Things That Matter : Historical Jesus Studies in the New Millennium 1

Word & World Volume 29, Number 2 Spring 2009 “Things That Matter”: Historical Jesus Studies in the New Millennium 1 MARK ALLAN POWELL he flurry of h...
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Word & World Volume 29, Number 2 Spring 2009

“Things That Matter”: Historical Jesus Studies in the New Millennium 1

MARK ALLAN POWELL he flurry of historical Jesus studies that marked the 1990s is over. Serious scholars are still doing serious scholarship, but, at a popular level, fans of the historical Jesus may long for those days when the discipline was more lively. Remember when Time and Newsweek devoted at least one cover each year to Jesus studies? Now they’ve had to turn to The Da Vinci Code, Mel Gibson’s passion movie, the Left Behind series, and Christian rock to sell those requisitely religious mid-December and Holy Week issues. On cable television, the VH1 network has had a huge hit with their nostalgia series I Love the Nineties. The show explores images and fads from a decade gone by: it was the time of Ally McBeal, Tanya Harding, and Tickle-Me-Elmo. And people who are interested in the historical Jesus may recall that it was also a time when Bible scholars could blackball Jesus by dropping little marbles into bowls; when headlines could scream, “Scholars Decide: Jesus Did Not Teach the Lord’s 1This article is a revised and greatly expanded version of a piece by the same name published online in SBL Forum (4 Nov. – 10 Dec., 2004) at http://www.sbl-site.org/publications/article.aspx?articleId=333 (accessed 1 November 2008).

People are less riled up over historical Jesus studies today than they were a decade or so ago, but the issues still matter, and they have profound implications for theology and piety, as well as for politics, philosophy, and the very self-image of Western civilization.

Copyright © 2009 by Word & World, Luther Seminary, Saint Paul, Minnesota. All rights reserved.

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Prayer!”; when John Dominic Crossan could announce that the postcrucifixion body of Jesus was devoured by wild dogs. Do you remember those days? Jane Schaberg called Jesus a (literal) bastard; Meier called him “a marginal Jew”; Leif Vaage said he was “a party animal”; Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza characterized him as a feminist prophet of the goddess Sophia; Crossan described him as “a Galilean hippie in a world of Augustan yuppies.”2 At one meeting I attended, a journalist who was covering the event for (get this!) GQ magazine turned to me and said, “You can’t make this stuff up!” So where are we now? What are the earmarks of Jesus scholarship a decade later? From 2002 to 2007, I chaired the “Historical Jesus Section” of the Society of Biblical Literature, and on the basis of that experience I will try to name some trends and traits of the current research. 1. Historical Jesus studies are becoming more clearly identified as a discrete field of inquiry. The field has typically been regarded as a subdivision of New Testament studies, which, in turn, belongs to the academic discipline of religion or theology. There have, however, been voices that questioned whether Jesus studies might not be more properly conceived as a subdivision of ancient history (parallel to, say, “Julius Caesar studies” or “Alexander the Great studies”). This identity crisis continues to be investigated, but, right now, the growing sense is that Jesus studies does not have to be a subset of anything. There is an increasing number of academics who think of themselves primarily as“Jesus scholars,” that is, as simply Jesus scholars, rather than as “New Testament scholars who happen to be interested in the historical Jesus” (or, for that matter, as “ancient historians who happen to be interested in Jesus”). 2. As a consequence of the above, the field has become more self-reflective with regard to its own history. The cute paradigm that describes that history as a series of phases (“Old Quest”; “No Quest”; “New Quest”; “Third Quest”) is falling out of favor. It reflects definite ideological bias. For one thing, the period that is usually designated “No Quest” (ca. 1906–1953) was actually a time when a great many significant works on Jesus were produced (albeit not too many that were of critical importance to post-Bultmannian Protestants, whose perspective the “No Quest” label represents). Likewise, when the “Third Quest” label was applied to current studies in a manner that would distinguish them from the “New Quest” movement of the mid-twentieth century, the clear implication was that those prior studies belonged to a terminated (failed) enterprise that had been replaced by a relevant new paradigm. Most Jesus scholars currently working in the field regard such labels as simplistic, inaccurate, and unnecessary. There is a quest for the historical Jesus, and it has been going on with diverse (but not easily or helpfully categorized) expressions for more than three hundred years. In other words, whereas 2For an overview of Jesus studies in the 1990s, including citations for all matters mentioned in this paragraph, see Mark Allan Powell, Jesus as a Figure in History: How Modern Historians View the Man from Galilee (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1998).

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the 1990s seemed to be a decade in which Jesus scholars wanted to be known as part of something new (a current “cutting edge” approach to Jesus unlike those failed quests of the past), the new millennium is an era in which Jesus scholars are prone to connect their work with past research. These days, the history of the discipline is not viewed as a fitful chronicle of stops and starts but as a progressive process of often insightful exploration. Current Jesus scholars embrace that history without feeling the need to define themselves over against it.

these days, the history of the discipline is not viewed as a fitful chronicle of stops and starts but as a progressive process of often insightful exploration 3. The much-maligned work of the Jesus Seminar has been reevaluated so that the legitimate contributions of the group are recognized and the reactions of academia against that group are regarded as hyperbolic.3 Many young scholars have trouble understanding what the fuss was all about. Certainly, the Jesus Seminar had its eccentricities, but there is nothing intrinsically odd or controversial about a group of qualified scholars gathering to test their hypotheses about Jesus by systematically working through the data to determine the extent to which these hold up. The Seminar’s methods and its conclusions remain subject to critique, but the charges that these scholars were guilty of “reprehensible deception” or “grandiosity and hucksterism”—or that the enterprise itself was “an academic disgrace” or “a ten-year exercise in self-promotion”—hardly seem justifiable.4 Now that some dust has settled, the Jesus Seminar’s work is often viewed as presenting a moderately (but not fully) persuasive case for what has become a minority understanding of Jesus. But their work is not viewed as preposterous or impetuous: their ideas about Jesus are at least plausible, based on possible construals of the evidence, and their well-documented judgments concerning hundreds of individual Bible passages offer a panoply of insight for anyone who engages the material seriously. 4. I notice a decrease these days in biographies of Jesus and an increase in dissertations concerning him. That translates into more focus on detail. There is a new generation of scholars who seem to have little interest in telling us everything about Jesus but who possess a passion for persuading us of some one thing that they are sure is true. 5. I notice less reliance on the apocryphal gospels than was in vogue a few years ago. No one can ignore those writings completely, but they seem to have 3The Jesus Seminar produced two major works: Robert W. Funk, Roy W. Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus (New York: Macmillan, 1993), and The Acts of Jesus: The Search for the Authentic Deeds of Jesus, ed. Robert W. Funk and the Jesus Seminar (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1998). 4I decline to name the (highly respected) scholars who offered these various comments; much time has passed, and I do not assume they would want to stand by their remarks. But, of course, these and similar statements are documented elsewhere (see Powell, Jesus as a Figure in History, 76).

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worn out their welcome among many scholars who think that their significance for historical reconstruction was exaggerated. With the possible exception of the Gospel of Thomas, the apocryphal works are almost unanimously viewed as late and all but void of historically reliable material independent of what can be found in canonical writings. Ironically, this movement away from the apocryphal gospels might be due to the work of the Jesus Seminar, which was often attacked for its supposed reliance on spurious, noncanonical works. The seminar did pay an extraordinary amount of attention to those works but, in the end, determined that only five Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Thomas) contained anything that could be traced with confidence to Jesus. The fact that they arrived at this conclusion via meticulous analysis uninfluenced by any preconceived notion of canon made it the more persuasive.

with the possible exception of the Gospel of Thomas, the apocryphal works are almost unanimously viewed as late and all but void of historically reliable material independent of what can be found in canonical writings 6. There is a new, cautious appreciation for the historical value of John’s Gospel. In the 1990s, Jesus studies invariably involved analysis of the synoptic tradition; the Fourth Gospel was deemed too theologically developed and its compositional history was considered too complex for it to function effectively as a source for historical reconstruction. The growing trend in current Jesus studies is to recognize the Fourth Gospel as a “dissonant tradition” that not only can be utilized but must be, if the synoptic tradition is not to be accorded free rein in a manner that seems uncritical. I have elsewhere attempted to tease out the implications of this point by asking scholars to imagine what might have happened if John’s Gospel had been lost to history only to be discovered now: 5

Imagine! A book on the life and teachings of Jesus that is almost as early as the Synoptic Gospels, that claims to be based in part on eyewitness testimony, that contains some material that is almost certainly very primitive, that may very well be independent of the other Gospels while corroborating what they say at many points, and that offers what is ultimately a rather different (though not wholly incompatible) spin on the Jesus story.6

Obviously, the implications of such a discovery would be phenomenal. Of course, nothing like this has actually occurred, but many scholars seem to be saying, “We do have such a book; perhaps we should not ignore it.” 7. I think I notice an increased interest in the historical Jesus on the part of 5On this, see especially John, Jesus, and History, ed. Tom Thatcher, Felix Just, and Paul N. Anderson (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2007). 6Mark Allan Powell, “The De-Johannification of Jesus,” in John, Jesus, and History, 132.

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women scholars, though the field remains overpopulated with men. Kathleen Corley, Amy-Jill Levine, and Paula Fredriksen have joined Fiorenza and Schaberg as high-profile examples of scholars who have gone where few women have gone before, and the “Call for Papers” that goes out for each annual meeting of the SBL inevitably draws responses from female doctoral candidates around the globe. The nature of Jesus’ stance toward women has been a topic of special interest to these and other scholars, as has the related question of what can be affirmed historically of his female associates (especially his mother and Mary Magdalene). 8. I discern what I can only describe as a resurgence of orthodoxy. Conservatives, traditionalists, evangelicals—call them what you will—have entered the field in droves, and in many cases they have seized the offensive. In the 1990s, Jesus studies was stereotyped as a left-wing haunt for radicals and disaffected apostates; the cautious and the conventional (John Meier; N. T. Wright) were sometimes viewed as “hold-outs” from a previous era. Evangelical scholarship tended to be either defensive and reproachful7 or simply dismissive of the entire enterprise.8 Times have changed: Meier and Wright are now regarded as preeminent Jesus scholars, more typical than exceptional, and dozens of other orthodox/evangelical scholars have offered positive contributions that are taken seriously by everyone in the guild.9 Of course, this could be a fluke or some sort of temporary surge—pendulums do swing—but the growing respect for Gospel tradition evident among many historical Jesus scholars today is a far cry from the skepticism that marked the guild a decade ago. Perhaps that is one reason we are no longer as interesting to journalists. 9. One of the most significant recent developments in Jesus studies has been the dethroning of dissimilarity as the favored criterion for historical research. For decades, scholars deemed material inauthentic if it seemed overly compatible with the interests and ideologies of developing Christian religion. There is logic to this that ought not be dismissed, but scholars with a more optimistic appraisal of tradition have complained that such a criterion guarantees a Jesus who has little in common with his closest followers. The more common view today is that, while the presence of dissimilarity may help to establish authenticity, its absence does little to challenge authenticity. Certain traditions (that Jesus was baptized by John; that he befriended prostitutes; that he regularly ate with tax collectors) are likely to be authentic because they did not serve the theological interests of the church and, in fact, necessitated apologetic explanations. But traditions about Jesus that comport well with confessions and practices of the early Christians should not automatically 7Cf. the literally inflammatory title of the popular book Jesus Under Fire: Modern Scholarship Reinvents the

Historical Jesus, ed. Michael Wilkins and James Moreland (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995). 8Luke Timothy Johnson, The Real Jesus: The Misguided Quest for the Historical Jesus and the Truth of the Traditional Gospels (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1996). 9A partial list would include Dale C. Allison, Paul N. Anderson, Darrell Bock, James D. G. Dunn, Craig Evans, Scot McKnight, Tom Thatcher, Graham Twelftree, Robert Webb, Ben Witherington, and the current author.

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be suspect: it is at least as likely that those confessions and practices were inspired by Jesus as it is that the traditions concerning Jesus were reshaped to conform to confessions and practices he did not inspire. Gerd Theissen proposes that the criterion of dissimilarity be replaced by a “criterion of historical plausibility,” according to which “whatever helps to explain the influence of Jesus (on early Christianity) and at the same time can only have come into being in a Jewish context” is to be judged historical.10 10. As one example (or consequence) of the point just discussed, there has been a notable increase in scholars willing to attribute messianic consciousness to the historical Jesus. One of the strongest pieces of evidence cited to support this is the across-the-board claim in New Testament documents that Jesus fulfilled what were thought to be messianic prophecies. This may at first seem surprising, because, for decades, historical Jesus scholars have tended to dismiss passages in which Jesus fulfills the Scriptures as apologetic fabrications of the early church. The assumed scenario was that believers scoured the Scriptures for messianic prophecies and then created or shaped their traditions of Jesus in ways that presented him as fulfilling these. But, recently, a new wave of scholars has posed a sensible alternative scenario: perhaps Jesus himself became convinced that he was the Messiah (like many other people known to us from history) and then he read or heard about things that the Scriptures said the Messiah would do and tried to shape his life accordingly. This would not explain everything: obviously, Jesus could not have orchestrated his own birth in Bethlehem (the authenticity of which remains highly contested), but why would he not have chosen to ride a donkey into Jerusalem in emulation of Zech 9:9? Some years ago, Rudolf Bultmann presented the latter story as the definitive example of an apologetic legend; it must be regarded as nonhistorical since, otherwise, we would have to assume that “Jesus intended to fulfill the prophecy of Zechariah 9:9,” which, Bultmann says, “is absurd.”11 No scholar today would be able to treat the absurdity of such a construction as selfevident. 11. There is also a marked return to the idea that Jesus proclaimed an eschatological/apocalyptic message of a coming kingdom. Perhaps the most distinctive hallmark of Jesus scholarship in the 1990s was a repudiation of the notion that Jesus expected and announced an imminent end of the world. Crossan, Robert Funk, Marcus Borg, and others maintained that Jesus did not speak about the end of the world but of a new way of being.12 The eschatological and apocalyptic sayings 10See Gerd Theissen and Annette Merz, The Historical Jesus: A Comprehensive Guide, trans. John Bowden (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998) 116. 11Rudolph Bultmann, The History of the Synoptic Problem: The Canon, the Text, the Composition, and the Interpretation of the Gospels, 2nd ed. (New York: Harper & Row, 1968) 261–262. 12See especially, Marcus J. Borg, Jesus in Contemporary Society (Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International, 1994) 74. But studies on Jesus by Dale C. Allison, Darrell Bock, James D. G. Dunn, Bart Ehrman, Craig Evans, Joachim Gnilka, Leander Keck, Scot McKnight, John Meier, E. P. Sanders, Graham Twelftree, and N. T. Wright have all argued for an eschatologically focused Jesus.

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attributed to Jesus in the Gospels were dismissed as enthusiastic attributions of a church in crisis, exemplary of the kind of rhetoric spouted by sects experiencing violent persecution and/or social ostracism. The compelling question, however, has been whether the scenario that rejection of this material requires is more plausible than that which ensues if the material is accepted as authentic. We may start by noting that almost all scholars grant that (1) John the Baptist spoke of an imminent end, and (2) Paul also thought the end was at hand. Is it reasonable, then, to assume that Jesus broke with his mentor on this apparently essential point only to have his own (nonapocalyptic) stance subsequently rejected by his most prominent and earliest interpreter? That could have happened, but isn’t it more reasonable, this argument suggests, to regard Jesus as the midpoint on a trajectory, as the connecting dot on a line from the Baptist to the Apostle? Is it not simpler to assume a progressive development of ideas than to adopt a scenario that requires at least two 180-degree turnabouts? The debate continues,13 but I think that those who grant general authenticity to the eschatological material are now once again regarded as representative of the mainstream.

there is a marked return to the idea that Jesus proclaimed an eschatological/apocalyptic message of a coming kingdom 12. Finally, another trend that marks current Jesus studies is a strong effort by scholars to integrate their work into some sort of larger task. I recognize that this point could be in tension with the first one noted above (the growing conception of Jesus studies as a discrete field); nevertheless, many of today’s historical Jesus scholars want to emphasize the significance of reconstructing a historically credible Jesus for systematic theology, pastoral preparation, spiritual formation, ecumenical discourse, or a variety of other concerns. Those who have made their way through N. T. Wright’s The Resurrection of the Son of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003) will have noticed the breadth of its concern. Historical questions are raised, but the book also wants to deal with theology; it wants to explicate what resurrection faith has meant, does mean, and ought to mean for those who commit themselves to it. Likewise, James Dunn’s massive Jesus Remembered (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), though marketed as a study on the historical Jesus, is actually less concerned with establishing what Jesus said and did than with analyzing how Jesus was remembered and why. Other Jesus scholars—including Borg, McKnight, and the present author—have recently authored books on spirituality in which their prior convictions regarding the Jesus of history remain relevant. This all seems to illustrate something that I heard myself saying back in the 13An up-to-date resource for assessing this discussion is Robert J. Miller, ed., The Apocalyptic Jesus: A Debate (Santa Rosa, CA: Polebridge Press, 2001).

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1990s when Robert Funk was invited to speak at a meeting of the Ohio Academy of Religion (OAR). The controversial founder of the Jesus Seminar was slated to give a very academic and fairly noncontroversial address on some topic of historical interest, but his mere presence in the Midwest was noticed by the general populace, and the building where he was to lecture was surrounded by protestors with picket signs. Indeed, threats were called in, necessitating police protection and armed bodyguards—a first for any plenary session of the OAR. I was asked to introduce Funk that night and, appraising the situation, I chose to do so with the following line: “Robert Funk is a man who gets people riled up over things that matter”—as opposed to things that don’t matter, which we all know can also be occasions for the riling up of people. And so it is with the current state of historical Jesus studies; people are less riled up than they used to be. I don’t know whether that’s entirely good or only partly so, but both historical Jesus scholars and their detractors would still agree that these are things that matter. We are studying subjects of fundamental importance to religion and society, topics with profound implications for theology and piety, as well as for politics, philosophy, and the very self-image of Western civilization. MARK ALLAN POWELL is professor of New Testament at Trinity Lutheran Seminary. He is currently serving as general editor for the revised Harper Collins Bible Dictionary and is author of the forthcoming Introduction to the New Testament (Baker Academic).

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