1995 - what you see is what you get

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WHAT YOU SEE IS WHAT YOU GET:Context and Content in Current Researchon the Historical JesusPAULAFREDRIKSEN

century ago, scholarship on the historical Jesus had polarizedaround two distinct options. To the one side stood the ethicalA onstructions of the liberal Protestants. Optimistic about the useof history in service of theology, endlessly producing studies of the life ofJesus to anchor their religious formulations, these scholars held thatJesus basic message centered on preaching, in Harnacks famous for-mula, the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man.To the other side stood scholars less optimistic-indeed, pessimistic-about the Gospels servicability as witnesses to Jesus. The erosion ofscholarly confidence in the Gospels historical adequacy can be plottedalong a trajectory that passes from Lasings publication of the Reimarusessays in the late eighteenth century to Weisss book on Jesus Proclama-tion ofthe Kingdom of God in the late nineteenth century. This trajectoryterminated in the conclusion, summed up by Weiss and energeticallyextended by Schweitzer, that the kingdom Jesus preached was thekingdom anticipated by his first-century Jewish contemporaries: an apoca-lyptic event, centered on a new or renewed Jerusalem, inaugurated by themessiah, and established by God.Where are we, a hundred years later? Jesus the charismatic healer andexistential religious thinker, Jesus the wandering cynic sage, Jesus thesocial revolutionary, Jesus the prophet of the impending end of days-allof these versions of Jesus populate the pages of the most recent books, allpresented with the same calm authority, all constructed through appealsto the same data. If this is progress, we might wish for less of it.

Paula Fredriksen is the William Goodwin Aurelio Professor of the Appreciation ofScripture at Boston University. She delivered an earlier version of this essay at the 1994Professional Meeting of the AAR/SBL as the final plenary lecture in the series Frontiersin Biblical Scholarship, sponsored by the Endowment for Biblical Research, the AmericanAcademy of Religion, the American Schools of Oriental Research, and the Society ofBiblical Literature.75

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76 Theology TodayOur intellectual circumstances differ greatly from those of our nine-

teenth-century counterparts. Their quests for Jesus stood within a contextmuch more self-consciously theological. We are the beneficiaries of thetransfer of New Testament studies into the critical and comparative worldof the liberal arts. We have enormous freedom and variety in ourmethodological choices-literary criticism, social anthropology, archaeol-ogy. We know more about ancient Christianity and Judaism than they did,thanks to the stunning manuscript finds in Egypt and the Judaean desert,and we have reaped a harvest from Jewish Studies, which has producedimportant insights into the rich varieties of late Second Temple Judaism,the historical matrix of both Jesus and the early church.

Fundamentally and formally, however, not much has changed; this, inany case, is what I shall argue here. Jesus the apocalyptic Jew-the Jesusof Weiss and Schweitzer-remains for many New Testament scholars anawkward and unwelcomed stranger. And the various Jesuses they pitagainst him all come down to some form or other of the ethical Jesus,conceived no longer as a nineteenth-century liberal but as his twentieth-century avatar: radically egalitarian, anti-elitist, anti-nationalist, anti-racialist, anti-patriarchal.

Yesus the apocalyptic Jew remains fo r many New Testamentscholars an awkward and unwelcome stranger.

I propose to review several recent interpretations of Jesus, all pub-lished since 1985: those of E.P. Sanders, Burton Mack, John DominicCrossan, Marcus Borg, and N.T. Wright. I shall also offer a new reconstruc-tion of the events surrounding Jesus death that differs from my ownearlier views. But, before filling in all the various backgrounds andportraits, we should begin by stretching our canvas over the familiarnarrative frame. This frame derives primarily from New Testamentmaterial: the four Gospels, Pauls letters, and Acts.

JESUS: NARRATIVEND CONTEXTJesus of Nazareth was probably born in the final years of the reign of

Herod the Great. He died in Jerusalem when Caiaphas was High Priestand Pilate the Roman prefect. His active ministry began sometime afterhis encounter with John the Baptist, who was, himself, a prophet ofimpending apocalyptic redemption. Jesus taught, traveled, and healedprimarily in the lower Galilee. He called twelve disciples. He ate withsinners. He exorcised demons, healed the sick, and much of his teaching,mediated frequently through parables, concerned the kingdom of God.

However long his public teaching lasted-one year according to Mark,perhaps three according to John-it ended not in the Galilee but inJerusalem, where Jesus journeyed for Passover. On or just before Pass-



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78 Theology TodayTHEAPOCALYPTICESUS

I turn first to the apocalyptic Jesus. His academic genealogy runs fromWeiss and Schweitzer to, recently and most exhaustively, E. P. Sanders;and I place myself in this stemma. The operative context for this Jesus isJewish restoration eschatology. Restoration eschatology describes a par-ticular biblical perspective on God and history, namely, that God is good,that he is in control of history, and that he will not countenance evilindefinitely. Ultimately, God will destroy evil, and, if one can read thesigns of the times, one can know when.2

Certain key elements appear variously, and in various combinations, inthose writings that describe the End. Some mention a cosmic battlebetween good and evil; others, the resurrection of the dead, or, perhaps,only of the righteous. Some attribute a major role to a messiah or (as atQumran) several messiahs. More frequently, an archangel or God himselfdirects the endtime scenario. Jerusalem is restored and made beautiful;the Temple is rebuilt, renewed, or enlarged; the twelve tribes are gath-ered in from exile. In some, Gentiles are made subject to Israel. In others,Gentiles cease worshiping their idols, acknowledge the God of Jacob, andworship with Israel in the New Jerusalem. Righteousness pours down likewaters; social and natural harmony pervade.

It is within this tradition that Sanders constructed his Jesus. He beganby stating, as a matter of principle, that any historical reconstruction mustrealistically anchor Jesus within first-century Judaism, broadly conceived.The key theological points are monotheism, election, law, repentance,and forgiveness. The key points of praxis are circumcision, food laws, theSabbath, purity, cult, and prayer. Further (in part to avoid the bog ofindecision surrounding Jesus sayings-which are authentic and whichare not?) Sanders proceeded from a scaffolding of Jesus deeds, derivedfrom the Gospel narrative. All these strategies combined to highlight thedeed with which Sanders began his reconstruction: Jesus action in theTemple.3

The Gospel narrative emphasized Jesusspeech: Is it not written, Myhouse shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations? But you havemade it a den of robber^. ^ Sanders focused, rather, on Jesus action,

2 0 n he major themes of Jewish restoration theology, see E.P . Sanders, Jesus and Juda ism(Philade lphia: Fortress, 1985), pp. 77-119,222-241 (a reconstruction of Jesus views withinthis perspective); E. Schiirer-G. Vermes et al., History ofthe Jewish People in &A ge ofJesu sChrist, 3 vols. (Ed inburg h: 1973-86), 2:514-546; and P. Fredrik sen , From Jesus to Christ. TheOrigins oft he New Testament Images ofJesus (New Ha ven: Yale U niversity Press, 1988), pp.3Sanders, Jesus and Judaism, pp. 1-58, which includes a clear stateme nt of the historicalproblems and method of proceeding; see also pp. 61-76, on Jesus an d the T emple; an d pp.

77-119 on the development of the context of restoration eschatology in general andtraditions concerning a new or restored T emple in particular. These ideas, lessprogrammati-cally, likewise conto ur Sanders popu lar re prise of his project, The Historical Figure ofJesus(Harmon dsworth: Penguin Press, 1993), chs. 6,7 , and 16. See also the excellent review essayon this latte r book an d Sanders project generally by Heikki Raisanen, Jesus in Context,Reviews in Religion and Theology (1994), pp. 9-18.

77-86.

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80 Theology Todayhope. Judgment language is mobilized against those who have ears but donot hear. Finally, a still later layer, composed post-70, depicts a scribalJesus who quotes Scripture and grieves over Jerusalem.

Q1 is the clue to Jesus. Comprised of pithy sayings and aphoristic socialcritique, it most resembles in form and content the wit and wisdom of thewandering Cynic sage. This insight, in turn, coheres with Jesus knownmodu s operandi and his call to followers: Live on the road; be homeless;travel light-again like the Cynic. Cynics were urban creatures, andGalilee was urban, so this is not impossible. Thus, Jesus, a radicalindividual in the mode of a Cynic philosopher, addressed other individu-als, inviting them through his subversive wit to live as he did. Jesus had nospecifically Jewish concerns; his interest, rather, was social e~ periment.~His kingdom is most like the Cynic kingdom: a question of attitude, ofknowing how to remain confident in the midst of confusion.1 The latermiracle traditions about Jesus, in fact, are restated reminiscencesof thesocially transformative power of his presence. Finally, a telling pointof coincidence: Philosophical cynicism, like early Christianity, taught thatthe true disciple must be prepared to follow his master into death.12

According to this reconstruction, the Temple incident never oc-curred.13 The story is Marks fiction, a measure of the evangelistsanti-Judaism. I cannot reasonably complain that this Cynic Jesus makesno sense out of the other data we have from the Gospels-his going toJerusalem for Passover, the issues surrounding his crucifixion, the tradi-tions about resurrection, and so on-because, on this theory, these, too,are heavily overlaid or simply created by Mark. Jesus must have gone [toJerusalem] on some occasion, most probably during a pilgrimage season,was associated with a demonstration, and was killed. . . [He] need noteven have been the instigator of such a tumult. There is nothing in earlytraditions about him that would indicate a motivationfor doing so.14Thisreconstruction of Jesus, in other words, does not rely on characterizationsof early first-century Judaism, because Judaism is not the context thatcounts to explain his teachings and actions.

9The Cynics self-understanding must be taken seriously as tha t which many must haveexpected of Jesus. [Jesus] them es and topics ar e much closer to Cynic idiom than tothose characteristic for public Jewish piety. One seeks in vain a direct engagement withspecifically Jewish co ncer ns, M ack, Murk, p. 73.OIbid.l Th e [miracle] stories were a rem inder abou t the effect Jesus had upon people a s somerem emb ered him. They give th e impression that Jesus was the source of a divine powe rcapable of effecting radical human transformations. . Th e stories suggest tha t Jesus wasable to set something in motion that enabled people to see, talk, walk, eat, andfunction freely within a transformed ethos, Mack, Murk, p. 76.%eeley, Jesus De ath in Q Deconstmcting The New Testament, pp. 162-165.13Mack,Murk, pp. 242f., 288-296.14Zbid.p. 89. H e continues, [Jesus] may, of course, have been trying out a few ideas ab outthe Kingdom of G od away from home. . O ne d are not overly drama tize, however, thinkingthe spotlight must have fallen on Jesus as the gospels have it. Only his followers took no te,and then, not all of them.



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Contat and Content 81Many of the interpretations fundamental to this reconstruction-archaeological da ta as testimony t o a hellenized Galilee a nd the assign-ment of red actio nal levels an d social worlds to Q-are, in fac t, extremelycontr0versia1.l~ will note h er e simply th at th e Cynic hypothesis leaves atremendou s am ount to accident, not least of all Jesus death.16 It allowsno important connection between Jesus and his native religion andculture an d no ne between him and t he religion to which his movementeventually gave rise. This is minimalist history. And it requires muchmore elaborate theo ries to explain where all the rest of Christian tradi-tion comes from.

JESUS, THE WANDERING JEWISH CYNICI turn now to a refined version of the same thesis: Jesus was awand ering Jewish Cynic. Jo hn D ominic Crossan introdu ced this figure inThe Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant, andpresented him again, in more pop ular form a nd with fu rthe r refinements,in Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography. 8 Unlike Mack and Seeley, Crossantakes seriously both th e sayings ma terial in Q and t he narrative m aterialin M ark. Thus, Jesus began his care er after contact with Joh n t he Baptist,who was an apocalyptic prophet, and, for a while, Jesus himself mighthave been so convinced. But he became disillusioned with that messageafte r Johns de ath. Th en, Jesus, finding his own voice, began to speak ofGo d not as imminent apocalypse, but as present healing.19 H e took to

the road, speaking witty aphorisms, eating with peasan t strangers, perform-ing miracles, exercising compassion, embodying through this medium amessage of unb roke red egalitarianism an d radical commensality. All thisagainst Jewish purity regulations, Mediterranean patronage structuresan d civilizations timeless inclina tion to d raw lines.20I5For a different cultural construal of the archaeological (and other) data, see SeanFreyne, Galilee, Jesus, and the G ospels (Fortress: Philadelphia, 1988); on the difficulty ofmatching social reconstruction to archaeological evidence, James F. Strange, First-Century Galilee from Archaeology and from Texts, S B L Seminar Papers (Atlanta: Scholars

Press, 1994),pp. 81-90; also, in the same volume, Richard A. Horsley, The Historical Jesusand the Archaeology of Galilee: Questions from Historical Jesus Research to Archaeolo-gists, pp. 91-135; Horsley, Wisdom Justified by all her Children: Examining AllegedlyDisparate Traditions in Q, pp. 733-751, a critical look at recent redactional theories andanalytical categories applied to Q.I0There is a friendly joke circulating among Jesus scholars: Burton Macks Jesus waskilled in a car accident on a freeway in Los Angeles. The point: for Mack, there is nosignificant connection between what Jesus was like and the fact that he was executed. Hisdeath was, in an important sense, accidental, Marcus J. Borg, Portraits of Jesus inContemporary North American Scholarship, Jesus in Contemporary Scholarship (TrinityPress International: Valley Forge, 1994), pp. 1 8 4 3 at p. 38, n. 28; the chapter reprints hisarticle by the same title for Harvard Theological Review, 84 (1991), pp. 1-22.John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Peasant (SanFrancisco: Harper Collins, 1991).ee note 1 above.Crossan, Historical Jesus, p. xii. He further developes his conjecture about Jesus*Crossan, esus:A Revolutionary Biography, p. 196.post-Johannine lapse from apocalyptic on pp. 237f.



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82 Theology TodayThis Jesus does not look particularly Jewish, fighting, as he did, the

inequities of peasant culture in general.21But, indeed, he was Jewish inthat his message was less individual and more communally-oriented thanthat of regular (Gentile) Cynics, who operated in cities. Jesus as Jewishpeasant Cynic worked the houses and hamlets, moving through apeasant society thick with resentments and unrest,22 eaching out not justto the poor but to the destitute. He taught a sapiential kingdom, one thatwas present here and now in the quality of peoples relations with eachother.23His eating with sinners and touching the sick shattered the socialboundaries erected by Jewish purity regulations, which directed Jewstoward that great brokerage center in Jerusalem, the Temple.24But Jesusignored these ritual laws, which of course, was to subvert them.25Thus,Jesus was the Temples functional opponent, alternative, and substi-t ~ t e . ~ ~

This opposition to the Temple sharpens in Jesus: A RevolutionaryBiography.Here Jesus message is the same, but this time, when he gets toJerusalem for Passover, the spiritual and economic egalitarianism [Je-sus] preached in Galilee exploded in indignation at the Temple as theseat and symbol of all that was nonegalitarian, patronal, and evenoppressive on both the religious and political Confronted . . .

Crossans Jesus does not look particularly Jewish,fighting, as hedid , the inequitiesofpeasant culture in general.

with the Temples rich magnificence, Jesus overturned the tables in itscourtyard. This was an act of symbolic import. What did it symbolize?Destruction. Of what? The Temples religious function. It seems clearthat Jesus . . symbolically destroyed its perfectly legitimate brokeragefunction in the name of the unbrokered Kingdom of God.28This act inturn led immediately to his arrest and crucifixion. He is killed by religio-political agreement-some combination (Crossan is vague here) of thepriests and Pilate.

21Crossan,Historical Jesus, p. 263, which moves from first-century Judaean peasants toEur ope to Southeast Asia; similarly Crossan, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, pp. 71-74,which ends on a quotation, used also in the larger book, from Hobsbaums work onnineteenth-century Sicilian bandits.22Crossan,Historical Jesus, p. 100.23Seeesp. ch. 12, Kingdom and Wisdom, an d ch. 13, Miracle and Meal, in Historical241bid.,p. 323.251bid.,p. 263.=Ibid., p. 355. See also, Ch. 14, John and Jesus, w here baptism, healing, and magic all27Crossan, esus:A Revolutionary Biography, p. 133.=Ibid., p. 197; see also, p. 133.

Jesus, for Crossans non-apoca lyptic interpretatio n of the evang elical kingdom -motif.

cast negative aspersions, b e they explicit or implicit, on the Te mp le cult, p. 235.



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Context and Content 83This Jesus lives in two first-century Jewish contexts. The first is with

Jewish peasants. This society, reconstructed through an appeal to histori-cal sociology and social anthropology (Lenski, Hobsbawm, Wilson, and soon), turns out to be only incidently Jewish. Jesus operative context isgeneric Mediterranean peasant society. I quote Crossan: Such egalitari-anism [as the type preached and practiced by Jesus] stems not only frompeasant Judaism but, even more deeply, from peasant society sMagic and meal or miracle and table-Jesus program, as Crossandefines it-is pointed directly and deliberately at . the very heart ofancient Mediterranean society.3o ewish religion itself, argues Crossan,thus made no essential difference in Jewish peasant behavior. Im surethat the poor Romans (and the Seleucids before them) would havewished that it were so.

The second Jewish context, the one that matters most for Crossansunderstanding of Jesus behavior, is purity within Temple Judaism,the opposite of what Jesus stands for. He is egalitarian; this Judaism ishierarchical and patriarchal. He is inclusive; it is exclusive. He is liberat-ing; it is oppressive. He stands for unbrokered religion; it is theSalomon Brothers of first-century religion.31 This definition of Judaism,much as the picture of Galilees grinding poverty, seems generated partlyby the socio-anthropological method32 and partly by the necessities ofCrossans plot: Purity-Judaism provides his Jesus with some ideologicaltraction.

It also explains the growth of the later church. Christianity took overthe inclusive missionary traditions of Hellenistic Judaism and enrichedthem with the enabling vision and abiding presence of Jesus.33 TheJewish wars against Rome in 66, 115, and 132,however, facilitated themove from levitical to rabbinical Judaism, and also the ascendancy ofexclusive over inclusive Judaism.34Christians were inclusive; rabbinicalJews were exclusive.35Both religions, Crossan assures us, are or were

291bid., . 263.3uIbid., . 304.31Cf.Historical Jesus, p. 360, quoted above; similarly Jesus: Revolutionary Biography, p.133.32Cf., or a different construal of the same evidence, Freyne, Galilee, p. 28 (on the dangerof using social models to generate sociological facts about first-century Galilee); p. 39 (thegood health of the Galilean economy); pp. 155-175 (more on Galilean economics); alsoDavid Adan-Bayewitz, Common Pottery in Roman Galilee:A Study of Local Trade (Ramat-Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 1993), especially ch. 11. Jim Strange notes that fromarchaeological survey s in Galilee it is possible to posit an oth er dimension of social reality. Itseems that the re a re mo re farmers on small plots of land than those plots will suppo rt. Thissuggests that th e sm all land ow ner had to work for wages for somebody else at least part ofthe time, or else develop a specialty on the side which could be marketed. Thus the simpledesignation Peasant or this social stratum s misleading since these peop le appear to have also

been artisans and small entrepreneurs as well as agricultural laborers. (my emphasis).First-Ce ntury Galilee, p. 89. Lenskis mode l might not spea k to this more varigated so cialpicture.33Crossan, esus: Revolutionary Biography, p. 423.341bid., . 421.35Crossan seems to envisage a market comp etition, wherein inclusive Christiansoutsold exclusive Jews in the race to convert the empire: D id Jud aism give too little inby guest on November 29, 2011ttj.sagepub.comDownloaded from


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84 Theology Todayequally valid: I insist once more that in linking exclusive Judaism withrabbinical Judaism and inclusive Judaism with early Christianity I am notmaking a comparison perjorative in either dire~tion.~~ut saying thisdoes not make it so and, clearly, after so many hundreds of pagesstirringly depicting a Jesus who struggles for social and sexual equality,Crossans preference is unambiguous, emphatic, and clear. Indeed, whatright-thinking person among us would champion a religion of sexism,hierarchy, and exclusion?

What about some of the other items of the gospel tradition? Where doJesus miracles, exorcisms and healings, and his proclamation of theKingdom come from? Here we have the definite pay-off of Crossansinterpretation: Christianity without embarrassment. The Kingdom lan-guage, as Ive mentioned, refers to the here-and-now; its actually aboutrelationships. The miracles and exorcisms are really about shatteringsocial boundaries. Jesus doesnt heal in any crude literal way; rather, herefuses to accept the diseases ritual uncleanliness and social ostraciza-tion. Jesus heals the illness [that is, social rejection] without curing thedisease in a way subversive to the established procedures of hissociety.37 llness is really about ostracism, and demonic possession aboutcolonial op pr es ~ io n. ~~vidently the only demons this Jesus can exorcizeare our own.

Evidently the only demons Crossans Jesus can exorcize are ourown.The empty tomb, the resurrection, what about these? In his first book,

Crossan proposed Nobody knew what happened to Jesus body. . Withregard to the body of Jesus, by Easter Sunday morning, those who careddid not know where it was, and those who knew did not care.39 Theresurrection stories are a kind of theological hindsight about Jesussignificance. In the Revolutionary Biography Crossan expands this idea ina haunting chapter, The Dogs Beneath the Cross. Roman crucifixionfailing to convert the Roman Empire? Did Christianity give too much in succeeding?(Crossan, Historical Jesus p. 423; for his entire discussionof missions , pp. 41-26). There islittle evidence that Judaism of any sort, whether Hellenistic or not, ever established missionsto Gentiles; and Crossan is led astray here in part by his da ted secondary sources . Se e nowShaye J.D. Cohen, Crossing the Boundary and Becoming a Jew, Harvard TheologicalReview 82 (1989), pp. 13-33 and Was Judaism in Antiquity a Missionary Relig ion?,JewishAssimilation Acculturation and Accomodation: Past Traditions Current Issues and FutureProspects edited by M. Mor (1992), pp. 14-23; P . Fredriksen,Judaism, the Circumcision ofGentiles, and Apocalyptic Hop e: Another Look at Galations 1 and 2, Journal for Theologi-cal Studies 42 (1991) pp. 532-564; E. Will and C . Orrieux,Prosilytisme uif?Lhistoire dunerreur (Paris 1992); and Martin Goodman, Mission and Conversion. Proselytizing in theReligious History of the Roman Empire (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1994).36Crossan,Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography p. 422.371bid. . 82.3gIbid. . 91.39Crossan,Historical Jesus p. 394.



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Conta t and Content 85was state terrorism; its function was to deter resistance to revolt . andthe body was usually left on the cross to be consumed by wild beasts. Nowonder we have found only one body [the Givat ha-Mivtar skeleton ofYehochanan] from all the thousands crucified around Jerusalem in thatsingle century. Remember those dogs. And if you seek the heart ofdarkness, follow the dogs.40

I honor this kind of effort. It takes a stand for divine consistency andagainst historical malfeasance (Crossans excellent phrase). Treatingsupernatural claims as historical data is cheating, unless we are willing tohonor all supernatural claims as historical. So Crossan translates theseclaims into more rational terms: metaphor, guilty revision. Whether suchtranslations are persuasive is another issue. Jesus healing miracles andexorcisms can, of course, be explained in other ways, such as by an appealto psychosomatic healing, auto-suggestion, and other such phenomenawe are familiar with today. I incline to see Jesus as that kind of healer,rather than as someone who regards disease as a social metaphor butchanges nothing. For one thing, I doubt many afflicted peasants wouldhave flocked to him for a cure and returned home satisfied with a

But the resurrection is something else. The movement stands or fallswith it, and I cannot imagine so many people in the first generationchanging their lives so radically without taking them at their word. Theywere convinced that Jesus had risen from the dead. If they just thoughtthat he had died but his t r u t f i e n t marching on, they could have saidthat. But they didnt; they spoke of resurrection. Please read me correctly:I am not saying that Jesus really rose from the dead because his disciplessaid that he did. I am saying that they really thought he had.

Crossans dogs account for the empty tomb. Its a gripping, horrifying,and powerful image. The resurrection stories as a kind of creativeaphasia, however, I find much less compelling. Those who had originallyexperienced divine power through his vision and his example continuedto do so after his death. They talked eventually not just of continuedaffection. . but of resurrection. They tried to express what they meant bytelling stories such as the supper at Emmaus. Its symbolism is obvious,as is the metaphoric condensation of the first years of Christian thoughtand practice into one parabolic afternoon. Incapable, for whateverreasons, of saying simply Jesus died, but I still believe and live accordingto what he died for, the early community constructed narrative meta-phors whose import was exclusively existential, not historical. Emmausnever happened. Emmaus always

Crossan,Jesus:A Revolutionary Biography, p. 127.41Cf.,on healing miracles, Sanders, Jesus and Judaism, pp. 157-173; on the relation ofhealing to religious authority within Judaism, G eza Verm es, Jesus the Jew (Philadelphia:Fortress, 1981 ), pp. 86-98. Ancient texts-pagan, Jewish, and Christian-depict too manymiracle-workers and healers for us to reasonably conjecture that all such were actuallydisguised reports of social critique.42Crossan, esus:A Revolutionary Bwgraphy, p. 197.by guest on November 29, 2011ttj.sagepub.comDownloaded from


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86 Theology TodayJESUS, THE ANTI-NATIONALIST

My fourth and final example of Jesus in current research draws on twosources: Marcus Borgs collection of essays,Jesus in Contem porary Schol-a r ~ h i p , ~ ~nd N. T. Wrights 1992publication, The New Testament and thePeople of God.44Wrights book is the first of a projected five-volume study,and he has kindly shared with me the next 350 pages of typescriptdestined for volume two,Jesus and the Victoryof Go d . These two scholarsrespond to and react against the three portraits of Jesus weve alreadyexamined, and each approves the work of the other. Ive christened theircreation the anti-nationalist Jesus.

I start with Borg. His essays urge three major points: First, Jesus usedkingdom-language, but not eschatologically. Second, Jesus was a teacherof wisdom who practiced inclusive table fellowship, open commensal-ity. Third, first-century Palestine was a purity society.

This purity system, centered on the Temple, had dominated Israelsince the exile.45At the top of this society were the purity elite: largeland-holding high priestly families. Just below them came their retainers(this analytical language draws again on Lenski)-scribes, lawyers, andPharisees-whose interests coincided with those of the elite.46At thebottom of the heap came the peasants: degraded, expendable, andgenerally not only impoverished but also impure.47

Enter Jesus. He does not like this system. Conflicts about issues ofpurity constitute one of the central strands of the Jesus tr a di t i ~n . ~ ~esuswas a social prophet, engaged in radical social criticism, and, for thisreason, he threatened Jerusalem, the home of these ruling elites. Thehealings and exorcisms-lepers, demoniacs, tombs-show Jesus shatter-ing purity taboos.49His use of kingdom language was part of hisworld-subverting wisdom. He did not intend it eschatologically. Jesuskingdom, the goal of his mission, was the formation of a contrastsociety or an alternative community seeking to live in history underthe kingship of God.50 Thus, while Palestine practiced the politics ofpurity, Jesus preached and lived the politics of compa~sion.~~

One might think, what with all the getting, spending, purifying, andsacrificing going on during the high holidays, that Jesus wouldnt becaught dead in Jerusalem at Passover. But he went because he had a plan.With Sanders, Borg holds that Jesus caused an incident in the Temple,and, again with Sanders, he agrees that this act was symbolic, but not ofdestruction or replacement. On that reading, Borg rightly observes, Jesus

43MarcusBorg, Jesus in C ontem porary Scholarship (Valley Forge: Trinity Press, 1994).44N.T.Wright, The New Testament and the People of God (Minnea polis: Fortress,1992).45Borg, esus in Contemporary Scholarship, p. 109.&Ibid., p. 110.411bid.@Ibid.,p. 111.491bid., . 123,n.51.solbid.,p. 61.511bid., . 26.



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Context and Content 87would not be indicting the Temple itself.52But given what the Templestood for, how could he not? The overturned tables express a mixture ofanger, protest, and indictment, a repudiation of what the Temple hadbecome: the center of a purity system that was also a system of economicand political oppr e~ si on . ~~

Wright picks up this picture and expands it. The Temple was at thedark heart of the purity system. Defilement could not only separatesomeone from communal life, it also meant dissociation from the peopleof the covenant god.54The only way to attain forgiveness-and hereWright seems to say that impurity requires forgiveness as opposed topurification-was to go to the Temple and perform rituals and worship.55

Beyond ritual purity, Judaism was also focused on racial purity, andhad been ever since the return from Babylon. Who was a pure-bred Jew?Works especially from the Roman period dwelled on race as the criterionof belonging to the true people, and this racialist emphasis was particu-larly instantiated in the Temple, which forbade entrance to Gentiles pastthe outer

Finally, the Temple was the site of animal sacrifices. We know beyonda shadow of a doubt that most Jews took part in the sacrificial system, butwe do not know why. . Was there an inner ra ti ~n al e? ~ right detectsa clue to a sub- or semi-consciousmeaning: If the Exile itself was seenas death and therefore the return from exile as a resurrection, hen itis not a long step to see the death of Israel as in some sense sacrificial.Exile itself is to be understood as a ~acrifice.~~acrifices were thus astrange sort of historical and existential metaphor, the dramatic reenact-ment of the movement of judgment and s a l v a t i ~ n . ~ ~

First-century Jews, it turns out, had an excellent sense of the possibili-ties of metaphor, because this is also how they understood apocalypticlanguage, in particular of the coming kingdom. They knew that suchwords did not refer to the end of the space-time universe. There isabundant evidence that they . knew a good metaphor when they sawone.60 t is wrong to think that Jews took mythological language literally.Such language was part of a complex metaphor system that served toinvest history with theological significance.61Jesus sought to reform his native religion, and he had his work cut outfor him. Against a tradition that excluded sick people as ritually uncleanand, thus, cut off from the people of God, Jesus went out to the sick.62

521bid., . 113.531bid.,p. 115.54Wright,The New Testam ent and the People of G o d , p. 225.551bid.5hIbid., p. 230-232.571bid.,p. 274.5nIbid., . 276.591bid.601bid.,p. 333.611bid., . 424.62Wright, esus and the Victoryof G o d , manuscript page 182.



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88 Theology TodayWhereas other Jews had assumed that wealth was a sign of Yahwehsfavor,63 esus welcomed precisely the poor and the outcast. This was thesign of the real return from exile, the new age, the resurrection cominginto being.@ n brief, Jesus also knew a good metaphor when he saw one,and this is how he used kingdom language, devastatingly misread by laterhistorians as literal apocalyptic.

Obsessed with purity and ex~lusiveness,~~ribing and wheedling Godwith almsgiving, prayer, and Israel had made herself as unattrac-tive as p0ssible.6~ esus summoned Israel away from the rules of Deuter-onomy, which in his view had been part of only a temporary phase in thepurposes of Yahweh: Now, the true people of God can be demarcatedby the state of their hearts, not by taboos.68By coming to Jesus, peoplecould get what they previously had to go to the Temple for: f0rgi~enes. s.~ ~In other words, Jesus was inaugurating a way of life that has no furtherneed of the Temple.70But more than purity, more than sacrificial cult (however metaphori-cally understood), the Temple was also the center and symbol of Juda-isms violent nati ~na li sm , ~~nd this at last gives us our key to Jesusmission and message. Jesus called his contemporaries to repent ofexclusiveness, to repent of the purity obsessions, and, perhaps most of all,to repent of their violent nationalism. People had to change theirlife-~tyle,~nd if the people did not give up their militant confrontationwith Rome and follow Jesus radical alternative vision of the kingdom,then Israels time was up.73 Throughout his public career, Jesus told astory in which the judgment usually associated with YHWHs actionagainst the pagan nations would fall upon those Jews who were refusingto follow in the way that he was holding out to them.74

Thus, at Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem to confront the Temple.Moreover, he pronounced himself to be its actual repla~ement.~~owso? Remember, everyone here understands metaphor. Jesus projectedhimself and his followers into Israels own myth of persecution andvindication, exile and return: The plot is the same, the dramatis personaedifferent.76 esus represents freedom: Jerusalem, unfreedom. Jerusalemis now Babylon.77And Jesus prophesies that, if Israel does not change, the

631bid.,ms. p. 295.@lbid.,ms. p. 254.6sIbid.,ms. p. 282.Ibid.,ms. p. 284.611bid.,ms. p. 282.@Ibid.,ms. p. 279.@Tbid., ms. p. 267; see also ms. p. 152.Olbid.,ms. p. 317.llbid., ms. p. 252.l21bid.,ms. p. 290.731bid.,ms. p. 300.141bid.,ms. p. 318.151bid.,ms. p. 325.161bid.,ms. p. 321.nIbid., ms. p. 336.



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Context and Content 89Temple will be destroyed within that generation. Its fall would be his~indicat ion.~~he devastation of Jerusalem-Babylon will signal the endof the exile for the people of God, namely, Jesus own followers.79Thus,the kingdom of God will come, here on earth in the time-space world.80

This hypothesis is coherent and parsimonious, offering the simplestexplanation so far of the rise of Christianity: Jesus created it. We have toask ourselves, though, Is this reconstruction plausible? First-centuryJudaism and Jesus mission transmute into huge abstractions; everythingmediates metaphor. We, of course, are capable of reading these texts likethis, as Wright has just demonstrated. But, inprinciple, what evidence canwe have that first-century Jews unconsiously or subconsciously houghtthis way too?

Perhaps, again, Jesus did think that Gods Torah (that is, Leviticus andDeuteronomy) was an outdated set of taboos, but we have no evidencethat he did, and, in the behavior of the later church, we actually havecounterevidence. If he had taught or, mysteriously, embodied an anti-Torah message, his apostles-the ultimate link in the chain connectingthe New Testament texts to Jesus of Nazareth-evidently entirely misun-derstood him. On the evidence of Pauls letters, the Gospels, and Acts,these apostles chose to live in Jerusalem, worship in the Temple, andkeep the festivals, the Sabbath, and the food laws.81 Could they reallyhave understood nothing?

This view reduces the purity codes and the operation of the Temple toa weird system combining caste and sacrament, ossifying society alongclass lines. This picture is simply false. Impurity is not sin. It is removednot through forgiveness (which is in any case not dispensed at theTemple) but through purification. Most forms of impurity could be dealtwith (I paraphrase Sanders here) by a quick wash and waiting for the sun

781bid. s. pp. 324, 344.791bid.,ms. pp. 330.* T h e conceit is elaborate. Since the book is not yet in print, I quo te a key passage in fullfrom the typescript: As a prophet, Jesus staked his reputation on his prediction of theTemples fall within a generation, and when it fell he would thereby b e vindicated. A s thekingdom-bearer, he had constantly been acting . . n a way which invited the conclusionthat he thought he had the right to do and be what the Temple did and was, therebyimplicitly making the Tem ple r edu nda nt. The story he ha d been telling, and by which he hadord ered his life, deman ded a particular ending. If, then, the Te mp le remained forever, andhis movement fizzled o u t . .he would be shown to be a charlatan, a false prophet-maybeeven a blasphemer. But if the Te mp le is destroyed and th e sacrifices stopped; if th e paganhordes tear it down stone by stone; and if his followers escaped the conflagration unharmed ,in a re-enactment of Israels escape from their exile in doo med Babylon-why then he isvindicated, not only as a prophet, bu t as Israels representative, as (in som e sense) the sonof man (Wright, MS, p. 334).81Living n Jerusalem, Lk. 24:52; Acts 1:12 and passim; Gal. 1:17-2:l; worshiping in theTemple, Lk. 2453; Acts 3:1, 5:12, 42;21:26ff. (Paul); 22:17 (ag ain); specifically sacrificing,Mt. 5:23-24; Sabb aths, e.g., Mk 16:l an d parallels, especially Lk. 23:56b (On the sa bbathday they rested according to the comm andm ent); fasts, Mt. 6:16-18; festivals, Acts 2 1(Pentecost, i.e., Shavuot); cf., perhaps, 1 Cor. 16:8; food laws, Actspassim and especiallyPeters vision, 1O:lO-16; Gal. 2:12, and t he controversy gen erally. For discussion, Sande rs,Jesus and Judaism, pp . 245-269; on confu sions resulting from conflating the evangelicalportraits w ith the Pau line evidence, Fredriksen, From Jesus to Christ, pp. 102-112.



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90 Theology Todayto set. Impurity was a fact of life, but not of class. The wealthiest grandedame, the fussiest Pharisee, the highest high priest would all be impureany time they mutatis m utundis) men struated, had a baby, had a seminalemission, or buried their de ad . Again, impu rity is not sin, nor did it effectnormal table fellowship.82The removal of corpse impurity did require a week-long process,punctuated on the third and seventh day by a sprinkling of water mixedwith th e ashes of the red heifer. For this, on e went to the T emple. Th at iswhy, for exam ple, pilgrims arrived in Jerusalem for Passover by th e eighthof Nisan, though th e holiday itself came o n the evening of the fou rteenth:O ne had to ea t th e Paschal meal in This is also probably whyJesus, arriving with all th e oth er pilgrims, had eno ugh time to tea ch dailyin the temple in the days before the feast (Lk. 19.47). For goodreason-purity-he was th er e one week early.

Wright calls th e anim al sacrifices strange,84and so they may seem tous in the m odern W est. In th e first-century Mediterranean, however, thismode of worship was universal. It is the least peculiar thing aboutJudaism. According to Wright, Early Christians offered no animalsacrifice^, ^^ an d again, N o Christians ever offered animal sacrifice quaChristians. Nobody ever thought th at th e worship of th e god made knownin Jesus of Naz areth required th e blood of calves o r lambs.86If by early Christians Wright means Gentile Christians, then Isubmit tha t we cannot know. Before 70, Gen tiles could make offerings at

the Jerusalem Temple,87 an d later Jewish tradition held th at Gentilescould sacrifice to G od an ywh ere, since they, unlike Israel, were no t bou ndby hulukhuh to offer such worship exclusively in Je rusalem .@W e have nogood reason a priori to rule Gentile members of the early Christian82See Sanders, Jesus and Judaism, pp. 182 Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief(Philade lphia: Fortress , 199 2), pp. 72-77; 213-240. Wright consistently confuses sin an dimpurity, while resting his discussion on citations to Sanders, People of God, pp. 213, 225,and frequently comparing to Crossan, who conflates sickness, impurity, sin, and forgivnessHistorical Jesus, pp. 323f.).83The biblical legislation is foun d in Num . 9:2-11; regard ing co mplications caused by

corpse impurity at Pesach, see especiallyw. 9-11. Pesach sheini was a second Passover heldone mon th later to acco modate those who were corpse-impure for the holiday in Nisan; seealso Num. 19 on the red heifer ash es and th e ceremonial d eterg ents for removing impurity.See Sanders, Historica l Figure, pp. 249-252 on purification, Passover, an d Jesus last week inJerusalem.@Wright,The New Testament and the People of G od , p. 278.851bid., . 120.861bid.,p. 363.87Thequestion, though, is complicated. See the review of the evidence and arguments byDaniel R. Schw artz, O n Sacrifice by Gentiles in th e Tem ple of Jerusalem, Studies in theJewish Background of Christianity (Tub ingen : J.C.B. Mohr, 1992), pp. 102-115.88J Reynolds and R. Tannenbaum, Jews and God-fearers at Aphrodisias (Cambridge:Cam bridge Philological Society, 1987), pp. 64-65. Tann enbau m adduces in support, in note277, a string of citations to tractate Zebahim. These seem to refer, on the contrary, toofferings brou ght to the Tem ple. His referenc e in the following note, however-Sifra 83b,parash a vav-is a legal discussion on the status of Ge ntil e sacrifices ou tsid e of Jerusalem(they were acceptable). I thank my colleague Mark Hirschman for guiding me throug h thisrabbinic material.



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Context and Content 91movement out of this group. Further, the accusation in Acts 21:28-29,tha t Paul brought G entiles into the Temple past their boundary, presup-poses sacrifice; prayer alone could have b ee n offered anyw here.If how ever, by the early Christians W right me ans th e first followersof Jesus, some awkward data still lie scattered around. W her e does h ethink Jesus picked up his lamb for the seder envisaged in Mark 14?Whats the point of the instruction on how the Christian should offer atth e altar in Matthew 5:23-24? Why does Pau l still praise th e Zutreiu, theTem ple cu lt, in his hymn to Israels divine privileges in R om ans 9? Why,indeed, does Pau l (who had no self-esteem problem s) s ee his apostleshipin terms of a p riestly service (R om . 15:16)? M etaph or, tru e, just asChrist sacrificed as a paschal lam b, but why use such images as metap horsif Jesus himself had condemned their referents as morally, socially, andreligiously wrong?

T o review, we have four Jesuses. We have on e apocalyptic Jesus (two,counting mine, of whom I havent spoken yet). H e caused a scene in th eTem ple to symbolically enact a prophecy of imp ending red em ption(Sanders). We have two non-apocalyptic Jesuses, a Cynic and a JewishCynic. T he Cynic Jesus went up to Jerusalem as a normal pilgrim and waskilled-no Tem ple tantrum (Mack , Seeley). T h e Jewish Cynic Jesus wentup fo r th e first time in his life th at o ne Passover. Disgusted by what he saw(he had had no idea, remember, what Jerusalem would be like), heovertu rned the tables, thereby symbolically destroying th e Tem plesbrokerage function (Crossan). And, finally, we have one metaphoricallyapocalyptic anti-nationalist Jesus who went up to Jerusalem at Passoverto con front t he Tem ple system, which he symbolically challenged, in-dicted a nd cond emne d (Borg, W right).

JESUS: ANOTHER IEWW hat ab out my Jesus?In 1988 I published From Jesus to Christ. My study traced th e growth ofapocalyptic Jewish traditions from the historical Jesus to the Christs of

th e early chu rches, especially in light of th e kingdoms continuing delay.For my reconstruction, I drew particularly on Sanders work. Th us, I hadan apocalyptic Jesus who went up to Jerusalem for Passover at o r as theclimax of his mission. He symbolically enac ted th e Tem ples impen dingdestruction. The gesture implied no con dem nation of his native religionbut, rather, announced the imminent coming of a new Temple and,hence, as well, Gods kingdom. T he act brought him to th e atte ntio n ofthe priests, who became alarmed at the potential for mass disturbanceduring the holiday when Pilate was in town. They facilitated his arrest,an d Pilate killed him.89

89The ncident at the Temple, pp. 111-114; arrest and trials, pp. 115-122; narrativesummary, pp. 127-130.



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92 Theology TodayI expanded and refined one aspect of my interpretation in a later paper,

Jesus and the Temple, Mark and the War.9oThere, I argued that boththe christologicalstrategy and the historical appearance of Marks Gospelcould be best understood if we posit that the evangelist knew of Jesusoriginal prophecy, and accomodated it to his own circumstances, post-70.Thus, proclaimed Mark, the generation that saw the Temple destroyedwould also be the generation that saw the Son of Man coming in glory(Marks reworking) to establish the kingdom. The Roman destruction ofJerusalem mobilized Mark to restate this traditional prophecy in order toreassure his community that everythingwas indeed occurring just as Jesushad said it would. They had but to endure and have faith.91

I thought this reconstruction elegant and, but for one awkwardness,extremely compelling. This awkwardness, however, has not gone away.How could Jesus have made such a spectacular prophecy, which Peter,John, and others must have known, and yet Paul-who knew Peter andJohn and who talked frequently of the coming Kingdom-never evenmentions it at all?

The Cynic Jesus went up to Jerusalem as a normal pi lw im andwas kil led -th ere was no Temple tantrum.In the time since, I have pondered Burton Macks Myth ofznnocence,

with its close reading of the Markan passion material. I have corre-sponded with David Seeley on the way the Temple incident works inMark. Ive reflected on the superiority of the Johannine chronology92 ndpassion traditions to that of the synoptics. I have read two excellentrecent studies on modern apocalyptic movements, Paul Boyers WhenTimeShall eN o and Stephen OLearysArguing the Apocalypse. Ihave changed my mind, and I present and defend mypentimento here.

Marks passion narrative makes up in drama what it lacks in historicalprobability. The priests motivations are obscure; the two trials before thefull Sanhedrin on the night of Passover beggar belief. Everything is set inmotion by Jesus action in the Temple in the days before the holiday.Once he overturns the tables (et cetera), the chief priests and scribesseek a way to destroy him (11:18).The action leads directly to his trial,which provides the dramatic foil for the Gospels sustained christologicalreticence: Jesus finally comes out (Are you the Christ, the Son of the

BL Seminar Papers (Atlanta 1990), pp. 293-310.91Seealso From Jesus to Christ, pp. 177-185.92John provides the following sequence of Jesus trips to Jerusalem: 2:13 Passover (andthe cleansing of the Temple); 5 1 a feast; 7:lO Sukkot (Tabernacles); 10:22 feast ofDedication (and thus a celebration of the Temples purification ); 11:55 Passover again.Paul Boyer, When Time ShaNBeNo More (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992).94StephenD . OLeary,A p i n g he Apocalypse:A Theory of MillennialRhetoric (New York:Oxford U niversity Press, 1994).



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Context and Content 93Blessed? I am. 14:61f.). The Temple action sets up the theologicalclimax of the Gospel.

John needs no such device. His Jesus has preached a very highchristology virtually since his first appearance. Consequently, unlikeMark, John does not need (two ) highly charged Sanhedrin trials to bearthe weight of articulating Christian doctrine. His Jesus, again, hadalready assumed that task. The Johannine sequence of events, lessdramatic, is also less improbable: Jesus comes to town, preaches, and isarrested the night before the night of Passover. He is detained briefly atthe High Priests house, where he is questioned about his disciples andhis teaching (18:19). He, then, passes on to Pilate. The priests motiva-tion is clear and commonsensical: If we let [Jesus] go on, . he Romanswill come and destroy both our holy place and our nation. Caiaphascontinues, It is expedient that one man should die for the people, thatthe whole nation not perish 11:48,50).95So what do I now think happened? Shortly after John the Baptistsexecution, Jesus would have carried on preaching his message of thecoming kingdom, meant literally: Justice established, Israel restored andredeemed, the heavenly Temple not built by the hand of man inJerusalem, the resurrection of the dead, and so on. He gathered follow-ers, some itinerant like himself, others settled in villages. He went up toJerusalem for Passover-perhaps he always did; I dont know. Then, hewent back to the Galilee, and continued preaching and healing. NextPassover, up again, and back again.And then, perhaps on the third year, he identified that Passover as theone on which the kingdom would arrive. Im guessing, of course, but forseveral reasons. In the (very reworked) traditions of the triumphalentrance, we may have a genuine echo of the enthusiasm and excitementof this particular ~ilgrimage.~~lso to the other side of events, we havethe traditions about the resurrection. I take this fact as one measure ofthe level of excitement and conviction on the part of Jesus followers.They went up expecting an eschatological event, the arrival of thekingdom. What they got instead was the crucifixion. But then, an unex-pected eschatological event happened: They were convinced that Jesushad been raised.

Why? Had Jesus named that Passover as the last? Within apocalypticmovements, a specifically named date concentrates and raises eschatologi-cal attention and prompts fence-sitters to commit to the movement (Idraw here on OLearys analysis of the Millerites in the 1 8 4 0 ~ ) . ~ ~erhaps

95Johnalso knew some version of the Temple incident. He placed it early in Jesusministry, where its significance is mostly symbolic; it sets the tone for Jesus relations withoffical Judaism, and it foreshadows the Passion (21 3-2 2) . H e may have gotten it fromMark-the issue is co nt es te d- or he may have gotten it from an independent tradition.%Mk.11:l-10 and parallels.97See rguing he Apocalypse on the growth of the Millerites-especially after the failureof Millers apocalyptic prediction (also known as The Great D isappointment) of March1844-in to the Seventh Day Adventist Church, pp. 99-133.



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94 Theology Today

FAITH,HIS

this is what Jesus had done. With this scenario, we do not need theTemple incident as a device to bring Jesus to the (negative) attention ofthe priests. He had already been to Jerusalem the previous Passover andthe one before that, getting the crowds all worked up about the comingkingdom. This year, both he and the crowds seemed even more excited.How long could Pilate be counted on not to act? Thus, the secret arrest,the rushed interview with Caiaphas, or Caiaphas and Annas, and then onto Pilate and death.

Two last points. First, the disciples experience of Jesus resurrectionpoints indisputably to the Christian movements origins in the eschatologi-cal hopes of first-century Judaism-the resurrection of the dead, thevindication of the righteous. The disciples choice to remain in Jerusalemrather than return to Galilee suggests further that they continued toexpect something to happen, and soon (think of the first several chaptersin Acts). And if something is going to happen, it happens in Jerusalem.Finally, the movement from the beginning received Gentiles withoutrequiring that they be circumcised. By mid-century, there would be acrisis. Some Christians, in the face of the kingdoms continuing delay,thought Gentile adherents should normalize their relation to Israel byconverting, which, for men, meant to be circumcised. Paul refers to thesecolleagues as dogs and mutilators of the flesh. James, Peter, andJohn agreed with Paul: no circumcision. No idols, and no circumcision.This pattern also points to the movements origins in Jewish apocalyptictraditions: Eschatological Gentiles, at the end of days, were to join withIsrael qua Gentiles and so to be included in the kingdom.98 The firstgeneration, improvising in their curious now-but-not-yet situation, incor-porated Gentiles accordingly. Jesus would be back soon.

TORY, AND METHODIn conclusion, I advance three points: on the relation of faith and

history, on the Christian study of Judaism, and on history and method.First: What about history and faith, or history and theology, or Jesus

and Christ? These categories still, after a century, stand in uneasy andconfused relation. A Jesus securely anchored in his first-century Jewishapocalyptic context-working miracles, driving away demons, predictingthe imminent end of the world-is an embarrassment. Is it sheer serendip-ity that somany of our reconstructions define away the offending ackward-ness? Miracles without cures, time without end, resurrections withoutbodies. The kingdom does not come, it is present as an experience, akinder, gentler society, mediated, indeed created, by Jesus. Then what isthis kingdom language doing here anyway? As one critic has noted:

Jesus idea of the Kingdom of God appears to be inextricably involved with anumber of eschatological and apocalyptic views which theology has been

9sSeeFrom Jesus to Chlist, pp. 16, 149-156, 165-176; for further citation to primarysourcesfor this Jewish tradition of the eschatological inclusion not conversion)of Gentiles,see Fredriksen, The Circumcision of Gentiles,especiallypp. 544-548.by guest on November 29, 2011ttj.sagepub.comDownloaded from


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Contextand Content 95accustomed to take over without critical examination. But now it is necessaryto inquire wheth er it is really possible o employ the idea of the Kingdomof God in the way th at has recently seemed app ropr iate. Th e question ariseswheth er Kingdom is not thereby divested of its essential traits a nd, finally,so modified that only the n ame still remains th e sam e.

So Johannes Weiss, in 1892.99One scholar reviewed refuted the possibility of an apocalyptic Jesus onthe basis of how weird apocalyptists are now: Most of us have heardstreet preachers. whose message is, The end is at hand, repent In myexperience, people who strongly believe the end is near sound verydifferent from what I hear in the Jesus tradition.@ This is not anargument. Another scholar defended the authenticity of Jesus (fairlydetailed) predictions of the fall of Jerusalem with an appeal to Josephus:Such prophecies of the Temples destruction are the necessary andpredictable focal point of Jesus whole prophetic ministry.. LikeJosephus, he claimed to see that destruction was inevitable.l0Jesus diedaround 30. The Temple was destroyed in 70. Josephus, who was presentat the siege, wrote his history in 77-78. Josephus successful predictioncannot, thus, establish the likelihood of Jesus having done the samething.

And again: If Jesus expected the end of the world, then he wasmistaken.lo2But if he did, and if he was, sowhat? Do historians in searchof Jesus of Nazareth really expect to turn up the Chalcedonian Christ?The inerrant incarnate Second Article of the Trinity, fully God and fullyman without mixture or confusion, is the theological construct of adifferent period. If we want to find this figure in the first century, thehistorical Jesus is not whom were looking for. History can be reconciled,variously, with faith, but never with anachronism.

My second concluding point concerns the Christian study of Judaism.In many of these studies of the historical Jesus, Judaism still serves as thedark backdrop rather than the living context of Jesus and the earlychurch. Something bad had happened to Judaism after the exile, and byJesus time it had run completely down hill. Think of the descriptions wehave been offered. First-century Judaism was economically and politicallyoppressive, exclusive, hierarchical, patriarchal, and money oriented. Itfocused excessively on ritual purity, racial purity, and nationalism, and itencouraged meanness to sick people.

Sanders 1977 book Paul and Palestinian Judaism finally removed thePharisees from the cross-hairs of Christian historical fantasy. But the

99JohannesWeiss, Jesus Proclamation of the Kingdom (ET, Fortress: Ph iladelphia, 1971;orig. pub. Gottingen, 1892), p. 131. I would like to thank theologian W esley Wildman forsharing with me the typescript of his forthcom ing book, The Qu estf ora Believable Jesus. Hisreview of the nineteenth-century roots of our centurys christological dilemmas refreshedmy sense of the value of Weiss discussion and suggested the framing of the present essay. Iam very grateful. See, too, Raisanens appreciation of Weiss, Jesu s in Contex t, p. 18.looBorg, esus, p. 83.OWright, MS 326, on Jesus mindset.Wright, MS 88.



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96 Theology Todayreplacement target of choice now seems to be the Temple and thebiblically-mandated laws of purity. The indictment of Judaism conse-quently broadens from about 6,000 men (Josephus estimate of thePharisees numbers) to include virtually every Jew in the first century,Jesus and his followers (to my mind, wrongly) excepted. And the oldpolemical opposition law versus grace has simply been replaced by aneven more self-congratulatory antithesis, purity versus compassion.

This is not history, nor is it realistic description. It is caricaturegenerated by abstractions, whereby a set of politically and ethicallypleasant attributes define both Jesus (egalitarian, caring, other-directed,and so on) and, negatively, the majority of his Jewish contemporaries.Jesus thereby snaps nicely into sharp focus. This clarity, however, ispurchased at the price of reality.

Whence this artificial and innocently insulting group portrait? In part,from those methods that specifically structure societies along lines ofgroup or class antagonisms. These scholars then link their methodologicalenthusiasms to their own political commitments, most frequently anidealized (read radical) vision of social equality. The whole packagethen fuses with two more traditional characteristics of New Testamenthistoriography: the conviction of Jesus singular moral excellence and a

The old polem ical expression law versus grace has simplybeen replaced by an even more self-congratulatory antithesis,purity versus compassion.

long cultural habit of explaining Christianity by having Judaism be itsopposite. The result is that ancient Christian texts become statements ofimmediate contemporary political relevance and ancient Judaism be-comes their contrasting background.Thus, there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free,there is neither male nor female-Pauls description in Galatians aboutoneness in Christ (3:28)-interpreted socially, is taken as a statement ofJesus uniquely anti-ethnic, anti-hierarchical, anti-nationalistic politicalagenda.lo3This agenda has been generated by seeing the primary datathrough the lens of methods that, at the same time, unobtrusively blockperception of other, messier, unobliging facts. Everything that does not fitthe model drops silently away, as the method determines both the

Io3Thus, for example, Crossan, on Jesus social program: No importance was given todistinctions of G entile and Jew, female and male, slave and free, poor and rich. He doesnot cite Galatians (Historical Jesus, p. xii); Open commensality profoundly negatesdistinctions and hierarchies between female and male, poor and rich, Gentile and Jew,again without citation (p . 263).by guest on November 29, 2011ttj.sagepub.comDownloaded from


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Context and Content 97historical description and its e~p1ana tion .l~~perfect fit History this tidyis a form of aesthetic delusion.

Consider Judaism as focused on racial purity, which in turn wasexpressed in the Temple regulations keeping Gentiles in the outercourts.105Did the priests really refuse members of the house of Adiabeneentry into the Temple? Of course not. If converts enter, the operativecategory is not race. Or consider the claim that Jews viewed wealth as asign of Gods favor. The ruling elites in Judea ensconced by Rome shouldhave been more effective: these were chosen on the basis of wealth. Infact, they failed to rule, in no small part, according to Martin Goodman,because wealth did not command social esteem among Jews, among otherreasons because the religious regulations mandating charity weakenedthe webbing of patronage.lo6 Or consider the Temple as a center ofvirulent nationalism. How do the priests and first men act, according toJosephus, whenever an outbreak threatens? They try to quiet the crowds.*07But in most of the studies we have considered, method has so controlledhistorical reconstruction that these nonconforming data simply disap-pear.

This brings me to my final point, on method and history. The methodsof other fields refresh and challenge our work in our own, and I think thisis all to the good. But we need to be sensitive to the utility of the method;and we can never let the method control the evidence. We-the histori-ans-must control both.

If we relinquish control, or fail to exercise it, or so enjoy where themethod is taking us that we fail to direct our own way, we risk wanderingin a past exclusively of our own imagining, distant not only from our owntime, but also from the reality of those ancient persons whose lives andworlds we seek to understand.

See, for example, Crossan, Historical Jesus, p. 292, where his four-fold typologygenerates Jesus social role and function (My proposal is that when we cross apocalypticand sapiential with scribes and peasants, it becomes necessary to locate Jesus in thequa dran t formed by sapiential and peasant.).In5The most no table sign of the emphasis on racial purity is, of course, the notice in theTemple that forbade non-Jews to penetrate farther than the court of the Gentiles,Wright, People of God, p. 232. See also Marcus B org,Jesus, p. 109.Io6The ailure of wealth to bring social esteem amon g Jews was only partly caused by theegalitarian ideals of the Torah. . .Neither H ebrew nor Aramaic had a term like the Latinbonus, which equ ated high social standing and morality with riches. Th e prestige gainedby many rich Greeks and Romans by paying for their citys religious cults was underminedby the uniquely Jewish and deliberately egalitarian tradition that every adult male Jewshould pay a half-shekel towards the upkeep of the sacrifices, the rich being positivelyprohibited from contributing more (Exodus 30:15) . . Martin Goodman, The uling Classof Judaea (Camb ridge: Ca mb ridge U niversity Press, 1987 ), pp. 128ff., also pp. 51-75.Io7Forexample, Bellurn, 2.316, trying to calm the crowds in the face of Florus provoca-tions; 2:320, urging the crowd to follow Florus wishes; 2410, attempting to persuade theyounge r priests in not t o suspen d sacrifices for Ro mes wellbeing.

1995 - what you see is what you get

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