Profiles of Jesus
Ed. Roy W Hoover, Polebridge
Press, 2002
Excavating the Bible
Anyone who has watched an archeological dig
cannot but be impressed by the fine attention to detail displayed by
their devotees. Valid
results can come in this discipline only from the most precise, careful
and systematic excavation. Roy Hoover, editor of this fine book,
likens the work of the Jesus Seminar on the gospels to an archeological
exploration. He notes that current scholarship acknowledges several
levels of tradition in the gospels. The earliest is the "Jesus
level". There a number of artifacts have been found. These are sayings, stories and activities which are typical of the Jesus of
history. Of course, all artifacts have to be interpreted. They must be
understood in terms of the rest of the evidence on-site. And none of
this evidence is fully compelling unless placed in the context of other
evidence from other sites. This book is a collection of
interpretations of Jesus.
Thirteen scholars have picked carefully through the artifacts. Each has
come up with a profile of the man buried in the gospels texts. As with
any such collection, some strike one as particularly useful. Others
somehow just don't hit the spot. Having said that, the essays are almost
all gripping in some way or other. Frontiers
Our understanding of Jesus has of late taken a new turn. Spurred on
by the belief that the Bible is somehow magically inspired directly by
God, many generations of scholars have excavated its texts minutely.
Every jot and every tittle has been sifted, sorted, labelled and placed
on a suitable shelf. Inevitably,
though, a generation has come along which is not quite so deeply imbued
by a deep conviction that the New Testament in particular is a holy
site, one which must be dug only in this or that way. As a result, the
exploratory ditches have been extended in directions previous generations might not have
been too happy about. First, serious work has long-since begun on assessing the physical
evidence of the near Eastern landscape. To give just one example: the
bustling, heterogeneous, Hellenistic town of Sepphoris is being excavated by consecutive
teams of archeologists (hampered somewhat by the current violence). Why concentrate on this obscure place? Because
it was little more than an hour's walk from Nazareth, in Jesus' time a
tiny hamlet. That Jesus was not familiar with Sepphoris stretches the imagination too far. As our evidence
grows about the town, we are able to ask more questions and get more
answers about Jesus. What languages he might have spoken, where he might
have roamed and what understanding of other cultures he probably had,
have come more sharply into focus. Second, a different sort of excavation
now includes the civilisations which surrounded and deeply influenced the
Hebrew culture of the first century. Some scholars, perhaps secretly worried
that Jesus might be jostled from his heavenly throne, have sought to
seal off the Jewish culture from Greek, Roman and Persian contamination.
Their general though often unspoken thesis that Jewish social and
religious constructs were somehow impermeable to other cultures has
proved incorrect. One
particularly useful exploration has been recent delvings into the
text and context of Josephus' accounts of the period [1]. New sites
of written information have
been opened up as a result. They are presently contributing much to our
knowledge of [a] some of the limits of what we can conclude about Jesus, and [b]
the more fruitful directions and layers in which scholars can excavate
in the future. Last, and
in my view probably more important, is a paradigm shift which is likely
to force
Christianity at large into new directions - albeit at a snail's pace,
such is the intransigence of the Church's leaders. This book is one of
the first steps in the formulation of that shift. It exemplifies two
principles as Christians stumblingly explore this new way of regarding
Jesus:
The paradigm shift starts when it is recognised that only a
relatively small part of the witness of the gospels is history, and
that the rest is theology.
This limitation allows us to put together no more than a profile of
Jesus. Any thought of deriving even the slimmest biography of the
man is now finally out of the question. Only about 20 percent of the
gospel record can be granted the status of good history. All
of what remains is interpretation - a theological slant given Jesus
by those who were first enraptured by him. The shift develops further when Jesus is granted a fully human status,
and when the divinity thrust upon him - quite naturally and rightly
- by the early Church is finally abandoned.
When the biblical site is stripped of its divine interpretation,
only the artifacts of a man are left. But not just a man. For
even the slim record we have of what really happened and what Jesus
really said reveals a person of great power and depth. Christians
have persisted for so long and remain so captivated by him for very
good reason.
The skeleton
One might have expected a diverse and sometimes contradictory group
of profiles to emerge in this book. I would have been disappointed if
that had happened. For if it had, I might have concluded that we were
back in familiar territory, one in which each person projects his or her
private desires onto an ambiguous ink-blot Jesus. The profiles
share a database. It is, broadly speaking, the conclusions of the Jesus
Seminar about which portions of the gospels are good history. The
great interest, then, is to see in what directions each author goes.
What sort of skeletal Jesus is revealed? Though it should be noted that
the many hysterical protests about the work of the seminar are just that
- hysterical. The basic layers of good history exposed by the Seminar
are not startling. They have been around for many, many decades.
It's just that, until now, they have had neither the visibility nor the
credibility which the Seminar has got for them. As Hoover remarks,
the profiles
... offer some differing perspectives on Jesus, but they also are
in agreement about certain matters of crucial importance in any
attempt to gain an informed view of him as a figure of history.
Among them are that
-
Jesus did not claim to be either the Messiah or to be divine.
-
Jesus did not intend to start an organisation. The Church we have
known through history was not, as its leaders claim, his intentional
creation.
-
He told others of his vision of the way God does things in the
world - that is, if God's kingdom or imperial rule. Today we might
call this God's socio-political system, how God would run the
nation.
-
A fundamental principle which Jesus spoke of and lived out was
that of inclusiveness. He expounded total liberation from both the
confining ethnocentric boundaries of traditional Judaism and from
the disempowering hierarchical patronage of the Roman Empire.
-
Contrary to a long-held Christian tradition, Jesus did not
predict that God would come to liberate the saved from the evil
empire of Satan. He was not apocalyptic in his outlook.
-
His was a vision of how life might be, of how each and every
person might explore and even reach full potential as children of
the Father.
-
The teachings and dogmas of the Church are based largely upon the
contents of John's Gospel. All the contributors agree that very
little of this can be "what really happened". It is of
almost no use in discovering the Jesus of history. It is first and
foremost and exposition of a theological system and therefore is
misleading about his primary concerns.
The Jesus We Know
What Jesus said turns out to be of pivotal importance. A number of
the contributors argue that Jesus' sayings lend meaning to his actions.
Actions do not speak louder than words, writes Lane McGaughy. The former
fade more rapidly and tend to be less accurately transmitted. Moreover,
Jesus lived in a world where
... language was potent, a world in which words could move the gods
to change their plans (a world of prayers and curses) and
word-pictures could enlighten and empower marginalized peasants ...
The lens of social meanings determines to a considerable
extent what we can discern about Jesus. "Blessed are the poor"
means one thing in a wealthy society and another in one where 99 percent
of the population lives on or below the breadline. Thus there is a
reciprocal relationship between first-century culture and the sayings of
Jesus.
Particularly good in this respect is the contribution from Stephen
Patterson [2]. He rightly points out that history
is not a science. It does not deliver the same type of objectivity.
At best the historian can strive only to be fair, unprejudiced, and
self-critical in looking at the past. Certainty always lies beyond the
historian's grasp. But this should not be viewed as a loss, a
deficiency of history. To the contrary, it is its very nature and
strength.
Given the nature of history, we nevertheless know the following about
Jesus with a very high degree of probability:
-
Jesus' notion of "God's Empire" was a profoundly
political statement, intensely subversive in intent and effect. To
suggest that God's Empire would or should replace the existing order
was bound to be received with suspicion and perhaps lethal force.
-
The Roman Empire was built on patronage. A few immensely powerful
and wealthy families funnelled resources down through dependents in
order to maintain the status quo. This system depended
heavily on its various parts maintaining their places and functions.
Jesus suggested that the patronage system should change radically.
By its nature it excluded those who had "no quid to
offer for quo". The excluded were those who fell through
the cracks in the system. They are the ones who, said Jesus, must be
brought in from the highways and byways to share the feast.
-
The expendables of the system are dirty people. They are the ones
who are too soiled to be fully acceptable to the in-crowd. From tax
collector to whore, said Jesus, these are the ones who come first in
God's kingdom. They are not unclean, but clean in God's eyes. The
first shall be last, and the last first.
-
The expendables experience a deep sense of shame in a society
built around the concept of honour. The honourable person is the one
who has a social place, role and meaning. Jesus is a shameless fool
who associates with other shameless fools. Let the outcasts and
sinners eat at the table with you, said Jesus.
-
Expendables deserve what they get. They are what they are because
they have sinned against God. But these are precisely who Jesus
calls, not the righteous. He serves the sick, not the healthy.
-
Honourable membership of the social order is given to those who
pay the price, who can afford the subscription. For Jesus, God's
kingdom is "unbrokered". It is free for the taking by
anyone.
Artful use of the spoken word was a characteristic of the way
Jesus related to people. His language was concrete and specific. His
images strike an immediate chord. He does not beat people up with holy
writings. His focus was always outside himself and usually figurative
and metaphorical, yet his expression resists literal interpretation. His
words elude anticipation and he makes free use of parody. His parables
in particular are striking and easily recalled.
An intense, focused vision provided the life of Jesus with a
strikingly unified vision of life and the world. Many competing visions
vied for the attention of the people of his day. His turns out to have
been by far the most enduring.
These are just some of the insights this book gives the reader. It
carries forward a growing tradition of writing in terms which [a] relate
to our everyday lives and [b] which avoid the jargon which bedevils most
theology. In short, it is comparatively easy to read, yet agreeably
profound in its conclusions - a rare combination.
______________________________________________
[1] For example Josephus and the New Testament,
Hendrickson, 2003
[2] Dirt, Shame and Sin in the Expendable Company of Jesus
[Home] [Back]
|
