Who do historians say that I am?

A review of "Jesus as a Figure in History: How Modern Historians View the Man From Galilee" by Mark Allan Powell

Who was Jesus of Nazareth? Today, few scholars doubt that Jesus actually existed, that he was a real historical figure. But exactly who or what was he? A raving madman? A prophet? A self-proclaimed Messiah? Or...?

This book, written by Mark Allan Powell (who is incidentally a Lutheran) doesn't give an answer to the question "who was Jesus". Rather, it describes the views of various scholars on the matter. Inevitably, there are many different views on Jesus within the scholarly community.

Powell begins by giving a short historical background. He describes how scholars during the 18th and 19th centuries attempted to cast Jesus in a "naturalist" mold. His miracles were really natural occurances, misunderstood by the superstitious disciples. The "kingdom of God" preached by Jesus was an earthly, political entity, not something supernatural and divine. And so on. The eschatological, apocalyptic and messianic elements of the Gospels were rejected as later ideas, and Jesus was transformed into a figure acceptable to 19th century agnostics or atheists. During the first half of the 20th century, Albert Schweitzer decisively challenged these ideas, "rediscovering" the eschatological ideas of Jesus, placing him once again in a firm 1st century Palestinian context. However, Schweitzer also believed that Jesus had failed in his mission, and that 20th century Christians must adopt an ultra-liberal, Social Gospel stance.

The main bulk of the book is devoted to contemporary scholars and their views of the historical Jesus. Powell does a good job in describing the various positions, the criticism levelled against them, and the often tricky methodological issues involved. For instance, how do we know which parts of the Gospels give the most trustworthy historical information about Jesus? How should apocryphal texts like "the Gospel of Thomas" be evaluated? What about the Talmud? Etc.

A particularly tricky criterion is the one called Dissimilarity. If a statement purported to be by Jesus is very different from 1st century Jewish conceptions, while also being potentially embarrasing to the early Church, it's usually deemed authentic. However, the Dissimilarity criterion gets problematic if taken to far. If the historical Jesus was neither "Jewish" nor "Christian", its difficult to explain why he recruited Jewish disciples who eventually founded the Christian Church! Dissimilarity risk turning Jesus into an inexplicable anomaly. In reality, there must have been at least some continuity between John the Baptist, Jesus and Paul. Why else would Jesus become a follower of John? And why else would Paul claim to act in Jesus name? Powell also points out another very common problem: those who attempt to reconstruct the "real" ideas of Jesus often end up with a Jesus whose ideas are similiar to their own! Leftist radicals end up with a leftist radical Jesus, Catholics with a Catholic Jesus, vegeterians with a vegetarian Jesus... Indeed, one of the things that made Schweitzer so remarkable was precisely that he came up with a Jesus he couldn't agree with.

The scholarly opinions described by Powell include those of John Dominic Crossan, Marcus J. Borg, E.P. Sanders, John P. Meier and N.T. Wright. Crossan and Borg are members of the Jesus Seminar and represent the "liberal" part of the spectrum, with Crossan speculating that Jesus was a kind of Cynic antinomian philosopher, more Hellenistic than Jewish, indeed, something of a 1st century hippie. By contrast, N.T. Wright openly defends the Biblical position, claiming that Jesus might very well have believed himself to be the God of Israel in the flesh. Of course, it's difficult to escape the suspiscion that Crossan is a hippie of sorts himself, while Wright is, of course, the bishop of Durham!

As already noted, the author of "Jesus as a figure in history" never answers that Question of Questions Jesus put to his disciples: "Who do you say that I am?". But at least, he has made it possible for the rest of us to contemplate the scholarly responses.