Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rcrh6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T20:56:01.920Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Portraits of Jesus in Contemporary North American Scholarship

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2011

Marcus J. Borg
Marcus J. Borg
Affiliation:
Oregon State University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Five portraits of Jesus by North American scholars published in the 1980s demonstrate the strength of the current resurgence in Jesus scholarship and disclose the central questions dominating the current discussion. These portraits (by E. P. Sanders, Burton Mack, Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, the present writer, and Richard Horsley) demonstrate that, after decades of relative disinterest, a “third quest” for the historical Jesus is under way. Each portrait or gestalt is interesting in its own right as a construal of the traditions about Jesus and as an exercise in historical reconstruction. Taken together, they illustrate the range of options in contemporary Jesus scholarship and point to the likely focal points of Jesus research in the 1990s.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 84 , Issue 1 , January 1991 , pp. 1 - 22
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1991

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 A version of this article was presented at the International Meeting of the SBL in Vienna in August 1990.

2 N. Thomas Wright has described the 1980s as bringing forth a “third quest” of the historical Jesus, succeeding the “first quest” of the nineteenth century and the “second quest” (or “new quest”) of the 1950s and 60s. See , Wright and Neill, Stephen, The Interpretation of the New Testament 1861-1986 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988) 379–403Google Scholar.

3 See my essay, “A Renaissance in Jesus Studies,” TToday 45 (1988) 280–92. See alsoGoogle ScholarCharlesworth, James, Jesus Within Judaism (New York: Doubleday, 1988) 9–29,Google Scholar 187-207, 223-43.

4 See my “A Temperate Case for a Non-Eschatological Jesus,” Foundations and Facets Forum 2 (1986) 98–99Google Scholar.

5 In a paper presented at the International Meeting of the SBL in Vienna in August 1990, Robinson further described the imminent eschatological understanding of Jesus as an “old model which is frayed and blemished, with broken parts, a Procrustean bed in which the discipline squirms,” and proposed instead a sapiential model.

6 So fruitful is this development that it marks a new era in Jesus scholarship. As Bernard Brandon Scott remarked at the meeting of the SBL in Chicago in December 1984: “The historical quest of the historical Jesus has ended; the interdisciplinary quest has just begun.” For a bibliography of over 250 works that use interdisciplinary approaches, see Harrington, Daniel, “Second Testament Exegesis and the Social Sciences: A Bibliography,” BTB 18 (1988) 77–85Google Scholar.

7 Sanders, E. P., Jesus and Judaism (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985)Google Scholar.

8 Sanders, , Jesus and Judaism, 11.Google Scholar The other seven are: (1) Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist; (2) Jesus was a Galilean who preached and healed; (3) Jesus called disciples and spoke of there being twelve; (4) Jesus confined his activity to Israel; (5) and he was crucified by Roman authorities. After his death, (6) his followers continued as an identifiable movement, and (7) at least some Jews persecuted some parts of the new movement.

9 Mark 11:15-17. Sanders rightly notes that it is often erroneously called the “cleansing” of the temple, as if the issue were purification or reform. Such a reading domesticates the act: Jesus becomes a defender of “pure religion” against the corruption of business practices.

10 Sanders, , Jesus and Judaism, esp. 61–76Google Scholar.

11 Ibid., 146-48. See Matt 19:28, with a near parallel in Luke 22:28-29. One of the virtues of Sanders's construal of Jesus is that it can make sense of this difficult verse. For a quite different understanding of it, see the treatment by Horsley later in this article.

12 Imminent eschatology is even central for Jesus' self-claim. Though Sanders agrees with most scholars that the traditions that report Jesus affirming himself to be Messiah and Son of God must be viewed as the creation of the church, he argues that many traditions point to a strong implicit self-claim: Jesus may have thought of himself as king, or, as soon-to-be king of the coming kingdom (“a strong inference,” ibid., 307, 321-22, 324), and as “God's last messenger” (318).

13 Sanders, , Jesus and Judaism, esp. 24–51.Google Scholar See also his Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison of Patterns of Religion (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977)Google Scholar.

14 Given that this understanding has come largely from German scholarship, Jesus' relationship to Judaism has perhaps unconsciously been seen as a version of Luther's relationship to late medieval Catholicism.

15 Sanders, , Jesus and Judaism, esp. 270–93;Google Scholar see also 294-318. For Jesus' “self-claim,” see n. 12 above.

16 Sanders's construal resembles Schweitzer's in three important respects. First, as with Schweitzer, Sanders holds that Jesus expected the coming of the kingdom of God as a decisive event to be brought about by God in the immediate future; imminent eschatology remains (see ibid., 142-48, 152-54, 318, 327). Second, Jesus' purpose in going to Jerusalem was to accomplish the decisive deed that would bring about dramatic divine intervention (for Schweitzer, Jesus' own death; for Sanders, the symbolic destruction of the temple). Third, it follows that Jesus was deeply mistaken about the central expectation that drove his ministry. What Jesus expected to happen did not happen: his belief in restoration eschatology was a mistake (ibid., 327). Sanders seeks to differentiate his position from Schweitzer, chiefly by claiming stronger evidence for his portrait; see ibid., 327-30.

17 Mack, Burton L., A Myth of Innocence: Mark and Christian Origins (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1988)Google Scholar.

18 Mack, , Myth of Innocence, 56.Google Scholar Professor Mack has kindly sent me two as yet unpub lished essays that treat the theme of Jesus as Cynic: “Cultural Critique in Antiquity: Diogenes the Cynic and Jesus,” and “The Lord of the Logia: Savior or Sage?” Also relevant are his “The Kingdom Sayings in Mark,” Foundations and Facets Forum 3 (1987) 3–47Google Scholar, and “The Kingdom That Didn't Come,” in Lull, David J., ed., SBL 1988 Seminar Papers (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988) 608–35Google Scholar.

19 “Jesus as Cynic” was the topic of a major session at the Annual Meeting of the SBL in November 1990. With some differences, the Cynic image has been developed in England by Downing, F. G., Jesus and the Threat of Freedom (London: SCM, 1987), andGoogle Scholaridem, The Christ and the Cynics (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1988)Google Scholar.

20 A chreia is a common Cynic form. An anecdote about a teacher, it typically consists of an objection and response.

21 Mack, , Myth of Innocence, 54Google Scholar.

22 Mack, , “Cultural Critique in Antiquity,” 9Google Scholar.

23 Mack, , Myth of Innocence, 125Google Scholar.

24 See also Mack, “Kingdom Sayings in Mark.” Mack's argument that Mark 1:15 is responsible for the impression that kingdom of God was the central message of Jesus needs to be taken seriously. Though scholars have long recognized that Mark 1:15 is redactional, many yet continue to treat it as an accurate summary of Jesus' message. Without Mark 1:15, would we see kingdom of God as the central message of Jesus or simply as a major theme or metaphor?

25 Mack applies this criterion rigorously. He sees social formation not only in texts that reflect institutionalization (e.g., Matt 16:16-20 and 18:18), but in all texts reporting conflict with groups: they involve boundary definition.

26 Mack also locates Jesus in a very Hellenized Jewish social world, emphasizing the Hellenization of Galilee and that Cynics and Cynic traditions were known there.

27 Mack, , Myth of Innocence, 73Google Scholar.

28 There is a friendly joke circulating among Jesus scholars: Burton Mack's Jesus was killed in a car accident on a freeway in Los Angeles. The point: for Mack, there is no significant connection between what Jesus was like and the fact that he was executed. His death was, in an important sense, accidental.

29 For example, in the work of Robert Funk, John Dominic Crossan, and Bernard Brandon Scott.

30 His foundational presupposition that the different forms of the tradition could not all be remembered in the same community seems doubtful to me. In the only way I have been able t o understand it, it seems obviously false. In talking with members of new religious movements with a living master, I have found that the same people tell different kinds (forms) of stories about the master. Sometimes they quote a short saying of the master, sometimes they tell a story about the master, and sometimes they tell a story that the master told. Without Mack's foundational presupposition, his minimalist portrait of Jesus begins to collapse (or, to change the metaphor, begins to burst because of expansion).

31 Fiorenza, Elisabeth Schüssler, In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins (New York: Crossroad, 1983).Google Scholar Her construal of Jesus (like Mack's) is part of a larger work treating the origins of Christianity; most relevant to her sketch of Jesus and the earliest Jesus movement are pp. 72-159.

32 Ibid., 70-71.

33 Ibid., 71; pp. 72-84 provide a useful summary and critical evaluation of the use of such heuristic models by Robin Scroggs, John Gager, Gerd Theissen, Wayne Meeks, etc.

34 Androcentrism refers to a perspective, patriarchy to a social system. See ibid., 29: “While androcentrism characterizes a mindset, patriarchy represents a social-cultural system i n which a few men have power over other men, women, children, slaves and coionialized people.”

35 She stresses that we know Jesus only through the community around him and repudiates any attempt “to distill the historical Jesus from the remembering interpretations of his first followers.” Thus she does not pursue a historical Jesus separate from his followers, but Jesus “as his life and ministry is available to historical-critical reading of the earliest interpretations of the first Christians” (ibid., 103; see also 121). Yet it seems clear that she thinks we do learn about Jesus (and not just about his followers) from the texts, for Jesus and the community around him are normative for her historical and theological reconstruction of Christian origins.

36 Ibid., 102, 100.

37 Ibid., 110-15. In this she largely follows her own earlier work and the work of Jacob Neusner. For her use of Neusner's description of woman as “the other” in the Mishnaic world view, see pp. 56-60.

38 Schüssler Fiorenza repeatedly warns against simply identifying first-century Judaism with patriarchy. First, ancient Judaism was not monolithic in this respect; there is an alternative voice, a “feminist impulse,” within Judaism (ibid., 107; see especially her striking treatment of Judith, 115-18). Second, patriarchy was of course found outside of Judaism as well, enabling her to emphasize that the problem was patriarchy, not Judaism.

39 Ibid., 118-30, 135.

40 Ibid., 140-54.

41 Ibid., 149-51.

42 “Sophia” is Greek for “wisdom”; in both Hebrew and Greek, “wisdom” is feminine.

43 Fiorenza, Schüssler, In Memory of Her, 132.Google Scholar Given that she also recognizes that Jesus spoke of God in a man's gestalt as “father,” her point is not that Jesus used a woman's gestalt to speak of God instead of a man's gestalt; rather, he used both.

44 Ibid., 134-35.

45 Ibid., 142: Jesus' message subverts the structures of oppression by envisioning a different future.

46 Ibid., 119-20. See also 111-12, 121.

47 Ibid., 121.

48 Borg, Marcus J., Conflict, Holiness and Politics in the Teachings of Jesus (New York/ Toronto: Edwin Mellen, 1984)Google Scholar; idem, Jesus: A New Vision (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987)Google Scholar.

49 I define politics in a broad and nonexclusionary sense, based upon its derivation from the Greek word for city (polis): politics is concern with the shape and shaping of the city, and by extension, of any human community. By nonexclusionary, I simply mean that to say Jesus was political does not exclude anything else; it does not mean political and (therefore) not religious. To see the political dimension of Jesus' activity does not exclude seeing other dimensions.

50 Borg, , Conflict, Holiness and Politics, 27–72.Google Scholar “Paradigm” is the term I most often use for the central value or cultural dynamic that structures a social world; for the same notion as “core value” and a lucid, compact analysis of first-century Jewish Palestine as a purity system, see Neyrey, Jerome, “A Symbolic Approach to Mark 7,” Foundations and Facets Forum 4.3 (1988) 63–91, andGoogle Scholaridem, “The Idea of Purity in Mark's Gospel,” Semeia 35 (1986) 91–128Google Scholar.

51 Lev 19:2 contrasted to Luke 6:36. Given that “compassion” is etymologically linked to “womb” in Hebrew, it is tempting to translate Luke 6:36 as, “Be like a womb, as God is like a womb.”

52 Her book was published while my Conflict, Holiness and Politics was in press. I would now incorporate most of her feminist insights.

53 Beginning with Perrin's, NormanRediscovering the Teaching of Jesus (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), esp. 164–206,Google Scholar these sayings have increasingly been seen as inauthentic in North American scholarship. The voting of the Jesus Seminar indicates how far the erosion of the “coming Son of man” sayings has gone: about eighty percent have consistently voted against their authenticity. The remaining threat and judgment texts in the synoptics do not point to the imminent end of the world, but are about evenly divided between threats of historical disaster and threats of unidentifiable or unspecified consequences. Though a few make use of eschatological motifs, they do not contain the element of imminence. See Borg, , Conflict, Holiness and Politics, 203–21, esp. 210-12Google Scholar.

54 “Holy person” is the gender-inclusive version of the semitechnical term “holy man,” a person who was a mediator of “the holy,” that is, of the numinous, the uncanny numina that lie beneath phenomena and that are “known” in extraordinary moments.

55 Such persons, known throughout the history of cultures, have vivid experiences of the holy as another dimension or layer of reality, a sense of encountering or being touched by it, or entering or seeing into it. They then become mediators or agents of the holy, often as healers, but also as prophets, lawgivers, clairvoyants, diviners, oracles, rainmakers, and gamefinders.

56 Geza Vermes is primarily responsible for introducing this element into the current discussion; see especially his Jesus the Jew (New York: Macmillan, 1973) 65–78,Google Scholar 206-13. See also Dunn, James G., Jesus and the Spirit (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1975)Google Scholar.

57 The tradition that Jesus was a healer and exorcist is very strong, as are traditions that suggest an unusual experiential intimacy with God and a sense of authority not grounded in institution or tradition. Moreover, the synoptic picture of him as a practitioner of prayer and fasting who sometimes experienced visions is plausible in this context. See Borg, , Jesus: A New Vision, 39–75Google Scholar.

58 For an account of what we can surmise about first-century Jewish mysticism, see Segal, Alan, Paul the Convert: The Apostolate and Apostasy of Saul the Pharisee (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990) 34–71Google Scholar.

59 I argue that there are two focal points to this fourfold portrait: spirit and social world. Jesus' relationship to the spirit was not only the source of his healing powers, but also the source of his sense of mission and of the perspective from which he spoke as a sage and prophet. His social world, rather than being the background of his activity as eschatological prophet or Cynic sage, was the center of his concern.

60 Horsley, Richard and Hanson, John S., Bandits, Prophets, and Messiahs: Popular Movements at the Time of Jesus (Minneapolis: Winston, 1985)Google Scholar; Horsley, Richard, Jesus and the Spiral of Violence (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987)Google Scholar; idem, The Liberation of Christmas: The Infancy Narratives in Social Context (New York: Crossroad, 1989)Google Scholar; idem, Sociology and the Jesus Movement (New York: Crossroad, 1989)Google Scholar.

61 The urban elites as land owners extracted money from peasants in the form of rent and taxes. Horsley points out that in Galilee there were three layers of taxation: the tithes mandated by the Torah, Herodian taxes, and finally those collected by the Romans.

62 Horsley, , Spiral of Violence, 287Google Scholar; see also 285-306.

63 Ibid., 324.

64 Mack argues for the former, Gerd Theissen for the latter. Theissen, (Sociology of Early Palestinian Christianity [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1978])Google Scholar argues that the Jesus movement in Palestine consisted of two groups: itinerant charismatics (who were the authority figures) and communities of local sympathizers. The radical commands of the synoptic tradition were intended for the former. Much of Horsley's Sociology and the Jesus Movement is a critique of Theissen's approach. For Horsley's critique of the Cynic hypothesis in the same volume, see 116-19.

65 Horsley, , Spiral of Violence, 246–55Google Scholar.

66 Ibid., 255-73.

67 Ibid., 231-45.

68 Ibid., 199-206.

69 Ibid., 143-44. See also 129-45.

70 Ibid., 160.

71 Ibid., 170-72, 207, 190-92. On p. 207, he writes: “God was imminently and presently effecting a historical transformation.” Horsley's orientation toward a present understanding of the kingdom is signified by a wordplay: Jesus' words about the kingdom are not to be understood in the sense of last or final things, but in the sense of “Finally, at last!” (p. 168).

72 Ibid., 324-25.

73 Ibid., 322.

74 It is interesting to note how the ghost of Schweitzer still walks. Despite the fact that Horsley provides a thoroughly historical way of reading both apocalyptic and the mission of Jesus, he seems to take for granted an imminent eschatology that requires assimilation.

75 In my own case, though I deny imminent eschatology, I do not exclude eschatology altogether from Jesus' message. In addition to speaking of the kingdom of God as a present power, Jesus apparently used kingdom language to refer to the eschatological banquet with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Matt 8:11-12; cf. Luke 13:28-29) and seems to have affirmed a life beyond death in response to a question about resurrection (Mark 12:18-27). He seems to have spoken of a last judgment (e.g., the Q passages Luke 10:12-15, 11:31-32). However, these “events” were not said to be imminent; rather, in the judgment when it comes, the “men of this generation” will fare worse than Gentiles from the past. It is not said that the judgment is imminent. Instead, the function of these sayings seems to be to subvert or reverse popular eschatological expectations: the last judgment and the kingdom, when they come, will be very different from what is expected.

76 Most of the texts in both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament that refer to a new world beyond the eschaton envision a continuing earth, for example, in Revelation: the New Jerusalem descends to a new or renewed earth. For one passage that envisions the meltdown and disappearance of the elements, see 2 Peter 3:10-12.

77 Carmignac, J., “Les Dangers de L'Eschatologie,” NTS 17 (1970-1971) 365–90, esp. 388-90CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

78 For example, Caird, George (The Language and Imagery of the Bible [London: Duckworth, 1980] 243–71)Google Scholar specifies seven different senses in which eschatology is used.

79 My own understanding of end-of-the-world eschatology (see above p. 13–14) need not involve the end of the earth; in the messianic age, the world of Jerusalem, banquets, and vineyards may remain. But it is an objective change of affairs that results in “everything being different,” in such a way that even outsiders or non-believers will have to say, “Yes, you were right, the end was coming.” (I owe this way of describing “objective” eschatology to a conversation with John Dominic Crossan.) Thus, when I deny imminent eschatology to Jesus, I am denying that he expected this kind of divine intervention in the near future.

80 Some of this work has already been done. See the report of the work on apocalyptic literature done within the SBL in the 1970s in Collins, John, ed., Apocalypse: The Morphology of a Genre, Semeia 14 (1979), andGoogle Scholaridem. The Apocalyptic Imagination (New York: Crossroad, 1984)Google Scholar.

81 See, for example, Bruce Chilton's work on kingdom language in the Targums, in God in Strength (Linz: Plochl, 1979).Google Scholar Also, McCarthy, Brian Rice (“Jesus, The Kingdom, and Theopolitics,” SBL 1990 Seminar Papers [Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1990] 311–21)Google Scholar suggests that the term would have had an intrinsically political meaning to the occasional hearers who were Jesus' audience.

82 There have been exceptions, of course, but they have not played much part in the scholarly discussion. For a review of scholarship's tendency to see Jesus' social stance within these two polarities, see my Conflict, Holiness and Politics, 4-17. Horsley also stresses this point in Jesus and the Spiral of Violence.

83 See also the insightful essay by Wink, Walter, “Neither Passivity Nor Violence: Jesus' Third Way,” in Lull, David J., ed., SBL 1988 Seminar Papers (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988) 210–24; andGoogle Scholaridem, “Jesus and the Domination System,” in David J. Lull, ed., SBL 1991 Seminar Papers [forthcoming].

84 Central to addressing these questions is a clearer understanding of Jesus' social world, identified earlier in this essay as one of the central emphases of contemporary scholarship.

85 The connection between imminent eschatology and the denial of anything political to Jesus can also be seen in Meier's, John P. recent essay, “Reflections on Jesus-of-History Research Today,” in Charlesworth, James H., ed., Jesus' Jewishness (New York: Crossroad, 1991) 92:Google Scholar “Jesus seems to have had no interest in the great political and social questions of his day. He was not interested in the reform of the world because he was prophesying its end.”