A Man Attested by God

The Human Jesus of the Synoptic Gospels

J. R. Daniel Kirk

• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781467445771
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

Thought-provoking alternative perspective on the full humanity of Jesus Christ In  A Man Attested by God  J. R. Daniel Kirk presents a comprehensive defense of the thesis that the Synoptic Gospels present Jesus not as divine but as an idealized human figure. Counterbalancing the recent trend toward early high Christology in such scholars as Richard Bauckham, Simon Gathercole, and Richard Hays, Kirk here thoroughly unpacks the humanity of Jesus as understood by Gospel writers whose language is rooted in the religious and literary context of early Judaism. Without dismissing divine Christologies out of hand, Kirk argues that idealized human Christology is the best way to read the Synoptic Gospels, and he explores Jesus as exorcist and miracle worker within the framework of his humanity. With wide-ranging exegetical and theological insight that sheds startling new light on familiar Gospel texts,  A Man Attested by God  offers up-to-date, provocative scholarship that will have to be reckoned with.

1 Idealized Human Figures in Early Judaism

The conversation in which I am participating with this book is located in the world of early Judaism. Each of the Gospel writers signals to his readers in the opening verses that the story of Jesus somehow connects with, or fulfills, the scriptures of Israel. Without prejudicing the question of how each author sees the relationship between those scriptures and the story of Jesus, it is fair to say that from the start each of the Synoptic Gospel cues the reader toward a scriptural matrix for understanding the connotations of the plots that unfold in their pages. Such scriptures, however, do not come into the Gospels unmediated, but within a Jewish tradition of interpretation and what might be called theological development. These realities have led to the sorts of arguments I outlined in the introduction, arguments to the effect that the uniqueness of God as articulated at various points in Israel’s scriptures generated a Jewish monotheism in the Second Temple period that, in turn, limited what might be said about other beings, angelic or human. Scholars whose work has been attuned to the strongly monotheistic conviction of early Judaism (visible, as they will often point out, in the perhaps daily recitation of the shema) have thus turned to the New Testament and asked what the implications might be for a Jewish writer, committed to monotheism, who depicts Jesus in the various ways visible in the early Christian writings.¹

The purpose of this chapter is not to deny that “divine functions which Jesus exercises are intrinsic to who God is.”² Instead, I wish to argue that prior to Jesus, innumerable people, what I am calling “idealized human figures,” are also depicted as performing such functions in Jewish literature. Thus, the framework developed here demonstrates that the exalted depictions of Jesus found in the Synoptic Gospels fit well within early Jewish ideas without redefining God as such.³ Whereas Bauckham seeks to establish the absolute uniqueness of some functions by analyzing texts descriptive of angelic activities and finding (almost) no instances in which God’s intrinsic functions are impinged, this chapter demonstrates that attribution of such unique functions of God to other figures happens remarkably often once we turn our gaze from the heavenly host to humanity. Jewish literature in the biblical and Second Temple periods repeatedly assigns to human figures the roles and attributes that are typically seen as being reserved uniquely for God alone. By focusing on this facet of early Jewish writings, we discover that Jesus’s identity markers are of a piece with this rich Jewish tradition.

The category I posit here, “idealized human figure,” refers to non-angelic, non-preexistent human beings, of the past, present, or anticipated future, who are depicted in textual or other artifacts as playing some unique role in representing God to the rest of the created realm, or in representing some aspect of the created realm before God.⁴ In a weak sense, this category might simply refer to a person or people who fill a particular role, without necessarily commenting on whether they are uniquely powerful or pious. There is a stronger sense, however, in which such idealization entails the very sorts of sharing in the (otherwise) unique prerogatives of God that New Testament scholars might point to as signaling a divine Christology. Both types of figures are surveyed below, though the latter subset will prove more enlightening for demonstrating the broad range of possibilities open to early “monotheistic” Jews for describing a person as playing the role of God without impinging on their “monotheistic” commitments. As I discussed in the introduction, the construction of the category of idealized human figure in this chapter then provides a paradigm whose explanatory power I test in extensive conversation with the New Testament writings.

Scholars have deployed such a category before in their studies of early Judaism. A 1980 volume edited by John Collins and George Nickelsburg explores “ideal figures” in early Judaism.⁵ The essays in their volume came into being through a process of realization that heroes in early Jewish literature were not simply celebrated for reasons such as faithful Torah keeping, but for virtues such as leadership, strength, righteousness (variously defined), or faithful embodying of a touchstone vocation such as prophet, priest, or king. They categorized the figures in three ways. First are those “drawn from the ancient past.”⁶ Initially, these appeared in the “history-like” literature of Israel, but their significance blossoms in ways that are often “distinct from their role in the unfolding history of the people.”⁷ Second are figures of the anticipated future. Messiahs and “son of man” figures fit here.⁸ Third are the character types: visionaries, wise men, martyrs, charismatics, zealots, the righteous.⁹ An important dynamic that runs across all three types is that the various depictions of the characters depend more on the “circumstances, purposes, and ideals of the authors” than on historical antecedent, biblical precedent, or abstract ideal.¹⁰ Tradition and social setting play off each other to generate figures who help convey the message that a given author is striving for.

The object of concern here is not the actual historical figures who may stand behind such idealized depictions, but instead the depictions themselves, which interpret the significance of the person through various ascriptions, actions, and attributes. In positing such a categorization, I am seeking to curtail two possible missteps in the interpretation of the historical evidence. First, more limited categories such as “anticipated messiah” might prove too narrow and lead to the wrong conclusion: if Jesus does something that no messiah was thought to do, such as raise the dead, one might conclude in too hasty a fashion that this means Jesus is being depicted as “more than messiah,” hinting strongly that he is God. Second, comparing idealized descriptions from early Jewish texts with those in the Synoptic Gospels enables us to compare like with like (i.e., textual depictions of idealized figures). Here, I am engaging the work of Larry Hurtado, who suggests in defense of his own thesis that what would be required to demonstrate that the early Christians were not treating Jesus as God would be nothing less than another historical, Jewish community worshiping their founder alongside Israel’s God.¹¹ Such a measure is unduly high. If textual evidence indicates that an idealized human figure, should such a figure appear, would be included in the worship of God’s people, then this may well explain the actions of the earliest Christians, echoed in the texts we now possess.

The category of “idealized human figure” seeks to chart a third way between “low Christology” that defines Jesus as “a mere human being,” and a “high” Christology that depicts Jesus as the God of Israel.¹² To claim that someone is an “idealized human” is to open up a broad range of potentially exalted descriptions. From the shady hints of Genesis 1, an idealized human might be depicted as ruling not only the earth, but even the heavens and the angels.¹³ Growing out of the suggestive language of “image and likeness,” an idealized human might be seen as physically bearing the divine likeness through a glory that cows the nations. Royal theology might be elaborated with the notion that the king sits on God’s own throne and even shares in the worship that God is due. An idealized human might be imagined as a priest who actually enters the heavenly court in his duties, who completes the work of creation, or whose word is the very word of God itself. An idealized eschatological redeemer might even play the part assigned to YHWH in a prophetic text about a coming visitation. We see all of this and more in biblical and post-biblical Judaism. I turn now to demonstrate the wide-ranging presence of idealized human figures in early Jewish religious texts.

A. ADAM AS PAST AND FUTURE

When probing the question of how it comes to be that early Christians depicted Jesus as performing actions or receiving ascriptions or possessing attributes typically reserved for God alone, a tendency within scholarship has been to look to angels, Wisdom, Logos, and other heavenly figures. My contention, however, is that within the Jewish scriptures the first intimation of humanity’s purpose is none other than playing the role of God on the earth. Without claiming that there was one, broadly deployed Adam theology in biblical and early Judaism, we can see that both the creation narratives of Genesis 1 and 2–3 themselves and the reuse of those traditions, create an important set of possible identifications between God and idealized human figures.¹⁴

1. GENESIS

The creation stories deploy models of God’s engagement with creation that recur elsewhere in Israel’s scriptures as well. One particular model that resonates broadly with the current project is what Mark Smith calls the “divine power” model.¹⁵ In this model, “the deity is viewed primarily as a warrior-king and power is the primary idea in this divine reality.”¹⁶ This royal language of “warrior-king” signals how such a view of God at times finds its earthly touchstone in the person of the human king. The human king’s power comes from the divine king, so that “it is through the human king that divine power is made manifest in the world.”¹⁷ Within this model of God’s unique work of creation and sovereignty, there are certain idealized human figures whose role is nothing less than being assigned a share in that very sovereignty that is God’s by right of creation.

In Genesis 1 humanity itself fits such a description. It is often asserted that Christian interpretation has made a bit too much of the protoplasts; however, we do well to remember that stories of origins are never told simply for their own sake. They are told to locate the tellers within (and often at the center of) a cosmic narrative.¹⁸ Genesis 1 is no different on this score. The depiction of humanity in this narrative is no less significant for having been well worn by generations of Christian theologizing:

Then God said, “Let us make humanity in our image, according to our likeness, and let them rule the fish of the sea and the birds of the sky and the beasts and the whole earth.” So God created humanity in his own image; in the image of God he created it, male and female he created them. Then God blessed them and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it. And rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the sky, and all the living things that creep on the earth.” (Gen 1:26-28)

Four aspects of this description point to the way in which the first humans are being idealized in the text: (1) the function of rule, (2) bearing God’s likeness, (3) the possibility that they are being described as God’s children, and (4) the blessing of fruitfulness and multiplication.¹⁹

The Priestly creation story in Genesis 1 not only puts on display God’s own sovereign rule through God’s creating order out of chaos but also depicts God sharing that sovereign rule with the creations. First, the sun and moon and stars are created to rule (משׁל) the lights (Gen 1:18). Later, humanity is created to rule (רדה) the creatures and to subdue (כבשׁ) the earth (Gen 1:28). The notion of a deity sharing its creative power with a human agent was a fairly common trope in the ancient Near East: creation occurred through conflict, and the primordial conflict and victory were emblematic of the nation’s conflict and (hoped for) victory on earth.²⁰ Genesis 1 democratizes this picture by depicting primal humanity, not just Israel’s kings, as those who are entrusted with rule over the earth.²¹ Moreover, this rule is part of what makes humanity God-like.²² Thus, John Goldingay draws the following conclusion about Genesis 1: “It has implicitly described God as a king who fulfills the king’s vocation of exercising sovereignty in such a way as to bring life to his people. In being created in God’s image, humanity is to fulfill this royal role in the world on God’s own behalf.”²³ Taking up the rol...