JESUS A NEW VISION. Copyright © 2006 by Marcus J. Borg. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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1. Marcus Borg, Conflict, Holiness and Politics in the Teaching of Jesus (New York and Toronto: Edwin Mellen Press, 1984).
* All biblical references are from the Revised Standard Version. See notes at the end of each chapter for citations.
* Editor’s note: Notes indicated by a number in boldface type (e.g. 12) contain further discussion; Those notes set in regular roman type (e.g. 12) are bibliographic citations.
1. For a masterful survey of Jesus’ role in culture, see Jaroslav Pelikan, Jesus Through the Centuries (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985; paperback edition published by Harper & Row, 1987).
2. John 9:5, 6:35, 11:25, 14:6, 8:58.
3. John 10:38, 14:9, 10:30.
4. John 3:16.
5. Mainstream biblical scholarship is the approach to Scripture taught in the seminaries of the mainstream churches. It is the product of using a historical method on the books of the New Testament, treating them as human documents rather than as divine documents guaranteed to be infallible by God. Beginning in the seventeenth century and accelerating through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it is now the approach to Scripture taught in the theological schools of the majority of Christian churches (including, for example, Roman Catholics, Presbyterians, Methodists, United Church of Christ, Disciples of Christ, Episcopalians, the majority of Lutherans, and some Baptists).
6. The two occasions are reported in Mark 8:27-30 and 14:53-65. In the first instance, shortly before Jesus and his disciples began the final journey to Jerusalem, and in a setting where his disciples were alone with him, Peter said, “Thou art the Christ” (Mark 8:29; “Christ” is the Greek word for the Hebrew “Messiah,” which means roughly “the anointed one of God”). This, the first time that any follower of Jesus in Mark called him by an exalted title, contrasts sharply with John 1:29-51, where already in John’s opening chapter both John the Baptist and several of Jesus’ disciples applied the grandest titles to Jesus: Lamb of God, Son of God, Messiah (Christ), King of Israel. Strikingly, Jesus responded to Peter’s affirmation by ordering the disciples to say nothing about it to anyone (8:30), a restriction that was to last until after Easter (see Mark 9:9). Thus in Mark, neither Jesus nor his disciples proclaimed Jesus’ identity during the ministry.
The second occasion in Mark was at the secret hearing before the high priest the night before Jesus was executed; in response to the high priest’s question, “Are you the Christ, the Son of the blessed?”, Jesus said, “I am” (Mark 14:61-62). Noteworthy is the fact that the high priest virtually had to “drag” the statement out of Jesus, plus the fact that the Greek and Aramaic phrase behind “I am” can be translated either “I am” or “Am I?” It is interesting that both Matthew and Luke interpret Jesus’ response as ambiguous (see Matthew 26:64 and Luke 22:67-68).
Regardless of how one interprets Jesus’ response, the fact remains that Mark nowhere portrays Jesus proclaiming his identity as part of Jesus’ own message. (It should be noted that the spirit world knows who Jesus was, even during the ministry; the voice “from heaven” at his baptism and transfiguration speaks of him as God’s “beloved Son,” and evil spirits recognize him as “Son of God” and “holy one of God.” But it remains true there is no human proclamation of Jesus’ identity in Mark’s gospel, either by Jesus or others.)
7. The contrast was first developed by Johann Gottfried Herder in 1797. Through the influence of David Friedrich Strauss’s two-volume Life of Jesus (1835) it became one of the foundational conclusions of Jesus scholarship. The reason for preferring Mark to John as more historical is quite simple. It is easier to account for a theological development from a Jesus who did not explicitly proclaim himself (Mark) to a portrait in which his identity is explicitly proclaimed (John) that it is to account for the reverse process. If Jesus did consistently proclaim his identity, as John reports, what motive could an early Christian author such as Mark have had for saying that Jesus did not preach about who he was?
8. The literature on John’s gospel is voluminous. For an excellent introduction, see Robert Kysar, John: The Maverick Gospel (Atlanta: John Knox, 1976).
9. See, for example, Mark 6:5.
10. The “apocryphal” gospels were gospels written by early Christians in the first few centuries of the church which did not make it into the New Testament. See E. Hennecke and W. Schneemelcher, New Testament Apocrypha, two volumes (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1963, 1965).
11. The heresy is known as “docetism,” from the Greek word dokeo, which means “to appear” or “seem.” Docetism is the notion that though Jesus appeared to be human, he was really God. Ironically, one of the earliest heresies is still thought by many people, Christians and non-Christians alike, to be the orthodox Christian position.
12. The beginning of the theological and historical movement known as the “quest for the historical Jesus” is typically dated in 1778 with the anonymous and posthumous publication of an essay by Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694-1768), available as “Concerning the Intention of Jesus and His Disciples” in H. S. Reimarus, Fragments, edited by C. H. Talbert and translated by R. S. Fraser (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1970), 59-269. For a history of the quest up to 1900, see above all Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus (New York: Macmillan, 1968; first published in German in 1906, and in English in 1910). For a treatment which includes the present century, see John Hayes, From Son of God to Superstar (Nashville: Abingdon, 1976).
13. For surveys of the diverse portraits, see especially Hayes, From Son of God to Superstar, and John Bowman, Which Jesus? (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1970).
14. See, for example, the history of Jesus research as sketched by W. Barnes Tatum, In Quest of Jesus (Atlanta: John Knox, 1982), 63-97.
15. Kerygma is a Greek word which means “preaching” and has become a technical term referring to the early church’s post-Easter message about Jesus. It is often emphasized that the purpose of the gospels is essentially kerygmatic and not historical, and whatever history they may contain has been thoroughly overlaid by the kerygma of the church. Scholars during the “no quest” period affirmed both the near impossibility as well as the theological unnecessity of trying to go behind the kerygma.
16. Mark 1:15. These are the first words attributed to Jesus in Mark, his “inaugu
ral address,” and presumably Mark intends them as a shorthand summary of Jesus’ message and mission. It is Mark’s answer to the question, “What was the core of Jesus’ proclamation?”
17. Often cited as Schweitzer’s most influential predecessor is Johannes Weiss, Jesus’ Proclamation of the Kingdom of God, edited and translated by R. H. Hiers and D. L. Holland (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971; first edition published in German in 1892, second edition in 1900).
18. See his The Mystery of the Kingdom of God (New York: Schocken Books, 1964, originally published in German in 1901); and The Quest of the Historical Jesus.
19. For Schweitzer, however, the story of Jesus did not end there. Instead, Schweitzer spoke movingly of the spiritual Christ who still speaks to us, concluding his treatment of Jesus with what have been called the most famous words of twentieth-century theology:
He comes to us as One unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lake-side, He came to those men who knew Him not. He speaks to us the same word: “Follow thou me” and sets us to the tasks which He has to fulfil for our time. He commands. And to those who obey Him, whether they be wise or simple, He will reveal Himself in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings which they shall pass through in His fellowship, and, as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience Who He is. (Quest, 403)
The words have even been set to music by Jane Marshall as “He Comes to Us,” an anthem for use in Christian worship.
For Schweitzer, the living Christ called him to Africa, even though Schweitzer’s understanding of the historical Jesus as one who was profoundly misled by the eschatological beliefs of his day left Jesus firmly anchored in his own time. No wonder Schweitzer wrote that Jesus is “a stranger to our time” (Quest, 401). For Schweitzer, the historical Jesus thus became theologically irrelevant; only the Christ who still speaks to us is relevant for theology.
20. It is found in the work of Rudolf Bultmann (1884-1976), arguably the most influential New Testament scholar throughout much of this century; in Günther Bornkamm’s Jesus of Nazareth (New York: Harper, 1960; originally published in German in 1956), probably the most widely read scholarly book about Jesus written in the last thirty years; and, in various forms, in the work of such influential scholars as Joachim Jeremias, Werner Kümmel, Hans Conzelmann, R. H. Fuller, and the early works of Norman Perrin. British scholarship, represented especially by C. H. Dodd, has resisted the consensus.
21. Hans Küng, On Being a Christian (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1984), originally published in German in 1974.
22. For Küng, as his sources indicate, that consensus is based almost exclusively on German scholarship; as already noted, German scholarship (at least until very recently) has been the dominant voice in biblical scholarship in this century. See also Bruce Chilton in his recent treatment of “Kingdom of God” research, The Kingdom of God in the Teaching of Jesus (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984), who speaks of a consensus reached by midcentury that the Kingdom was to be understood eschatologically.
23. See my essay, “The Historical Jesus and Christian Preaching” in The Christian Century (August 28-September 4, 1985): 764-767.
24. See the well-known epigram created by Rudolf Bultmann: only the das (“thatness”) of Jesus matters, not the was (“whatness”); that is, all that matters theologically is that Jesus was, not what Jesus was. The “facts” of his life are theologically irrelevant. Bultmann’s position is not universally held, but it is typical and influential.
25. In the spring of 1986, I conducted a mail poll of seventy-two active Jesus scholars, members of the Jesus Seminar inaugurated by Robert Funk and members of the Historical Jesus Section of the Society of Biblical Literature. The two samples thus fairly represent contemporary mainstream scholarship. Combining the two groups, 59 percent of those responding think that Jesus did not expect the end of the world in his generation. It should be noted that all of the scholars were in North America; a poll of German scholars would, I suspect, show that the consensus still exists in Germany. For the poll itself and detailed results, see my “A Temperate Case for a Non-Eschatological Jesus,” published in Society of Biblical Literature: 1986 Seminar Papers (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1986), 521-535, and in the journal of the Jesus Seminar, Foundations and Facets Forum, volume 2, number 3 (September 1986): 81-102, especially 98-100. The same poll was taken at the October 1986 national meeting of the Jesus Seminar at Notre Dame, with even more decisive results. Of the thirty-nine scholars voting, nine said they thought Jesus did expect the end of the world in his own time, thirty said they did not.
26. In addition to the essay referred to in the previous note, see also my “An Orthodoxy Reconsidered: The ‘End-of-the-World Jesus,’ ” in The Glory of Christ in the New Testament (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 207-217, and my Conflict, Holiness and Politics in the Teaching of Jesus (New York and Toronto: Edwin Mellen Press, 1984), 221-227.
27. In addition to the large number of books published in recent years on the historical Jesus and related subjects (for example, the social setting of first-century Palestine), the “renaissance” is pointed to by two organizational developments. In the Society of Biblical Literature, the major professional organization for mainstream biblical scholars, a new “consultation” was formed in 1981 and became an official “section” in 1983, devoted to the study of the historical Jesus. In 1985, Professor Robert Funk founded “The Jesus Seminar,” now constituted by over one hundred “Fellows” committed to investigating the traditions about Jesus. The Jesus Seminar has already attracted considerable national attention, not only in scholarly circles but in the public media. See its journal, Foundations and Facets Forum, which began publication in 1985.
28. A remark made by Bernard Brandon Scott at the annual meeting of the Historical Jesus Section of the Society of Biblical Literature in Chicago in December 1984. For bibliographical essays about this rapidly growing development in New Testament studies, see Paul Hollenbach, “Recent Historical Jesus Studies and the Social Sciences,” Society of Biblical Literature 1983 Seminar Papers (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1983), 61-78; Bruce Malina, “The Social Sciences and Biblical Interpretation,” Interpretation 36 (1982), 229-242; Philip Richter, “Recent Sociological Approaches to the Study of the New Testament,” Religion 14 (1984), 77-90; Robin Scroggs, “The Sociological Interpretation of the New Testament,” New Testament Studies 26 (1980), 164-179. See also the volume in the Semeia series devoted to this topic: John H. Elliott, ed., Semeia 35: Social Scientific Criticism of the New Testament and Its Social World (Decatur, GA: Scholars Press, 1986).
29. In some respects, the quest for the historical Jesus as a historical enterprise is no different from the quest for the historical Caesar or the quest for the historical Buddha. Though we know of these figures only in traditions preserved by their respective communities, we do not therefore conclude that we can know nothing about them. Our sources for the historical Jesus are at least as good. To be sure, there is more of a “theological overlay” in the sources about Jesus because of the early church’s convictions regarding his ultimate stature, but this does not render historical knowledge impossible.
30. To a large extent, the methodological skepticism of this century has flowed from beginning with the sayings of Jesus, especially those with a christological significance (that is, those which directly or indirectly make a statement about Jesus’ ultimate status). But to make the historical difficulties involved in assessing these sayings paradigmatic for all historical knowledge of Jesus goes beyond sound historical judgment. See the astute methodological remarks of E. P. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985), 3-13, and A. E. Harvey, Jesus and the Constraints of History (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1982), 5-10.
31. This meaning of the term must be distinguished from two other common meanings. In popular usage within the church today, it has become virtually synonymous with having the gift of tongues. That usage is too narrow; the term properly denotes a Spirit-filled person wh
o may or may not speak in tongues. It is also to be distinguished from a second use, widespread in secular culture: to refer to a person (often in the political or entertainment world) who has unusually captivating or magnetic appeal.
1. I believe that he was quoting or paraphrasing Karl Barth, though I am not aware whether it is published somewhere in Barth’s writings or whether it is anecdotal.
2. See the excellent statement by Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon in “Embarrassed by God’s Presence,” The Christian Century (January 30, 1985): 98-100. They argue that both the modern church and modern theology are pervaded by the “practical atheism” of our time, that way of seeing and living which takes it for granted that there is no reality beyond the visible.
3. There are exceptions, to which I am indebted. Two studies from the last decade stand out: Geza Vermes, Jesus the Jew (New York: Macmillan, 1973), which treats the Jewish charismatic tradition contemporary with Jesus, and J. G. Dunn, Jesus and the Spirit (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1975), a scholarly study of texts and traditions relevant to Jesus’ relationship to the Spirit.
4. Of the many books which treat the subject of the modern worldview (or Weltanschauung, a German term which often appears even in books written in English), I have found two to be especially useful: W. T. Stace, Religion and the Modern Mind (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1952), and Huston Smith, Forgotten Truth: The Primordial Tradition (New York: Harper & Row, 1976).
5. Though this is not the place to develop the point at length, the term “faith” has thus undergone a subtle but decisive shift in meaning in the modern period. For many people, faith now means “believing in the existence of God.” In earlier times, it didn’t take “faith” to believe that God existed—almost everybody took that for granted. Rather, “faith” had to do with one’s relationship to God—whether one trusted in God. The difference between faith as “belief in something that may or may not exist” and faith as “trusting in God” is enormous. The first is a “matter of the head,” the second a “matter of the heart”; the first can leave one unchanged, the second intrinsically brings change.
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