An overlooked link to the historical Jesus

January 12, 2009 at 7:49 pm (Jesus)

How close can we get to the historical Jesus? The standard answer is, we can go back as far as St. Paul, but no further.

The Gospels are the primary source of information about Jesus, of course. The Gospels are biographies, even if they also sustain an evangelistic thrust.

Paul provides much less historical information than the Gospels. He alludes to Jesus’ teaching explicitly in 1Co. 7:10 (cf. Mark 10:11-12) and 1Co. 9:14 (cf. Luke 10:7). Elsewhere, Paul alludes to Jesus’ teaching without explicitly citing him (e.g., compare Rom. 12:14 with Mt. 5:44).1 But despite his interest in Jesus’ sayings, Paul doesn’t dwell much on the events of Jesus’ life, aside from the crucifixion and the resurrection.

Still, Paul’s letters are considered to be the earliest documents in the New Testament. Such historical details as we can glean from his letters2 get us within about 25 years of Jesus’ death.

Moreover, I think we can go one step further back, if we are willing to give credence to second-hand testimony. And I think the testimony is credible:  second-hand information is an extraordinary asset, given that the events took place 2,000 years ago!

I refer to an overlooked link to the historical Jesus:  James, the Lord’s brother. Paul refers to James in Gal. 1:19, 2:9, and 1Co. 15:7. The first two passages make it clear that Paul had met James:

  • Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas [Peter] and remained with him fifteen days. But I saw none of the other apostles except James the Lord’s brother. (Gal. 1:18-19)
     
  • Then after fourteen years I went up again to Jerusalem … and when James and Cephas and John, who seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace that was given to me, they gave the right hand of fellowship to Barnabas and me, that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised. (Gal. 2:1,9)

Regrettably, Paul doesn’t supply any details about the meeting recorded in Galatians 1, and we know only the official business that was transacted at the meeting recorded in Galatians 2. It would be wonderful to know what conversation took place informally.

But even with such limited information, I think we can legitimately support two historical details about Jesus’ life from these references to James.
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The Gospels as biographies

November 10, 2008 at 8:26 pm (Jesus, synoptic Gospels)

“[Rudolph] Bultmann led questers [for the historical Jesus] up another false trail by his strong assertion that ‘There is no historical-biographical interest in the Gospels’.

“The influence of this view, that the Gospels are not biographies of Jesus, persists to the present day. However, it is too little recalled that on this point Bultmann was reacting against the Liberal questers’ confidence that they could penetrate back into Jesus’ self-consciousness and could trace the development of his self-understanding as Messiah (messianic self-consciousness). …

“The original questers were attempting to write biographies on the model of the nineteenth-century biography, with its interest in the personal life and development of the biographical subject. So what Bultmann was actually decrying was the attempt to write a modern biography of Jesus.

“Since the 1970s, however, the question of the Gospels’ genre has come under increasingly close scrutiny, and it has become much clearer that the Gospels are in fact very similar in type to ancient biographies (Greek bioi; Latin vitae).

“That is, their interest was not the modern one of analysing the subject’s inner life and tracing how an individual’s character developed over time. Rather, the ancient view was that character was fixed and unchanging; and the biographer’s concern was to portray the chosen subject’s character by narrating his words and deeds. Which is just what we find in the Synoptic (indeed all the canonical) Gospels, though not, it should be noted, in the other [apocryphal] Gospels now frequently drawn into the neo-Liberal quest.

“Moreover, it is clear that common purposes of ancient bioi were to provide examples for their readers to emulate, to give information about their subject, to preserve his memory, and to defend and promote his reputation. Here again the Gospels fit the broad genre remarkably well.

“Of course, it remains true that the Gospels were never simply biographical; they were propaganda; they were kerygma [proclamation intended to win converts]. But then neither were ancient biographies wholly dispassionate and objective (any more than modern biographies).

“In other words, the overlap between Gospel and ancient biography remains substantial and significant.”

— James Dunn, Jesus Remembered, pp. 184-85. I have broken up Dunn’s paragraphs to make this excerpt easier to read.

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Inconsistencies internal to scripture

November 1, 2008 at 9:45 pm (Jesus, scripture, theology)

In this post, I will address a foundational issue:  the (non-)inerrancy of scripture.

I believe that scripture contains inconsistencies and outright contradictions. Some of the inconsistencies are purely historical in nature; others touch on theological or ethical matters.

Here is a selection of texts that have led me to that conclusion:

  • Did Jesus begin his ministry after the arrest of John the Baptist (Mark 1:14-15) or before John’s arrest (John 3:22-24)?
     
  • Was Jesus leaving Jericho when he healed Bartimaeus’s blindness (Mark 10:46) or approaching Jericho (Luke 18:35)?
     
  • Did Judas hang himself (Mt. 27:5), or did he fall headlong in a field, bursting open in the middle so that all his bowels gushed out (Acts 1:18)?
     
  • Did a certain man address Jesus, “Good Teacher”, calling forth the response, “Why do you call me good?” (Mark 10:17-18)? Or did he address Jesus, “Teacher”, and receive the response, “Why do you ask me about what is good?” (Mt. 19:16-17)?
     
  • Did Jesus forbid divorce absolutely (Mark 10:11-12; Luke 16:18), or did he allow divorce in cases of adultery (Mt. 5:32; Mt. 19:9)? How does Paul dare to add another exception, in cases of desertion (1Co. 7:15)?
     
  • Did Jesus annul the food laws in their entirety (“Thus he declared all foods clean,” Mark 7:19)? Or did he annul only the tradition of the elders with respect to hand washing (“But to eat with unwashed hands does not defile anyone”, Mt. 15:20)?
     
  • It is well known that James contradicts the core Protestant doctrine, salvation by faith alone —
     

    Paul James
    Romans 3:28 —
    For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.    		 James 2:18-26 —
    But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder! Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless? Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works; and the Scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness” — and he was called a friend of God. You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. And in the same way was not also Rahab the prostitute justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out by another way? For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead.
    Romans 4:6 —
    For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.

     
    But most readers overlook the fact that James actually says nothing about Jesus aside from the bare affirmation that Jesus is “the Lord” (1:1), “the Lord of glory” (2:1). In particular, James fails to mention either the crucifixion or the resurrection.
     

  • If there is a gulf between Paul and James re soteriology (doctrine of salvation), there is a similar gulf between John and the synoptic Gospels re christology. For example, consider the famous “I am” claims of Jesus, according to John (6:35; 8:12; 8:58; 10:7; 10:11; 11:25; 14:6; 15:1). And consider Jesus’ awareness of his own pre-existence, according to John (3:13; 6:38; 8:38; 8:58; 17:5; 17:24). There is no christological material remotely comparable to this in Matthew, Mark, or Luke.

What are we to do with the above data, which clearly illustrates the problem of inconsistencies and even outright contradictions in the New Testament? It seems to me there are four basic options.
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Christology

October 29, 2008 at 8:40 pm (Jesus, theology)

Raymond E. Brown, a Roman Catholic scholar, has published a great introduction to christology. It’s learned but accessible and downright fascinating.

Brown lists the various christological titles ascribed to Jesus in the New Testament:  Messiah (Christ), Rabbi (Teacher), Prophet, High Priest, Saviour, Master or Lord, the Son, Son of Man, Son of God, and God. Brown then distinguishes between a relatively low christology (meaning, in this context, New Testament titles which are not explicit about Jesus’ divinity) and a high christology (i.e., titles which include “an aspect of” divinity). Brown then continues:

Every New Testament writer may have believed in the divinity of Jesus, for none denies it; yet several do not use terminology or descriptions that enable us to know with precision their christological stance. …

Raymond Brown, ChristologyIn describing high christology I have spoken of “an aspect of” divinity; for while terms listed there [Lord, Son of God, and God] place Jesus in the divine sphere, neither the terms themselves nor the authors who use them necessarily convey the same understanding of divinity. There are a wide range of conceivable possibilities in understanding the degree or manner of Jesus’ divinity.

As to degree, theoretically Jesus could be seen as divine but as lesser than other divine figures who were not human, e.g., angels who were known in the Old Testament as “sons of God.” Or Jesus could be deemed equal in divinity to “the one true God” who sent him. …

As to manner, theoretically Jesus could have been a man who was deified at a point in his career — “made divine,” for instance, at his baptism when the Spirit of God descended on him, or at his resurrection when God elevated him to heaven. Or he could have been divine all through his life in the sense that he was conceived as a divine being without a human father. Or he could have been a deity before he took on flesh. And even in that last possibility he could have been brought into being by God the Father as the first born of all creation (see Col. 1:15), or he could have been uncreated and with the Father forever.

Classical or orthodox Christian faith, articulated in the 4th century, tells us that Jesus as Son was equal to God the Father in all things and existed from all eternity; but that articulation does not tell us how many 1st-century New Testament authors, if any, had reached that precision.

(In conventional Christian thought a conciliar formulation of dogma cannot contradict the New Testament; but it may have gone beyond what was clearly articulated or visibly understood in New Testament times, precisely because questions were now being asked that had not been asked in earlier times.)

A description of Jesus as “Son of God,” after all, would have been applicable to him understood in any of the degrees or manners just mentioned. Indeed, when we recognize that the books that make up the New Testament were written in different places in the Mediterranean world during a period of almost 100 years (ca. 50 to 125), more than likely even the high christological terms meant different things to different people who used them.

A basic step in any serious discussion of christology is to appreciate that Christian religious thought, since it involved the comprehension of Jesus by human beings, developed and changed, as does other human thought. True, Christians maintain that there was divine revelation about the identity of Jesus, but that does not mean that believers understood the revelation completely or at once.

The classic passage where Matthew reports that Simon Peter could confess that Jesus was the Messiah, the Son of the living God, because it was revealed to him by Jesus’ Father in heaven (16:16-17), also shows clearly that Peter did not understand essential aspects of that confession (16:22-23).

(Raymond E. Brown, An Introduction to New Testament Christology, Paulist Press, 1994, pp. 4-5.)

The main thing I would take from Brown’s introduction to the topic is this:  there are several issues here, bundled together under the deceptively simple heading, christology.
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Jesus’ emotional life

October 22, 2008 at 7:54 pm (Jesus, synoptic Gospels)

In his teaching, Jesus often used the words “joy” and “rejoice”:

The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. (Mt. 13:44)

drawing of Jesus laughingHis master said to him, Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master. (Mt. 25:21)

Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven; for so their fathers did to the prophets. (Luke 6:23)

Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven. (Luke 10:20)

I tell you, there is joy before the angels of God over one sinner who repents. (Luke 15:10; in this passage, he repeatedly uses the word “rejoice”.)

This emphasis on joy may come as a surprise, since church life is often a pretty sombre business. Similarly, we may overlook the fact that Jesus was a deeply emotional man.

His compassion (or pity) clearly made a deep impression on the disciples:

When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. (Mt. 9:36)

When he went ashore he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them and healed their sick. (Mt. 14:14)

Then Jesus called his disciples to him and said, I have compassion on the crowd because they have been with me now three days and have nothing to eat. (Mt. 15:32)

And Jesus in pity touched their eyes, and immediately they recovered their sight and followed him. (Mt. 20:34)

Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand and touched him and said to him, I will; be clean. (Mark 1:41)

And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her and said to her, Do not weep. (Luke 7:13)

Jesus was also plainly angry (or zealous) on occasion:
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