Jesus according to the New Testament

James D. G. Dunn

• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781467452540
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

New Testament scholar James D. G. Dunn has published his research on Christian origins in numerous commentaries, books, and essays. In this small, straightforward book designed especially for a lay audience, Dunn focuses his fifty-plus years of scholarship on elucidating the New Testament witness to Jesus, from Matthew to Revelation. Dunn's Jesus according to the New Testament constantly points back to the wonder of those first witnesses and greatly enriches our understanding of Jesus.

CHAPTER ONE

Jesus according to

Jesus

Can we be confident that we are able to get back to Jesus’s own message and views of himself? John Meier certainly has no doubts on the subject—and the five volumes of A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus include a clear and fully worked-out answer.¹ Perhaps, however, a briefer answer will help focus attention on the key features that enable us to speak with confidence not only of the impact that Jesus made but also of Jesus’s own understanding of what he was about. The obvious way to go about it is to focus on the distinctive features of what the first Christians remembered about Jesus as recorded by the earliest evangelists.² The following pages explore this in three ways: lessons learned from Jesus, distinctive features of Jesus’s ministry, and Jesus’s own self-understanding.³

Lessons Learned from Jesus

There are quite a number of emphases and priorities that we can say with some confidence the first followers of Jesus attributed to Jesus.

The Love Command

The summation of the love command is recorded by the first three Gospels.⁴ Since all three agree on the principal features, we need cite only Mark’s version:

One of the scribes . . . asked him, “Which commandment is the first of all?” Jesus answered, “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart. . . .’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” (Mark 12:28–31)⁵

The first quotation comes from Deuteronomy 6:5, the fundamental creed of Israel, so it would occasion no surprise to those who first heard and circulated the Jesus tradition. It is the second commandment that would be something of a surprise when first uttered. For it comes from a much less well-known and less-used passage in the Torah: Leviticus 19:18. In early Jewish reflection it is hardly as prominent as the first—the third clause in a verse that is part of a sequence regarding personal relationships and obligations. “You shall not hate in your heart anyone of your kin; you shall reprove your neighbor, or you will incur guilt yourself. You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD” (Lev 19:17–18).

Such esteem for Leviticus 19:18c as the second of the two commandments that sum up the law of God is exceptional. Explicit references to Leviticus 19:18 are lacking in Jewish literature prior to Jesus, and the allusions that exist give it no particular prominence—though, subsequently, the opinion is attributed to Rabbi Akiba (early second century CE) that Leviticus 19:18 is “the greatest general principle in the Torah.”⁶ Since the prominence given in the earliest history of Christianity to the command to “Love your neighbor as yourself”⁷ is most obviously attributed to the influence of Jesus’s teaching, it is probably not unfair to deduce that the similar emphasis of Akiba attests the same influence. At any rate, the abstraction and exaltation of Leviticus 19:18c as the second of the two greatest commandments can be confidently attributed to Jesus and strongly attests his influence.

Priority of the Poor

This priority is most striking in several Gospel passages. Notable is Jesus’s response to the rich young man, who had observed all the commandments but lacked one thing: “Go, sell what you own, and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven” (Mark 10:21 parr.). Similarly his commendation of the poor widow who in giving two copper coins to the treasury had, in Jesus’s perspective, “out of her poverty . . . put in everything she had, all she had to live on” (Mark 12:42–44 // Luke 21:2–4). In Jesus’s response to the Baptist’s question as to whether he (Jesus) was the fulfillment of (messianic) expectation, the climax in Jesus’s answer is that “the poor have good news brought to them” (Matt 11:5 // Luke 7:22). Notable too is the way Luke begins his account of Jesus’s mission, by narrating Jesus’s reading from Isaiah 61 in the Nazareth synagogue: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor” (Luke 4:18). And equally striking is Luke’s version of the Beatitudes—the first being “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God” (Luke 6:20; an interesting variation of the version in Matthew: “Blessed are the poor in spirit” [Matt 5:3]). It should occasion little surprise, then, that for Luke a key feature of the gospel is that it is good news for the poor: that it is the poor, the maimed, the lame, and the blind who should be invited to a great feast (Luke 14:13, 21); and Zacchaeus demonstrates his readiness for salvation in that he gives half of his goods to the poor (Luke 19:8).

Of course, the priority of the poor is a prominent emphasis within Israel’s own law (e.g., Deut 15:11). But that the particular concern for the poor so prominent among the first Christians is to be attributed to the influence of Jesus’s own emphasis can hardly be doubted. So with the early concern among disciples in the Jerusalem community for the poor widows among their members that resulted in the first formal Christian organization (Acts 6:1–6). The profound concern for the poor displayed by James attests the same concern (Jas 2:2–6). The same impression is given by the fact that in the Jerusalem agreement—that gentile converts need not be circumcised—the only other concern indicated was “that we remember the poor, which,” Paul adds, “was actually what I was eager to do” (Gal 2:10). Similarly there can be little doubt as to why Paul gave such importance to helping the poor among the saints in Jerusalem, making a special collection for them in the churches that he had founded, and was willing to risk his own life to bring the collection to Jerusalem.⁸ We may be confident, then, that concern for the poor is one of the priorities that the first Christians learned from Jesus.

Sinners Welcome

A particular feature of Jesus’s ministry that caused surprise and shock to his religious contemporaries was his openness to those regarded as unacceptable in religious company. According to the first three Gospels, it was one of the features of Jesus’s conduct that drew criticism from the “righteous.” Early in his account Mark reports the offense Jesus caused by his readiness to eat “with sinners and tax collectors.” “Why does he do this?” complained Pharisees and scribes. To which Jesus famously replied, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I have come to call not the righteous but sinners” (Luke adds “. . . to repentance”; Mark 2:16–17 parr.). Matthew and Luke (Q)⁹ note a similar criticism later: “Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!” (Matt 11:19 // Luke 7:34). But it is again Luke who gives particular emphasis to this aspect of Jesus’s conduct. He notes the repeated criticism of Jesus on this point: “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them” (Luke 15:2). To which Jesus replies with the parables of the shepherd’s lost sheep and the woman’s lost silver coin: that of course the shepherd goes in search of the sheep and the woman for the coin until they find what had been lost (Luke 15:3–10). Luke alone narrates the parable contrasting the prayers of the Pharisee and the tax collector, in which it is the latter who prays, “God, be merciful to me a sinner,” whose prayer is truly heard (Luke 18:9–14). And it is Luke alone who narrates the episode in which Jesus goes to be a guest with the “chief tax collector,” Zacchaeus, despite the criticism that Zacchaeus was “a sinner.” The episode ends with Jesus’s reassurance that salvation has come to this house, since he (Zacchaeus) also is a son of Abraham (Luke 19:1–10).

It is hardly surprising, then, that Paul could sum up the gospel in terms of the great reversal—of God’s love for sinners. “God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us” (Rom 5:8). “For just as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous” (Rom 5:19). And it was Paul who pressed the logic of the gospel: that if gentiles are to be classified as “sinners,” then, of course, the gospel is for them too, justification being by faith in Christ and not by doing the works of the law (Gal 2:15–17). It can hardly be doubted that this extension of the gospel, to gentiles as well as Jews, was the direct result of the recognition that the good news that Jesus brought was primarily for sinners.

Openness to Gentiles

Jesus’s commission of his disciples, in effect to join in his ministry, raises the question whether Jesus himself was open to gentiles: “Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matt 10:5–6). But Matthew records this as in effect simply a (preliminary) phase in Jesus’s ministry, since he takes more pains to emphasize that Jesus saw the gospel as for gentiles also. It is Matthew alone who provides Isaiah 42:1–4 as one of the Old Testament prophecies that Jesus fulfilled, climaxing in the expectation that “in his [Christ’s] name the Gentiles will hope” (Matt 12:21). It is Matthew who adds to the account of the healing of the centurion’s servant the prediction of Jesus that “many will come from east and west and will eat with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, while the heirs of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness” (Matt 8:11–12). And it is Matthew who ends his Gospel with Jesus commissioning the apostles to “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations” (Matt 28:19). So we can be confident that Matthew was fully in accord with the early Christian conviction that the gospel was also for gentiles and that this conviction was fully in accord with Jesus and with his preaching and expectation during his earthly ministry.¹⁰

Women among His Close Followers

Somewhat oddly Mark concludes his account of Jesus’s crucifixion and death by noting that on the edge of the onlookers were women, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salome, who had followed and ministered to him in Galilee, and also “many other women who had come up with him to Jerusalem” (Mark 15:40–41).¹¹ The oddity, of course, includes the fact that precisely at this point Jesus’s male disciples seem to have abandoned Jesus altogether—though John adds that “the disciple whom Jesus loved” was there with the women (John 19:25–27). Luke and John earlier both tell the touching story of Jesus’s closeness to the sisters Martha and Mary (Luke 10:38–42; John 11). And Matthew and John make special mention of initial resurrection appearances to Mary Magdalene in particular at Jesus’s now empty tomb.¹² The fact that none of these appearances are included in what we may regard as the formal list of resurrection appearances drawn on by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:3–8 is presumably just a reminder that women’s testimony was not given as much weight as men’s. It is all the more notable, therefore, that, despite what was regarded as the weaker status of women’s testimony, Matthew and John nevertheless give prominence to the appearances to Mary Magdalene in particular.

That this testimony would have been regarded as shocking to Jesus’s contemporaries may well have been a factor in ensuring that the testimony was preserved and given expression in the written Gospels—a reminder that women were an important part of Jesus’s disciple group and played a vital role within it. And should we not see a connection here with the prominence of women among Paul’s coworkers? That the ex-Pharisee, previously committed to the maintenance of Jewish tradition, including the lower status of women, should after his conversion include many women among his close colleagues and “coworkers,” a little over 20 percent,¹³ should probably be regarded as an indication of the often unmentioned influence of the tradition of Jesus’s ministry on Paul.

Openness to Children

The key incident recollected by the first three Gospels is Mark 10:13–16 parr. Notable is the fact, recorded by all three evangelists, that when people brought children to Jesus, that he might bless the children, his disciples rebuked them. Jesus’s own indignant response was, “Let the children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs” (Mark 10:14). Mark and Luke add Jesus’s saying, “Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it” (Mark 10:15 // Luke 18:17).¹⁴ Given the notable influence of Jesus on the personal relations of his disciples, we should probably detect the influence of Jesus here too in the “household codes” that appear in the later Pauline letters.¹⁵ Such household codes were familiar then, but notable in Paul’s exhortations is the assumption that children and slaves would be fully part of the Christian gathering and could or should be addressed directly. It is hardly straining the evidence to infer that this too attests the continuing influence of Jesus’s mission on his disciples.

Relaxation of Food Laws

This is one of the most remarkable features of Jesus’s mission, not least since it cut so sharply across a traditional Jewish concern for purity. Not surprisingly it is given extensive treatment by Mark and Matthew (Mark 7:1–23 // Matt 15:1–20). It b...