Jesus: a new vision

by Marcus J. Borg

  3. The classic anthropological study of “revitalization movements” as a cross-cultural phenomenon is by A. F. C. Wallace, “Revitalization Movements,” in Reader in Comparative Religion: An Anthropological Approach, 3rd edition, edited by W. A. Lessa and E. Z. Vogt (New York: Harper & Row, 1972), 503-512, initially published in American Anthropologist 58 (1956), 264-281. I am using “renewal movement” and “revitalization movement” as synonyms, making no effort to define the type of movement more specifically. For distinctions among social movement, social movement organization, coalition, and faction, all of which move in the direction of greater refinement of types, see Bruce Malina, “Normative Dissonance and Christian Origins,” in Semeia 35, edited by John H. Elliott (Decatur, GA: Scholars Press, 1986), 35-36.

  4. For these two factors, see especially Theissen, Sociology of Early Palestinian Christianity, 112-114.

  5. There is an interesting historical parallel to the Buddha. Like Jesus, he is best understood as a renewal movement founder. He did not see himself as the founder of a new religion, but as a reformer or purifier within Hinduism. Like Jesus, he taught a way which differed radically from the conventional wisdom or dominant consciousness of his day. Finally, like Jesus, his movement “failed” within his own culture and became a “new religion” which flourished in neighboring cultures (to this day, Buddhism is not as strong in India as it is in other Asian countries).

  6. The words are from Jesus’ instructions to the twelve as he sent them out on a mission in the midst of the ministry in Matthew 10:5-6; see also Matthew 15:24. The mission to the Gentiles is a historical development that began after Easter. In the synoptic gospels, this is reflected by the fact that it is the risen Lord who speaks of going to “all the nations” (see, for example, Matthew 28:19).

  7. See A. F. C. Wallace’s comment, “Revitalization Movements,” 512, that revitalization movements typically come into existence through “a prophet’s revelatory visions.”

  8. See Mark 3:14-15, 6:7, with parallels in Matthew 10:1 and Luke 9:1-2; Luke 10:17 reports that the powers were found in a larger group, “the seventy.” See also Mark 9:14-29 which, though it reports a failure on the part of the disciples, presumes that they normally had the power to heal.

  9. See especially 1 Corinthians 12-14.

  10. After Easter, as Theissen argues in Sociology of Early Palestinian Christianity, the Jesus movement was composed of two “symbiotic” or interdependent groups: wandering charismatics (the twelve and some others, who were the authority figures in the movement), and communities of “local sympathizers,” who remained in their own locales and gave support to the charismatics.

  11. The only known parallels in first-century Judaism were a few “prophets” mentioned by Josephus who led people into the wilderness. See R. A. Horsley and J. S. Hanson, Bandits, Prophets and Messiahs (Minneapolis: Winston, 1985), 161-172, 257, who argue that these popular prophetic movements may provide the closest social parallel to the movement of Jesus and his followers.

  12. For example, homelessness, lack of possessions. For the suggestion that the Jesus movement after the death of Jesus had two sets of ethical norms, the more radical of which applied to the “wandering charismatics,” see Theissen, Sociology of Early Palestinian Christianity, 8-23.

  13. The festive character of the meals is pointed to by a small detail: Jesus “reclined” at table (see, for example, Mark 2:15, 14:3; Luke 7:36). Ordinary meals were eaten in a sitting position, whereas festive meals or banquets involved “reclining,” lying on one’s side at a low table.

  14. Matthew 11:18-19 = Luke 7:33-34.

  15. Mark 2:18-19a. Verses 19b-20 are probably the product of the early church; they implicitly identify Jesus with the bridegroom who “has been taken away” and justify the church’s practice of fasting after the death of Jesus. However, verse 19a by itself need not be seen as the creation of the early church on the grounds that it implies that Jesus is the “messianic bridegroom.” It can be read parabolically or proverbally to mean, “People do not fast in a time of joy.” This common-sense observation is the justification for the followers of Jesus not fasting. See especially the treatment of this passage by E. Schillebeeckx, Jesus (New York: Crossroad, 1981), 201-206. He comments, “Being sad in Jesus’ presence [was] an existential impossibility” (201); and the text reveals “something of the enchantment and the power executed upon them by the living Jesus of Nazareth” (205).

  16. Within the Buddhist tradition, people speak of a “Buddha field” which could be felt not only around the Buddha, but also around other enlightened figures who came after him. Within the Christian tradition, a similar “zone” was felt around St. Francis, as well as around other figures.

  17. On this section, see Marcus Borg, Conflict, Holiness and Politics in the Teaching of Jesus (New York and Toronto: Edwin Mellen Press, 1984), 123-129, 133-134.

  18. Luke 15:20, Luke 10:37, Matthew 18:23-35, Luke 18:13. According to Matthew 9:13 and 12:27, Jesus quoted an Old Testament passage (Hosea 6:6) contrasting compassion with the demands of holiness: “God desires mercy and not sacrifice.”

  19. Mark 3:1-6, Luke 13:10-17, 14:1-5; see also Matthew 12:11-12. John’s gospel also reports two: 5:1-18, 9:1-17.

  20. Luke 6:36. The parallel in Matthew 5:48 has “perfect” instead of “compassionate” (merciful). “Perfect” is characteristic of Matthew’s redaction.

  21. For compassion as “wombishness,” see chapter 6, page 102.

  22. See Dodd, The Founder of Christianity, 63-65: the heart of Jesus’ ethical teaching is “Like father, like child”; that is, children of God are those who are “like God” in the quality and direction of their behavior.

  23. The pathos of God is here used in the sense in which Abraham Heschel uses it in his book, The Prophets (New York: Harper & Row, 1962); it refers to the biblical affirmation that God is not the distant one, unmoved by what happens to human beings in history, but that God feels for and with them.

  24. On this whole section, see Borg, Conflict, Holiness and Politics, 78-95 and notes 14-73, 306-314.

  25. See chapter 6, pages 101-102.

  26. Mark 2:15, Luke 19:7, Luke 15:2, Matthew 11:19 = Luke 7:34. The accusation is thus found in three of the four strands of the synoptic tradition (Mark, Q, and L).

  27. The exact boundaries of the outcast class are not clear. Though larger than the lists of despised occupations (see chapter 5, note 25), it is not to be thought of as comprising a majority of the population. Tax collectors were particularly offensive, in part because of resentment against an oppressive tax system and their own questionable practices, but also because they were seen as collaborators with the occupying power, as traitors or “quislings.”

  28. Three of his most famous parables—the Lost Sheep, Lost Coin, and Lost (Prodigal) Son—are said by Luke to have been Jesus’ response to the charge that he ate with sinners (Luke 15:1-32); scholars tend to agree that Luke’s setting may well be historically correct. Each climaxes with a celebration that “the lost” has been found. Implicitly, the festive meals of Jesus are that celebration. Other parables also implicitly or explicitly defend his association with outcasts: Workers in the Vineyard (Matthew 20:1-15), the Two Sons (Matthew 21:28-32), the Unmerciful Servant (Matthew 18:23-35), and the Great Supper (Luke 14:15-24 = Matthew 22:1-10).

  29. Presumably something happened at these meals; a likely possibility is that “the master” would speak.

  30. See chapter 6 above, pages 101-102.

  31. Some have claimed that it was the primary cause of Jesus’ being handed over to the Romans for crucifixion by some leaders within Judaism. See, for example, Norman Perrin, Rediscovering the Teaching of Jesus (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), 103; and W. R. Farmer, “An Historical Essay on the Humanity of Jesus Christ,” in Christian History and Interpretation, edited by Farmer et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), 103.

  32. See the comment of the Jewish scholar Geza Vermes in Jesus the Jew (New York: Macmillan
, 1973), 224: Jesus’ association with outcasts was the factor which differentiated him “more than any other” (italics added) from “both his contemporaries and even his prophetic predecessors”; Jesus “took his stand among the pariahs of his world, those despised by the respectable. Sinners were his table-companions and the ostracized tax collectors and prostitutes his friends.”

  33. Restrictive attitudes toward women in Judaism seem to have intensified after the exile, in part as the building of the “in-group/out-group defenses” that characterized the quest for holiness. See Leonard Swidler, Biblical Affirmation of Women (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1979), 158-159.

  34. For a treatment of the theme in the religions of the world, see Denise Carmody, Women and World Religions (Nashville: Abingdon, 1979). The male monopoly on conventional wisdom may not always have been so. There is some reason to believe that women may have been seen as equal (or primary) sources of wisdom in the stone ages, when many cultures imaged deity as primarily female. In both Hebrew and Greek, the word for “wisdom” is feminine, perhaps reflecting this ancient connection. When male images of deity began to become dominant, religious authority figures became male as well.

  35. For a striking collection of negative statements about women in ancient Greek and Latin authors, see C. E. Carlston, “Proverbs, Maxims, and the Historical Jesus,” Journal of Biblical Literature 99 (1980): 95-96. In the Old Testament, the book of Proverbs illustrates well the male domination of conventional wisdom. Most likely it was an “instruction manual” used in “wisdom schools,” which educated young men of the upper classes (women were excluded from such education). The teachers in these schools were men, and the point of view was male. For example, though there are many statements about a “contentious” or “fretful” wife, there are no corresponding statements about troublesome or difficult husbands. Noteworthy, however, is the very positive picture of the ideal wife in Proverbs 31.

  36. See especially the work of Leonard Swidler. His Women in Judaism: The Status of Women in Formative Judaism (Methuen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1976), treats the period from the second century B.C. to the fifth century A.D. His Biblical Affirmations of Women surveys both positive and negative attitudes toward women up to the postapostolic period.

  37. The “exception that proves the rule” is a woman sage named Beruria in the second century A.D.; see Swidler, Women in Judaism, 97-104.

  38. See the first-century A.D. statement: “If any man teach his daughter Torah, it is as though he taught her lechery” (Mishnah Sotah 3.4).

  39. Images for God in the Old Testament are generally (though not universally) masculine (for example, king, shepherd, father). It is tempting to speculate about the correlation between masculine images for God and a patriarchal social order. Do masculine images of God intrinsically go with patriarchal understandings of society? If so, then what is at stake in gender imagery for God is the ordering of social reality.

  40. Luke 8:1-3. Presumably, the women at the tomb (see Mark 16:1-8 and parallels) were among the group which followed him during the ministry.

  41. Luke 7:36-50. Described as a “sinner” and “a woman of the city,” she may have been a prostitute. That she unveiled and unplaited her hair in public is also striking. There is another story of a woman devotedly anointing Jesus with ointment in Mark 14:1-9.

  42. Luke 10:38-42.

  43. As part of John’s gospel, the story of Jesus and the woman at the well in John 4:7-30 is difficult to assess historically. However, it reflects the ethos of the time: the woman is surprised that Jesus converses with her, as are the disciples.

  44. Galatians 3:28. See also note 46 below.

  45. See the important comments of Schüssler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her, 106-107, who correctly insists that the patriarchal attitudes of early and subsequent Christianity should be emphasized as strongly as the patriarchal attitudes of first-century Judaism. That is, the antipatriarchal practice of Jesus was not directed against Judaism itself, as if patriarchy were something intrinsic or peculiar to Judaism; rather, “his movement is best understood as an inner-Jewish renewal movement that presented an alternative option to the dominant patriarchal structures rather than an oppositional formation rejecting the values and praxis of Judaism” (107).

  46. 1 Timothy 2:8-15. Though attributed to Paul, most scholars believe that it (along with the other two “pastoral letters,” 2 Timothy and Titus) was written by a second-generation follower of Paul near the end of the first century. It was common practice in the ancient world to attribute documents to an earlier master. The only passage in letters written by Paul himself which clearly subordinates women is 1 Corinthians 14:34-36, and this may be an editorial addition by somebody later than Paul. See especially Robin Scroggs, Paul for a New Day (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977), 45-48.

  47. Luke 4:18, quoted from Isaiah 61:1-2. Luke obviously sees them to be a fitting crystalization of Jesus’ mission.

  48. Matthew 5:3, 5:6; Luke 6:20-21, 24-25. Matthew’s interpretation has often been preferred to Luke’s in the history of the church, including the modern church, due in part to the socioeconomic position of the interpreters of Scripture over the centuries. That is, how we “see” Scripture is to a considerable extent shaped by our own position in society. Once the church became the “established religion” of most Western cultures, the interpreters of Scripture generally interpreted Jesus’ words about the poor and rich in such a way so as not to call into question the political and economic structures of those cultures. “Liberation theology” is reminding us how different Scripture looks when viewed “from below,” that is, from a vantage point which does not take the existing socioeconomic order for granted. For a good introduction to liberation theology’s way of seeing Scripture, see Robert McAfee Brown, Theology in a New Key (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1978), especially 75-100.

  49. Luke 4:18-19.

  50. For the Jubilee regulations, see Leviticus 25:8-17, 23-55; 27:16-25. The Jubilee also required that all “slaves” or indentured servants be released. For scholarly treatments of the possible relationship between Jesus and the Jubilee year, see John Yoder, The Politics of Jesus (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1972); and Sharon Ringe, Jesus, Liberation, and the Biblical Jubilee (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985). More generally on the question of Jesus and the poor, see Walter Pilgrim, Good News to the Poor: Wealth and Poverty in Luke-Acts (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1981); and Luise Schottroff and Wolfgang Stegemann, Jesus and the Hope of the Poor (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1986).

  51. For an occasion when it was observed, see Nehemiah 5.

  52. Luke 6:30 = Matthew 5:42, Luke 6:34-35, Matthew 6:1-4, Mark 10:21. See also the petition in the Lord’s prayer, which may refer to actual debts: Matthew 6:12 = Luke 11:4.

  53. Matthew 6:24 = Luke 16:13, Matthew 6:19-21 = Luke 12:33-34. See also chapter 6, pages 104-105.

  54. Acts 2:44-45, 4:32-35. The churches of Paul, all outside of Palestine, apparently did not practice common ownership.

  55. Matthew 5:43-44 = Luke 6:27.

  56. Leviticus 19:18b. Thus the words are found in the same chapter as the central affirmation of the quest for holiness (Leviticus 19:2). Consistent with the emphasis upon holiness as separation, “neighbor” was understood to mean “fellow Israelite” (note that it is parallel to “sons of your own people” in the first half of Leviticus 19:18). The command later in the chapter (verse 34) to love the “sojourner” (that is, the foreigner in the land), was understood by the first century to mean “proselyte” or “convert”—that is, Gentiles who had become Jews. Thus neither command applied to non-Jews. On this whole section, see Borg, Conflict, Holiness and Politics in the Teaching of Jesus, 129-133.

  57. Matthew 5:41.

  58. Matthew 5:9; the phrase “children of God” connects the passage explicitly to the notion of the imitatio dei; to be children of God is to be like God. Both Matthew 5:45 and Luke 6:35 connect this behavior to being “children of God.”

  59. Matthew 26:52. Like the previous saying, this is
found in Matthew alone. A version of it is found in Revelation 13:10b, which suggests that the saying was widespread in the early Christian communities and not simply the creation of Matthew. It may well come from Jesus himself, and in any case is consistent with what we know of Jesus.

  60. See chapter 9, pages 173-174.

  61. Mark 12:13-17.

  62. Luke 23:2 reports that his opponents did accuse him of this as they brought him before Pilate: “We found this man perverting our nation, and forbidding us to give tribute to Caesar.” Luke apparently regards the charge as false.

  63. See also Theissen, Sociology of Early Palestinian Christianity, who stresses that the Jesus movement was the “peace party” among the renewal movements operating within Palestine (see 64-65, as well as 99-110, where he speaks of strategies within the movement for overcoming and containing aggression). Within an evangelical framework, Ronald Sider and Richard Taylor also argue for a “pacifist” Jesus deeply involved with issues of war and peace in his own time; see their Nuclear Holocaust and Christian Hope (New York: Paulist, 1982), 95-134. See also William Klassen, Love of Enemies (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984); Stanley Hauerwas, The Peaceable Kingdom (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983), especially 72-95; and the works of John Yoder, especially The Original Revolution (Scottsdale, PA: Herald Press, 1971), The Politics of Jesus (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1972), and Christian Witness to the State (Newton, KS: Faith and Life Press, 1977).