long as we maintain that God really is up to something particular in history, we can't avoid asking historical questions. Our theological formulations need to be responsive to the historical evidence.
At the same time, it seems to me that we ought not to find the theological-cum-spiritual interpretation of the events of Jesus' life and the historical reconstruction of that life at odds with each other. Indeed, a great deal of the historical-Jesus scholarship during the past half-century, including that of broadly skeptical historians like Ed Sanders as much as that of more conservative scholars like Tom Wright, has underscored the existence of a hard core of evidence about Jesus regarding which we can be fairly confident.
The details may be up for grabs, but I don't think that's true about the overall shape and trajectory of Jesus' life. Of course there are disagreements, but I think you'd find widespread support for a lot of claims about Jesus (though perhaps this is more likely among the "Third Questers" like Sanders, Borg, and Wright). Theologians like Pannenberg, Cobb, and David Brown have been very effective at integrating good historical scholarship into their theological work.
So, in brief: Christian theology needs history to avoid turning into wish-fulfillment or fantasy, and it needn't be frightened of history because historical scholarship need not be seen as a foe of Christian faith.
So Gary,
"So, in brief: Christian theology needs history to avoid turning into wish-fulfillment or fantasy, and it needn't be frightened of history because historical scholarship need not be seen as a foe of Christian faith."
How am I to trust/validate those trustworthy historic writings that supposedly disagree with scripture?
I have read NT Wright's, "What St. Paul Really Said."
How does that view differ from Acts 13:38,39?
pat
Gary Wills, prolific Catholic writer has also written a book which I have read: "What Paul Meant," in which he makes these statements:
"When Paul speaks of moving beyond God's Law he is speaking of two laws laid down by God--not only the Jewish Law given to Moses, but the natural law given to Gentiles. He contrasts both laws with a single promise given to both Jews and Gentiles, the promise to Abraham that he would be the father of many nations. Jesus moves beyond both laws by being the fulfillment of the single promise."
"It cannot be repeated often enough that Paul knew of no New Testament, and no rescue but that of the promise given the Jewish people. He did not believe in a substitution of a new way to be rescued. He did believe, with Jesus, that the claims of the prophets had to be fulfilled, making a religion of the heart replace that of external observance."
We too often forget that the Lucan story of Paul's conversion, written half a century after the event, does not agree with the story told by Paul. Luke's description is far different than Paul's; i.e., Paul tells us nothing of falling to the ground, being blinded, needing an Ananias to restore his sight. Comparison between the two reveal multiple contradictions which have become conflated in our minds, just as the varying stories in the Gospels are very confusing.
I think this book literally saved my faith at a key point in my reading and thinking. I had been reading a lot of Jesus Seminar writers, particularly Crossan, and questioning everything I'd ever thought or been taught. I really wanted to know if there was an intelligent and respected Biblical scholar (as opposed to a pop-culture evangelical apologist, which was most of what people recommended when I was looking for other views) who held to a more traditional view of the gospels and could "hold his own" against the Jesus Seminar perspectives. Finding the good Bishop of Durham was literally a godsend to me because reading Wright showed me there were other perspectives than the narrow ones I'd been opposed to and the iconoclastic ones I was reading at the time.
And after I'd read a little Wright, this book introduced me to Borg as well, and even though I disagree with him on many points about Biblical literalism, etc., ... well, he's Borg. Resistance is futile; you WILL be assimilated (you can bet I never get tired of that joke). His genuine deep spirituality and love for God (as opposed to the anger of Crossan, Spong, etc) made me realize that even the most extreme liberals could be people of deep faith.
Most of all, the dialogue between Wright and Borg in The Meaning of Jesus showed me that conversations between people with different ideas about Jesus could be carried out with respect, dignity and a sense of shared faith despite disagreement.
Without the belief in the resurrection, Christianity is of only of value to mimic. The whole OT sacrificial system pointed to the need for Christ to die. His virgin birth was predicted, and is also important to Christianity and its value. To the "new Atheists", what is gained by not offering an alternative to Christ's atonement, just this life is all we have and can pass on to the next generation. Some of these "new Atheists" set up their own logic and science as what we should look to. What is gained? Paul's message of salvation and his own death in presenting Jesus is pretty powerful for those that want to do away with the miracles of Jesus and his resurrection . Thomas Jefferson tried to write his own Bible without the miracles to "humanize" Jesus. History will speak for itself, but I would say he was unsuccessful in stripping the NT of what he could not believe.
The Gospel is too important to tinker with as some wish to do. The "new Atheists" offer nothing in its place. Until they do, we should be very fearful of lightly throwing "the baby out with the bathwater". Are their enigmas, paradoxs and conundrums in the Bible? Yes! Should we jump to disbelief because of them? I think not until someone has offered a better alternative, and promise of life after death.
Without the belief in the resurrection, Christianity is of only of value to mimic. The whole OT sacrificial system pointed to the need for Christ to die. His virgin birth was predicted, and is also important to Christianity and its value. To the "new Atheists", what is gained by not offering an alternative to Christ's atonement, just this life is all we have and can pass on to the next generation. Some of these "new Atheists" set up their own logic and science as what we should look to. What is gained? Paul's message of salvation and his own death in presenting Jesus is pretty powerful for those that want to do away with the miracles of Jesus and his resurrection . Thomas Jefferson tried to write his own Bible without the miracles to "humanize" Jesus. History will speak for itself, but I would say he was unsuccessful in stripping the NT of what he could not believe.
The Gospel is too important to tinker with as some wish to do. The "new Atheists" offer nothing in its place. Until they do, we should be very fearful of lightly throwing "the baby out with the bathwater". Are their enigmas, paradoxs and conundrums in the Bible? Yes! Should we jump to disbelief because of them? I think not until someone has offered a better alternative, and promise of life after death.
It seems to me that Pat poses exactly the right question about our sources for the life of Jesus and the development of the early church: how do we assess and interpret them? This is the question that rightly puzzles us when we read ancient Jewish and Roman records of various kinds, and also when we read the gospels themselves.
I suspect that there are people with historical training reading this thread; I'm not one of them. My own background is in Christian doctrine, law, and philosophy, so I'm probably not the best person to comment on the question, How do we do history?
But I think the answer has to be, in part, that we seek to determine what happened (a deliberate reference to von Ranke, whose presence will annoy some) and why by asking how the available evidence fits together. I find census records, private correspondence, official edicts, architectural remains, and so forth, and try to make a coherent whole out of them. Sometimes disagreements among sources will require reinterpretation of one or another; in other cases, an explanation of the reasons for the disagreements will be necessary.
This isn't just a puzzle we confront when asking about extra-canonical information about the world of the first century and its relationship to the gospels; it arises with respect to the gospels themselves. We have to sort out tensions like the following: the variety in the accounts of Peter's denials; the number of Gerasene demoniacs; the difference between John's apparent three-year chronology for Jesus' ministry and the Synoptics' apparent one-year chronology; the difference between John's depiction of Jesus as explicitly articulating a high Christology, and the less dramatic portrait in the Synoptics; and so forth.
What specific kinds of problems are you thinking about, Pat, with respect to the various extra-canonical sources? Are you thinking about the kinds of general historical resources that A. N. Sherwin-White discusses in Roman Society and Roman Law (his goal is to make sense of Paul in light of information about his title topics)? Or are you thinking specifically about the non-canonical gospels? Or something else?
In Borg’s earlier works, he makes the claim that the early gospel accounts were very numerous and all anonymous. The four gospels that we find in the NT were assigned their authors by committee hundreds of years after the fact. He states this as commonly accepted fact among biblical scholars. Is there any validity to these claims? This certainly seems to differ from the version we received in academy and college.
Ron Jolliffe
ron,
It is widely accepted by New Testament scholarship that the names of the gospels were all given much later than the time of the composition of the books themselves. As the number of written gospels proliferated (see Luke 1:1-4 as evidence of this) it became necessary for those in leadership positions to control the kinds of texts they wanted read, so one of the early attempts was to proclaim that only gospels written by apostles or disciples of apostles were acceptable--and presto, every gospel got attributed to someone belonging to that group, whether Matthew, Mary, Judas, etc.
Evidence to support this later naming seems to be supported in some cases by internal evidence in the gospels themselves. Take the gospel of Matthew, for example, and compare the story of the call of "Matthew" in Matthew 9:9-13 with the earlier source story in Mark 2:13-17 as well as Luke 5:27-32, both of which call this disciple "Levi," and never Matthew, and it suggests that the name "Matthew" may have become important to this gospel now named after that disciple.
Then add to this the story of the triumphal entry in which Matthew is the only one of the four gospels to report Jesus riding on two animals for the triumphal entry (Mark, Luke, and John all specifically identify only one animal) because Jesus had to fulfill the Zechariah prophecy that he would ride on two animals, and you are again confronted with information that seems to discount the idea that the author of this gospel was an eyewitness.
This last point leads to what I think is the greatest problem of what you and I both "received in academy" about eyewitness accounts, namely, that if eyewitness is important, then we have two gospels that are named after disciples of Jesus, i.e. Matthew (if you ignore what I just wrote above) and John. That means every time there is a difference of reporting in Mark or Luke from either Matthew or John, we have to agree with the eyewitness, creating the difficulty that some "authors" in the Bible are more accurate prima facie than others.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book and found it very accessible. Even without the deep historiographical background Gary has provided here, it is clear what the stakes are for these men. I'm much more attracted to Wright--although I can't separate out whether I am more like him in my historical method or if my attraction is simply based on that fact that I'm more comfortable with his conclusions due to being a bit more conservative than Borg myself.
I find it hard to see where Borg draws the line between historical memory and historical metaphor. I don't understand why it is at all important to him that Jesus was ever an historical person. From his conclusions (and I am not too troubled by them and welcome him as a Christian brother), it seems that if the early church had just invented Jesus, it would still be a strong enough metaphor to transform Borg's life and to show him how God wants him to live. The story is compelling enough for him--the great line "I don't know if it happened this way, but I know this story is true."
I have been blessed by Borg's phraseology in the past--the idea of "fact fundamentalism" that he says both secular people (whatever that means) and conservative Christians fall into. I'm still trying to translate what that means. And as an historian I find it hard to weave into the fabric of my own work.
And speaking as an historian, I do see what I do as different from, say, literary criticism (no offense to those of you out there who do this). I don't think writing/studying history is the same as writing/studying fiction. So I'm more attracted to Wright who thinks that knowing what happened and who Jesus was in his context is important. I don't know where Borg is as an historian. As a person committed to the transforming story of Jesus, he might be okay talking about it all as metaphor.
But I guess, my sensibilities run in the line of wanting to be transformed by something that happened, even if my understanding of what happened is totally mediated by others--all historians have to have their information mediated by others who might not always give the "right" view or "exact" view of the past. We know this. We are given the tools to deal with it. I don't think it makes us "fact fundamentalists". We all understand we can only know so much about what happened....
anyway---very useful book, outstanding review. Thanks for encouraging me to read it.
Lisa, I, too, am more comfortable reading and discussing the historial context surrounding Jesus. When we realize that most of what we have in the Gospels was composed more than two generations later, there was ample time to weave magical and miraculous events very similar to the actions of pagan gods which all at that time were familiar.
Since there were no eye-witnesses to any of the things recorded, and contradictions abound, it is quite evident, IMO, that Hebrew hyperbole was a significant literary art in their writing and it was not history, but fictionalized ideas they wished to convey. Had many of the things recorded actually happened, surely contemporary writers would have mentioned them. The longer time passed from Jesus life to the written records, how many hundreds of individuals told, retold, and added to the events?
The principles of love and self-giving, and showing compassion for others, unlike the pagan gods, was a fresh and most inspirational theme. That is what one should get from studying Jesus' life, not the external and miraculous stories told to impress contemporary audiences. Modern and postmodern audiences are not swayed by such
stories, in fact dismiss all of it if it must be "bought" in toto.
Posted by: Elaine Nelson on 04 June 2008 at 9:53
"Pat, where and how do you expect to find this "real" Jesus? There is only the reports of the Gospel writers, none of who saw or talked with Jesus, and the earlier writers also had no "personal" relationship with Jesus. ... We are left with reports of reports and many of them were contrived,... "
Elaine: I don't know what else you or the others have written about this issue, since I just started reading the content of this blog. Nevertheless, I must confess that I have a hard time believeing what you have just stated. Didn't Peter and John "saw or talked with Jesus'? Don't we have their testimonies about Jesus? Did not they testify about a risen Savior?
And not only testify, but their belief was so strong, that all of Jesus' apostles preferred to die as martyrs rather than deny his resurrection. Are most people willing to die for their beliefs? Would you give your life for your beliefs, especially if you have some doubts about them. Millions of Christian martyrs would rather die than deny the resurrection!
Of the many martyrs who died because of their belief, how many saw or spoke with Jesus? There is insufficient evidence to ascertain the authors of Matthew, Mark and John, and the estimated dates of the writings would make it highly unlikely that they ever knew Jesus personally. There is consensus that Luke wrote Luke-Acts, and Paul wrote most, but not all of the epistles attributed to him.
It was common in ancient times, to attach a well-known name to many writings to give it more authenticity. Peter and John may have seen and talked with Jesus, although we cannot be certain.
Paul, of course, never did, and he is foremost proponent of Christianity and it was revealed to him through Jesus Christ. The first to see Jesus after the Resurrection were women, and they did not write about it.
Some question the ability of the disciples who were illiterate fishermen to write in such polished Greek. None of this should change the essential message of the NT which we have derived from someone who never saw him: Paul.
Posted by: Elaine Nelson on 01 July 2008 at 9:40:
"Of the many martyrs who died because of their belief, how many saw or spoke with Jesus?"
My Answer: All of Jesus' original disciples were martyrs. I hope you will agree with me that all of them did know the Lord face to face.
"There is insufficient evidence to ascertain the authors of Matthew, Mark and John, and the estimated dates of the writings would make it highly unlikely that they ever knew Jesus personally.'
My Answer: As far as my recollections goes, the church Fathers did believe that Matthew, the disciple of Jesus, was the actual author of the Gospel bearing his name. The same is true about John. It is believed by scholars that Mark was a close friend of Peter, and thus well acquainted with the facts connected with the life of Jesus. Luke is believed to be a physician who accompanied Paul in his travels.
He states in his Gospel that he researched the incidents connected with the life of Jesus very carefully. My question to you: Do historians need to have witnessed the events they report in their writings? Is it fair to impose a much higher standard on the Gospel writers than the one required from reputable historians?
"There is consensus that Luke wrote Luke-Acts, and Paul wrote most, but not all of the epistles attributed to him."
My Response: Paul wrote Romans between 56 and 58 AD. This was only a quarter of a century after Jesus' death. He was close enough to the date Jesus was crucified. The theory that Mark was the first Gospel written is not substantiated by the testimony of the church Fathers. There is enough evidence suggesting that Matthew was the first Gospel ever written, and it was directed at the Jewish Christians. According to the testimony of Origen, if my memory serves me right, a copy of his Gospel, written in Aramaic, was included in the library of Alexandria. If you need documentation, I think I can dig this out!
"Some question the ability of the disciples who were illiterate fishermen to write in such polished Greek."
My Answer: We have a man in Loma Linda who is probably the greatest SDA authority in biblical matters. His name is Bernard Taylor. I asked him about this, and his answer was that the Gospels were not written in polished classic Greek, but rather in the language of the common people. Dr. Taylor is one of the official translators of the newest English version of the Septuagint.
It all depends on whose history you agreee with.
Yes, the church fathers believed many things that were later disproved. Also, there are no original autographs and more than 5,000 manuscripts with many variances. We cannot say for certain who the writers were, and all the scholars I have consulted are almost unanimous in agreeing that Mark's was the first gospel, from which Matthew and Luke derived much of their stories.
Of interest is that the earliest NT writer, Paul, never seemed the least interested (had he not heard?) of Jesus' miraculous conception and birth; a story that both Matthew and Luke told with several contradictory versions.
The martyrs who died for their faith are largely reported from secular sources. We do not, however, have any secular report of Jesus being seen or heard, only 2nd of 3rd hand reports.
Did Jesus' parents take him to Egypt after his birth? Did Herod order the killing of all male babies? We have no secular historian who even mentions these massive murders, which seems quite unlikely if it truly affected as many as the Bible writers reported. There are far too many unanswered questions: answers that are so different as to be no answers but raising more questions.
Paul went to the block with no more evidence than is available to me. Peter went to the Cross with no more evidence than is available to me. Jesus was called more of a fake in His day than in mine.
The bottom-line as an old sinner like me, where does one go?
If I am wrong, it won't be the first nor the worst mistake I have made. Therefore, my hope, my faith, my assurance, my love and my life are based upon nothing less than Jesus' blood and Righteousness. He lives, Thank God Almighty, He lives. Tom
Posted by: Elaine Nelson on 02 July 2008 at 1:46:
"It all depends on whose history you agreee with."
My Answer: I prefer to trust the testimony of the early Christian writers, because they were much closer to the events. I tend to discount the opinions of agnostics and those determined to discredit the authenticity of biblical writers. Here is the testimony of some of the authorities I prefer to trust:
"The early Christian writers assert that St. Matthew wrote a Gospel in Hebrew; this Hebrew Gospel has, however, entirely disappeared, and the Gospel which we have, and from which ecclesiastical writers borrow quotations as coming from the Gospel of Matthew, is in Greek.
According to Eusebius (Hist. eccl., 111, xxxix, 16), Papias said that Matthew collected (synetaxato; or, according to two manuscripts, synegraphato, composed) ta logia (the oracles or maxims of Jesus) in the Hebrew (Aramaic) language, and that each one translated them as best he could.
St. Irenæus (Adv. Haer., III, i, 2) affirms that Matthew published among the Hebrews a Gospel which he wrote in their own language. Eusebius (Hist. eccl., V, x, 3) says that, in India, Pantænus found the Gospel according to St. Matthew written in the Hebrew language, the Apostle Bartholomew having left it there.
Eusebius tells us that Origen, in his first book on the Gospel of St. Matthew, states that he has learned from tradition that the First Gospel was written by Matthew, who, having composed it in Hebrew, published it for the converts from Judaism. According to Eusebius (Hist. eccl., III, xxiv, 6), Matthew preached first to the Hebrews and, when obliged to go to other countries, gave them his Gospel written in his native tongue.
St. Jerome has repeatedly declared that Matthew wrote his Gospel in Hebrew ("Ad Damasum", xx; "Ad Hedib.", iv), but says that it is not known with certainty who translated it into Greek.
St. Cyril of Jerusalem, St. Gregory of Nazianzus, St. Epiphanius, St. John Chrysostom, St. Augustine, etc., and all the commentators of the Middle Ages repeat that Matthew wrote his Gospel in Hebrew.
St. Jerome uses Matthew's Hebrew text several times to solve difficulties of interpretation, which proves that he had it at hand. Pantænus also had it, as, according to St. Jerome ("De Viris Ill.", xxxvi), he brought it back to Alexandria.
However all ecclesiastical writers assert that Matthew wrote his Gospel in Hebrew, and, by quoting the Greek Gospel and ascribing it to Matthew, thereby affirm it to be a translation of the Hebrew Gospel.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10057a.htm "
*********
Papias (Eusebius, H.E. 3.39.16)
"Matthew collected the oracles (ta logia) in the Hebrew language, and each interpreted them as best he could."
Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. 3.1.1
"Matthew also issued a written Gospel among the Hebrews n their own dialect while Peter and Paul were preaching at Rome and laying the foundations of the church."
Origen (Eusebius, H.E. 6.25.4)
"As having learnt by tradition concerning the four Gospels, which alone are unquestionable in the Church of God under heaven, that first was written according to Matthew, who was once a tax collector but afterwards an apostle of Jesus Christ, who published it for those who from Judaism came to believe, composed as it was in the Hebrew language."
Eusebius, H.E. 3.24.6
"Matthew had first preached to Hebrews, and when he was on the point of going to others he transmitted in writing in his native language the Gospel according to himself, and thus supplied by writing the lack of his own presence to those from whom he was sent."
Epiphanius (ca. 315-403), bishop of Salamis, refers to a gospel used by the Ebionites (Panarion 30. 13.1-30.22.4). He says it is Matthew, called "According to the Hebrews" by them, but says it is corrupt and mutilated. He says Matthew issued his Gospel in Hebrew letters. He quotes from this Ebionite Gospel seven times. These quotations appear to come not from Matthew but from some harmonized account of the canonical Gospels.
Jerome also asserts that Matthew wrote in the Hebrew language (Epist. 20.5), and he refers to a Hebrew Matthew and a Gospel of the Hebrews-unclear if they are the same. He also quotes from the Gospel used by the Nazoreans and the Ebionites, which he says he has recently translated from Hebrew to Greek (in Matth. 12.13).
http://www.religiousstudies.uncc.edu/JDTABOR/shemtovweb.html
*********
As to the time of its composition, there is little in the Gospel itself to indicate. It was evidently written before the destruction of Jerusalem (Matt. 24), and some time after the events it records. The probability is that it was written between the years A.D. 60 and 65.
http://www.christiananswers.net/dictionary/matthewgospelaccording.html
Of course, you everybody is free to trust their chosen authorities!
A servant is known by his master's absence.
A silent tongue and true heart are the most admirable things on earth.
A servant is known by his master's absence.
Post new comment