Jesus of Nazareth

Jew from Galilee, Savior of the World

Jens Schröter, Wayne Coppins, S. Brian Pounds, Wayne Coppins, S. Brian Pounds

• Publisher: Baylor University Press
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781481301992
• eBook ISBN: 9781481303491
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

Jesus of Nazareth continues to fascinate. From antiquity onwards countless people have found meaning for their lives through Jesus' teaching. His life led to the establishment of a community that subsequently grew into what is today the world's largest religion. At the center of the Christian faith stands the confession that this Jesus is both "true human being and true God."

In Jesus of Nazareth, noted German New Testament scholar Jens Schröter directly addresses the connection between Jesus' humanity and divinity--how the historical Jesus can also be the Christ of confession. Schröter begins by looking at the modern quest for the "historical Jesus" from its beginnings down to the present. In the process Schröter isolates key questions of historical method--how can we reconstruct the past? What is the relationship between these reconstructions and past reality itself? Schröter then examines the words and deeds of Jesus, including his death and resurrection, in their Galilean and Greco-Roman contexts. Schröter finally measures the impact that Jesus has had in literature, film, music, and the fine arts. Jesus of Nazareth thus narrates the remarkable story of how a Jew from Galilee became the savior of the world, how Jesus can be said to be both God and human, and how this Jesus continues to exert influence.

Part I

INTRODUCTION

1

The “Historical” and the “Remembered”
Jesus; or, How It “Really” Was

For our culture Jesus of Nazareth has a unique meaning. No other person has had a similar impact or influenced European history in a comparable manner. The Christian character of Greco-Roman late antiquity, the opposition of Pope and emperor in the Middle Ages, the Crusades, the Reformation, the Declaration of Human Rights, and the constitutions of numerous countries of the European and North American cultural sphere are historical effects of the religion at whose center stands the confession of faith in Jesus Christ. The traces of engagement with Jesus in music and literature, film and painting, philosophy and history writing—down to the reckoning of time post Christum natum¹—testify to a unique fascination that has emanated from him for about two thousand years. At all times the Sermon on the Mount has served again and again, up to the most recent past, as a critical standard—and not only within Christian churches.² The beatitudes, the command to love one’s enemies, and the Lord’s Prayer are known also to people who are far away from Christianity as central contents of the proclamation of Jesus.

At all times Jesus’ Passion has also found impressive representations—one need only think of the Passion music of Johann Sebastian Bach or the Isenheim Altarpiece of Matthias Grünewald (for this cf. the section “Good Friday and Easter: Suffering and Comfort upon the Face of God” in ch. 14)—and it has even given inspiration to the imitatio of his pains. One can find motifs inspired by the Passion narrative up to the present and in everyday culture—as, for example, on the poster with which the German Red Cross promoted blood donations, which contained a clearly recognizable allusion to the New Testament words of the Lord’s Supper (fig. 1.1). We will return to the impact of Jesus in chapter 14 of this book. Before doing so, a road must be laid that will lead us into the time when the itinerant preacher Jesus of Nazareth appeared in Galilee and Jerusalem. The effects that have gone forth from him cannot be understood without an engagement with these origins—even if they are not exhausted in them but represent creative further developments that testify to the formative power of the figure of Jesus.

FIGURE 1.1
Advertisement of the German Red Cross for blood donations: “My blood for you.”

In the past few decades the discussion about who Jesus “really” was has broken out anew. Numerous Jesus books published since then have sketched different pictures of his person. Jesus has appeared as a social revolutionary who acted on behalf of the poor and oppressed, as a prophet who announced the imminent dawning of the reign of God, as a wisdom teacher who proclaimed a radical ethic, and as a charismatic who founded a new community that critically distanced itself from traditional societal norms. In the following portrayal of Jesus it will become clear how these conceptions are to be evaluated according to the view presented here. At this point, however, it is first to be maintained that the new international Jesus research, which reaches across confessional boundaries, has impressively summoned into consciousness the significance of the quest for Jesus for Christian theology and beyond.

How could Jesus obtain such significance and become the center of a distinct religion? The witnesses of early Christianity provide a clear answer. The uniqueness of Jesus consists in the fact that in his person God and human being come directly into relation with each other. Through the activity of Jesus, the reign of God is established on earth; Jesus is the “image,” “imprint,” or “word” of God. He thus belongs on the side of God; he is the one through whom God has appeared in the world and toward whom God has acted in a unique manner in raising him from the dead. In Jesus Christ one thus encounters God himself. This simultaneously means that the confession of Jesus Christ leads to salvation and the coparticipation in his way mediates new life. Let me now mention three New Testament texts that bring this conviction to expression, each in its own way.

(1)John’s Gospel speaks in an especially intensive way of the close relationship between Jesus and God. The actually invisible God is made known through Jesus (1.18); the one who sees Jesus the Son simultaneously sees God the Father (14.9). Jesus is therefore designated as the “Word,” which was already with God before the creation of the world. In a similar manner, other New Testament writings call Jesus “image,” “first born,” or “reflection” of God and thus bring to expression his close relationship with God.³

(2)Luke 12.8-9 (par. Matt 10.32-33) says, “Whoever confesses me before human beings, the Son of Man will also confess before the angels of God. But the one who denies me before human beings will be denied before the angels of God.” Here a judgment scene is presented: At the end of time one stands before God and his angels; Jesus, the Son of Man, can speak on behalf of someone or not. It depends on one’s own confession to Jesus before human beings whether Jesus does this and one is saved or whether one belongs to those who are condemned because one has denied Jesus in one’s earthly life.

(3)In 2 Cor 5.14-15 Paul writes, “One died for all, therefore all died. And he died for all so that those who live may no longer live for themselves but for the one who died and rose for them.” Here Paul connects the path of believers to that of Jesus Christ: they have died to their old life; they now have a share in the new life of the risen Jesus and have become a “new creation” through their belonging to him (v. 17). Thus, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ are understood as an event in which human beings can participate and as an event that opens for them the possibility of a new life.

The union of God and human being in Jesus Christ that comes to expression in these texts—he is “Word of God,” heavenly advocate in the last judgment, mediator of new life—was held fast to in the early Christian confessional formulae and was an undisputed foundation for Christian faith for a long time. It first became a problem for the modern consciousness. The Enlightenment specified human reason as a critical standard that was also to be applied to the biblical writings. This led to the distinction between rationally verifiable reports on the one hand and “myths” that interpret past events but must be distinguished from the events themselves on the other hand. The historical consciousness that emerged in the nineteenth century also made clear the distance that lies between the world of the New Testament and its interpreters. As a result, access to the past was tied to methodologically controlled research on sources that was supposed to lead to a picture of history that was as impartial as possible.

Enlightenment and historical-critical research compelled new reflection on the relation of divinity and humanity in Jesus Christ. Now it appeared certain only that Jesus was a human being, whereas the unity of God and human being in his person could no longer be presupposed as unproblematic. As a consequence, interest became focused on what could be determined about his activity and fate by means of historical research, and with this the quest for the “historical Jesus” was born. This quest inquires about Jesus without presupposing the confession of his divinity. The uniqueness grounded in his divine nature was thus placed in question. Can the knowledge of the earthly Jesus be reconciled with the confession of his divinity? Can the “historical Jesus” be reconciled with the “Christ of faith”? Historical Jesus research gives two answers to these questions.

The first answer says that one must distinguish between the results of historical research and faith convictions. Historical research can set forth a picture of the activity of Jesus and inquire into the causes for his execution on the basis of the witnesses that have been handed down. By contrast, whether Jesus acted with divine authority, whether God raised him from the dead, and whether he will return for the last judgment cannot be decided by means of historical criticism. Therefore, historical Jesus research does not make a judgment about the truth of the Christian faith either. Instead, it provides the foundation for comprehending its emergence. It makes clear that the Christian confession is a reaction to the claim of Jesus, which the New Testament designates as “discipleship” or as “faith,” but also that there are other possible ways of relating to Jesus besides this one. The conflicts reported in the early sources already show that the authority of Jesus was traced back to the Spirit of God but also that it could be evaluated as an alliance with Satan.⁴

Historical research thus aims to understand the connection between events and their subsequent interpretation, between event and narrative.⁵ It questions the sources with a view to whether what is reported by them actually took place, why precisely these things are reported about Jesus whereas others are not, and how event and interpretation relate to each other. Historical Jesus research thus views the sources with a critical and differentiating eye.

Biblical scholarship has decisively contributed to the development of this critical consciousness, whose beginnings can be traced back to the seventeenth century.⁶ In Jesus research it occurred for the first time in the second half of the eighteenth century in a treatise titled “Apology or Defense of the Rational Worshippers of God” by the Hamburg Orientalist Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768), post-humously published by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729–1781) in seven parts as “Fragments by an Anonymous Writer.” Since that time, the distinction between the events of the life and activity of Jesus on the one hand and their portrayal in the Gospels on the other hand has been a presupposition of the engagement with Jesus, and nobody doubts its legitimacy.

The second answer runs as follows: historical research does not restore the past again as it once took place. Rather, it investigates the sources from the perspective of its own time and thus understands the past in the light of its own present. For historical Jesus research this means that historical research sets forth pictures of the person of Jesus that correspond to the state of knowledge about Jesus’ time and that are at the same time influenced by the respective view of reality and by the assumptions that always play a role—consciously or unconsciously—in the interpretation of texts. Historical Jesus research thus exposes the Christian faith to critical scrutiny through historical-critical methods. In the process, it never attains certain, unrevisable results about the past. But it places an image of Jesus before one’s eyes that is rationally and ethically accountable in relation to the sources in the respective present. Thus, historical Jesus research is not a venture that is opposed to Christian faith, though one can also deal with Jesus as a historical person without being a Christian. Historical Jesus research challenges Christian faith to formulate its confession of Jesus in the light of current knowledge about his person and his time.

Thus, historical Jesus research simultaneously presents a challenge and a gain for specifying the relationship between the historical Jesus and the Christ of faith. The challenge consists in exposing the confession of Jesus to critical examination through scholarly research and to think it through ever anew in the light of the findings that are brought to the surface in the process. The gain consists in the fact that in this way the confession corresponds to the current conditions of knowledge and understanding does not become inaccessibly distant and conveyed only with difficulty. Let me also explicate this in somewhat greater detail.

The numerous Jewish writings that have been discovered and published since the second half of the nineteenth century have led to a much more exact perception of Judaism at the time of Jesus.⁷ Today’s portrayals of Jesus distinguish themselves at precisely this point from those that were written before these writings became known. But the fact that the Jewish sources are viewed with different eyes today has also contributed to this difference of perception. The new reflection on the relationship between Christianity and Judaism that began in the Christian theology of the second half of the twentieth century—initiated not least by the Shoah—is responsible for this change. It has substantially increased our sensitivity to the rootedness of Christianity in Judaism. No one disputes today that Jesus and Paul must be understood in the context of ancient Judaism—the one as a Galilean itinerant preacher, the other as a Diaspora Jew and Pharisee converted to Jesus Christ. The investigation of ancient Judaism as the historical context for the activity of Jesus and for the emergence of the Christian faith has been able to show that theses such as those of an “Aryan Jesus” or of pagan religion as soil that nourished early Christianity are false or one-sided. Not only the source situation but also the perspective on the sources have changed. Historical research always also has a corrective function with respect to the understanding of the present in light of the witnesses of the past.

Thus, historical research is equally obligated to the past and to the present. It preserves the traces of what has been from being forgotten; at the same time it resists a manipulation of the past for ethically questionable or politically questionable purposes.⁸

It is therefore necessary to distinguish between a “historical Jesus” set forth with the methods of historical research and the “earthly Jesus”: the “historical Jesus” is always a product of the evaluation of the sources by a male or female interpreter. Depending on how the sources are judged and fit together different pictures emerge. Historical portrayals of Jesus—precisely also portrayals put forth in more recent research based on intensive evaluation of the sources—therefore reveal differences that are substantial in part. Historical research will never attain to a definitive picture of Jesus, for the sources do not allow for only one interpretation. By contrast, the “earthly Jesus” is the Jew who lived and was active in Galilee in the first century and is no longer directly accessible in later times but is accessible only as mediated through interpretations. Therefore, historical portrayals of Jesus, just like other historical portrayals, are always a linking of present and past, and they contribute in this way to the understanding of reality. Therefore, the result of a present-day historical portrayal of Jesus is the Jesus remembered and made present from a specific perspective at the beginning of the twenty-first century.⁹

How was it “really”? This question can be answered only when facts and events are interpreted within a framework that is first disclosed to the view of the later interpreter. The historical events around Jesus, with which we are concerned in what follows, must be joined with one another and placed in a historical context. Whether a contemporary of Jesus would recognize him in the picture that emerges remains a hypothetical question that does not determine the value of a present-day portrayal of Jesus. What is more important is that such a Jesus picture must be plausible under current conditions of knowledge and oriented to the sources—also and precisely at those points at which Jesus appears foreign and uncomfortable to us in these sources. “Really” then means plausible in light of current presuppositions of understanding; understanding one’s own present in the light of the witnesses of the past, thus as a present that has come into being historically. Theref...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Translators’ Preface
• Preface to the English Edition
• Preface to the First Edition
• Preface to the Second Edition
• PART I INTRODUCTION
• 1 The “Historical” and the “Remembered” Jesus; or, How It “Really” Was
• 2 A Glance at the History of Research
• 3 The Historical Material: Remains and Sources
• PART II A PORTRAYAL OF JESUS
• 4 A Jew from Galilee: The Nazarene
• 5 A Jew from Galilee: The Galilean
• 6 A Jew from Galilee: The Jew
• 7 The Reign of God Begins: Jesus’ Encounter with John
• 8 The Reign of God Begins: Beginnings in Galilee
• 9 The Reign of God in the Proclamation of Jesus
• 10 Life in Light of the Reign of God: The Ethos of Jesus
• 11 Representative of God or Savior of Israel? The Self-Understanding of Jesus and the Judgment of His Contemporaries
• 12 The Jerusalem Events
• 13 Jesus and the Beginnings of Christian Faith
• 14 Spotlights on the Wirkungsgeschichte of Jesus
• Appendix: Maps and Figures
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index of Scripture and Ancient Sources
• Index of Modern Authors