The Historical Jesus and The Elusive Messiah

Dear friend RC:
As I said on the phone, Crossan’s The Historical Jesus should be required reading; not so much for the general public as for those who undertake another Jesus study. The man, Crossan, is familiar with the many “images” of Jesus. He quotes seven, the Zeolot, the sage, the magician, the King, the itinerant cynic, and so on. As he rightly points out, many “biographies” of Jesus turn out to be autobiographies of the writers.

Before I go on, let me quote from a previous letter of mine in which I summarize Raymond Martin’s summary of the different types of Jesus scholars, which helps to place Crossan in a wider perspective. Of course, Crossan in turn categorizes others. I just love these neat taxonomies!

Raymond Martin, wrote a book, The Elusive Messiah, comparing the different scholars, writers, and especially their methods in search of "the historical" Jesus, his sayings, and so on. The author is not so much interested in the question I have been: just who was Jesus. Rather he compares methodologies. The book has been a revelation for me in the way it demonstrates how different assumptions, acceptance or rejection of certain evidence leads to different conclusions. Martin's greatest contribution is to separate historians and theologians, and provide a 2-fold characterization of all these scholars. He divides them into "conservative" and "liberal", depending on whether they see Jesus as an eschatological prophet or not; and "Naturalists" and "non-Naturalists", depending on whether they seek natural or supernatural explanation. He also reviews the rebuttals sympathetically. He also points out that the acceptance or rejection of The Gospel of Thomas, and Q, and the ordering of the writers of the NT makes a great deal of difference in the conclusions reached by the various scholars; methinks it is the other way around. While sympathetic to the writers' claim for brand new revelation in their books, he focuses instead on the amazing amount of agreement among the scholars (not Barbara Thiering, whom he ignores but for whom I have a soft spot even I if don't belive her conclusions). There seems to be a consensus that John was no disciple, wrote last, and wrote his own theological agenda into his (their? if you believe as I do Fortna's theory of multiple authorship) Gospel. There is similar agreement that we do not know who wrote the other Gospels; the names and characters were added, wistfully, more than 100 years later. Furthermore, contrary to previous opinion, the Synoptics not only did not provide independent confirmation of the events, but clearly copied from each other (or from an Ur-text). The vast number of near identical quotations and their order precludes almost all other possible explanation. They also think that the differences are not due to lapses of memory but due to different aims by the writers. At least one other interesting consensus concerns the outright rejection of the "birth stories" by the two writers who include it, Matthew and Luke, and the rejection of John, whom they see clearly writing his own agenda. As for the birth stories, aside from the fact that the two in the Gospels are irreconcilable, the scholars claim there was no census, and if there had been one, requiring citizens to register in the city of their ancestors would have created a mass exodus and a bureaucratic nightmare. Besides, assuming that most people would even know their lineage, there must have been over 1,000 descendants of David (assuming he was from Bethlehem) still living (I have a mathematical argument showing that there were vastly more than 1000, which I will send you later) ; registration would have been where people lived so they could be taxed, not where they had been born; and it is highly unlikely that Augustus would have made an edict about the house of David, out of power for over 500 years, since it might have conferred some legitimacy over the ruling houses of Hasmodians and later Herodians.

Martin, fortunately, also agrees with me that the historians, Crossan (of whom he thinks very highly), and the Jesus Seminar axiomatically reject anything supernatural, hence their conclusions are almost given from their premises. That is a grave error; after all we do not know if there was a virgin birth, raising of the dead, let alone Resurrection. I prefer those works that question these on the basis of other factual information, for instance, Jesus' older brother, "virgin" meaning "young woman", or the confused accounts of the Resurrection stories, or their retrofitting into Mark, or Barbara Thiering's alternate explanations.

He and I also agree that if the most theologically historical "facts" in the Gospels were to be proven untrue, or highly questionable, it would place the basis of faith on very shaky grounds. As you know, I am even a bit more forceful. I have difficulty with claims of faith independent of history. Or rather unshakable faith, regardless of the facts. After all, the individual's belief was originally based on the belief of the basic correctness of much of the NT. Once this faith strengthened, the individual, of course, can claim that his faith is strong enough to withstand any revelation about the NT and the events therein. But he would never have had such strong faith, had it not been inculcated in him by a belief in the factuality of most items. (I know you disagree).

Crossan points out that most writers pick and chose the lines in the NT to buttress their positions without indicating how their picks accord with the entire NT, without explaining the counter-evidence. He proposes a three-fold triadic (3x3=9) method which takes into account archeology, history, literature, textual criticism, and so on. He also divides the evidence into chronological strata, 0-30, 30-60, 60-90, etc, and also characterizes the events according to the number of independent attestations, including all 20 Gospels.

By and large he agrees with Mack, Klopsock, and the Jesus Seminar in his “Gospel of Jesus”, restricting it to the sayings of Q. As for the rest, he considers it in the context of his triads, fully aware of the various agendas of the writers. To give you but one example, he does a superb job in disentangling the various types of “son of man” titles. He says that in most cases it merely means “I”, the speaker referring to himself. He likens it to the uses of “one” in English. In American, “One should help the needy” means that everyone should do so. In British, “One flies first class” means that the speaker flies first class. You will have to read it for yourself.
To this I can add that in Hungarian "emberfia", meaning "son of man" is simply an apellation to another person without any theological implication.