Bible Books: The Apocalyptic Visionary

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The attempts by the Jesus Seminar in the 1990s to uncover the historical Jesus inspired some of the most heated, frustrating and irresistible debates of that decade. Now Dale C. Allison has entered the fray with a book, remarkable for its logical presentation and clarity of expression, that ranks among the best of the modern Jesus books.

Allison, associate professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, takes up the radical thesis at the heart of Albert Schweitzer’s groundbreaking study, The Quest of the Historical Jesus (1906; reprint, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1998). Schweitzer showed in an objective but nevertheless devastating sequence of analyses that those who have looked for Jesus have generally failed to find much more than reflections of themselves. And yet Schweitzer could not resist proposing his own interpretation of Jesus as an apocalyptic prophet.

There has recently been a renewal of interest in Schweitzer’s apocalyptic Jesus, partly in response to efforts by the Jesus Seminar and others to strip away the Jewish apocalyptic elements that are so prominent in the Jesus of the Synoptic Gospels. Scholars as varied as E.P. Sanders, John P. Meier, N.T. Wright and Bart D. Ehrman have taken up the Schweitzer approach, which insists on Jewish apocalypticism as the proper background and on the coming kingdom of God as the central theme of the activity and teaching of Jesus.

Allison offers a vision of Jesus in the context of the millenarian teaching of Revelation 20, which declares that there will come a future millennium of righteousness and blessing. He employs a combination of methodologies to analyze large parts of the Synoptic tradition and describes what can be known about Jesus’ millenarian vision. He also interprets eschatological language of Jesus, concluding that Jesus was a millenarian ascetic as well as “a Jewish prophet who demanded repentance in the face of the eschatological crisis and interpreted his own person and ministry in terms of scriptural fulfillment.”

Allison presents a coherent and challenging portrait of the historical Jesus, but he creates a problem by assigning Jesus to the category of millenarian prophet. As his 17-page “detached note” on the subject points out, the term “millenarian prophet” no longer pertains only to the New Testament or to early Judaism, but has lately grown more inclusive, indeed has become a social science label. Applying it to Jesus suggests that he was one among many prophets of a utopian future. And he was. But Jesus is also the archetype for the category of millenarian prophet. So we have a case of circular reasoning in defining Jesus: He meets the definition of millenarian prophet, which is a category defined in good part by—Jesus himself! Surely it is better to stay with the New Testament’s own language and to call Jesus a prophet of God’s kingdom.

Another problem for many who will read this book is Allison’s assertion that Jesus was a failed visionary: “Jesus the millenarian prophet, like all millenarian prophets, was wrong: Reality has taken no notice of his imagination.” Even though Jesus was wrong, Allison says, “his dream is the only dream worth dreaming.” These conclusions suggest that few if any have really understood Jesus over two thousand years of church history, and more subtly, question whether the existence of the church is even justified. Alfred Loisy’s famous dictum comes to mind: “Jesus announced the kingdom, and it was the church that came.” Loisy meant this positively, in that the church was needed to preserve, adapt and enlarge the teaching of Jesus. Scholarly attempts to explain or rationalize this role of the church do not fully encompass its remarkable and continuing vitality. Most participants in the life of the church today would regard Allison’s conclusion as overly pessimistic.

Allison began his scholarly career by producing with W. D. Davies the magnificent three-volume A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1988). Despite the concerns raised here, his newest book deserves a careful reading and serious reflection and discussion.

The attempts by the Jesus Seminar in the 1990s to uncover the historical Jesus inspired some of the most heated, frustrating and irresistible debates of that decade. Now Dale C. Allison has entered the fray with a book, remarkable for its logical presentation and clarity of expression, that ranks among the best of the modern Jesus books.