Readers Reply

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Good References

Having been a pastor for 40 years (now retired), I find your series on the historical Jesus enormously exciting and stimulating. It points me to authors whom I otherwise would not know. Thank you.

Fleeting Fame

In no way will I renew my subscription to your magazine. I don’t know what part of the Bible you intend to continue to review; I have found these “reviews” to be nothing more than an opportunity for isolated and seldom-published ultra-liberal professors and clergy to achieve their 15 minutes of fame.

In the Nick of Time

While BR is probably the most beautifully illustrated magazine I know of, I have become increasingly impatient with the ideologically driven pseudo-scholarship of Marcus Borg, John Dominic Crossan and others of the Jesus Seminar ilk. So I resolved to let my subscription lapse.

However, you have, at the last moment, redeemed yourself with a truly spectacular, middle-of-the-road issue. The articles by N.T. Wright, Victor Hurowitz and Gary Anderson (“How Jesus Saw Himself,” “P—Understanding the Priestly Source” and “Torah Before Sinai,” BR 12:03) were excellent, as were articles by Luke T. Johnson and Eta Linneman in the December and August 1995 issues (see “The Search for (the Wrong) Jesus,” BR 11:06 and “Is There a Gospel of Q?” BR 11:04).

I am mailing in my renewal postcard and giving you another year. Please try to maintain the balance you have finally begun to achieve over the last six months.

Historical Jesus

Prophet or Reformer?

N.T. Wright’s article “How Jesus Saw Himself,” BR 12:03, is incisive. Although Wright deliberately skirts passages from which it can be argued that Jesus saw himself as divine, his analysis is valid regardless of how one views Jesus’ divinity. And his suggestion that we “re-center” our concept of God at the point of Jesus’ crucifixion should be emblazoned across the sky!

Yet I take issue with Wright’s statement that “Jesus was not a religious reformer, but an eschatological prophet.”

I believe Wright’s discussion of Torah versus Jesus’ authority should make a distinction between the written Torah and first-century oral law, the “tradition of the elders” (Mark 7:3), predecessor of the Mishnah. Consider, for example, the Sermon on the Mount. In Matthew 5:17–19 Jesus says, “I have not come to abolish the Law or the Prophets but to fulfill them,” and He endorses the entire Hebrew Bible as eternal wisdom. In Matthew 5:20 He adds, “Unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.” Then in Matthew 7:12 He says, “So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.” Matthew 5:17–20 seems a preface to, and Matthew 7:12 a summary of, the intervening teachings, which is not criticism of the Torah, but an indictment of the hypocrisy of the Pharisees and the legalism of the oral law they perpetrated in the name of God. Jesus is emphasizing to His hearers the need to adopt a heart attitude in relationships with God and other men rather then follow formulas and ritual. This is not new doctrine; it flows naturally out of Hosea 6:6, the new covenant of Jeremiah 31:31–34, and other Old Testament passages. Indeed, it seems the scribes and the Pharisees were in sync with Jesus on this ideal (Mark 12:28–33; Luke 10:25–27)—even though hypocrisy and legalism subverted their practice.

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Jesus the Messiah was both a religious reformer/restorer and an eschatological prophet. The prophet who said, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near,” (Matthew 4:17) and, “I am the way and the truth and the life” (John 14:6), was also the reformer who said, “Unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:20), and “‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations,’ but you have made it a den of robbers” (Mark 11:17).

N.T. Wright responds:

Obviously, within Jesus’ eschatological program there were elements of reform. But reform wasn’t the main thrust; I was responding to Paula Fredriksen’s criticism of me (“Did Jesus Oppose the Purity Laws?” BR 11:03), in which she implied that I saw Jesus as just a reformer.

In addition, I disagree with your picture of the Pharisees (see my New Testament and the People of God [Fortress, 1992], chap. 7). “Legalism” now means something quite different from what they were teaching. Nor is it clear that Jesus regarded the whole Old Testament as valid for all time: In Mark 7 he says that the food laws are now redundant. This illustrates my first point: He wasn’t a reformer, saying that food laws, etc., are a bad thing, but an eschatological prophet, saying that the new moment in God’s purposes had now arrived, when everything was going to be different—not because God changes his mind, but precisely because this was the way he had planned it.

Cynical Outlook

I am puzzled. N.T. Wright is anxious to portray Jesus as very much in line with Jewish prophets but claims also that Jesus “subverted conventional Jewish family loyalty…urged his followers to abandon their possessions, which in his world mostly meant land,” challenged the Torah’s basic boundary markers separating Jews and gentiles, and “symbolically enacted” the Temple’s destruction. What is left of Judaism after one has cracked those four pillars? Wright’s position seems seriously at odds with itself. Perhaps he should reconsider possible connections between Jesus and the Cynics, who also spoke against family ties, recommended poverty, advocated cosmopolitanism and were critical of attempts to localize the divine presence. Indeed, it is precisely the sort of data Wright points to that makes the positions of John Dominic Crossan, Burton Mack and F. Gerald Downing so strong.

N.T. Wright responds:

I have responded fully to the “Cynic” hypothesis in my forthcoming book, Jesus and the Victory of God. Yes, there are some analogies between Jesus and the Cynics, just as there are between badminton and baseball. But they are, so to speak, different ball games. The “Cynic” case can only be made if you ignore or marginalize Jesus’ whole proclamation of the Kingdom of God. Downing treats it as of minimal significance. Mack and Crossan try to explain it in terms not of the well-attested Jewish apocalyptic eschatology but of the few-and-far-between Cynic or, 006similar, “kingdom” metaphors. In terms of actual ancient history, frankly, this is like trying to play baseball with a badminton racket. Once again, the “Cynic” theorists are making Jesus a reformer, not an eschatological prophet. What is more, they are making him very non- or anti-Jewish, whereas his whole claim was that the great moment toward which the Jewish vocation had been moving was now bursting into life. A Cynic wouldn’t have known what to make of that.

The Wright Stuff

Thank you many times over for N.T. Wright’s article! The news media gives us so much of the conclusions reached by the Jesus Seminar and other ultra-liberal scholars that persons still reaching out for authentic faith might conclude that there is no basis for traditional Christian belief. Wright challenges many of these assumptions courteously and without rancor, better than anyone else I have read. His presentation of how Jesus was fulfilling kingdom promises seems to me clearer and more satisfying than most commentaries I have used. Best of all, the ending of his article verifies the Resurrection and thus accounts for all that followed—the first preaching, the firm testimony that Jesus was no longer in the tomb but alive and present in the early Church.

Let me add that the article should help tone down the more extravagant claims of some current eschatological interpretations coming from premillennialist theology and dispensationalism. Many of us hear too much hard-right conservatism on the radio and in magazines, so it is a relief to hear from a more knowledgeable source with a broader perspective.

The Scandalous Jesus

N.T. Wright uses the insights, and challenges the excesses, of both the orthodox and the reductionists who claim to know Jesus.

The traditional view of Jesus is often laden with so much gloss that the man himself disappears under the veneer.

But reductionists like the Jesus Seminar have scraped away too much. Their product is a Jesus who actually said very little and did less (since miracles are deemed non-credible). He is a cipher who doesn’t seem to have done anything upsetting enough to merit crucifixion. It is even more difficult to imagine such a character inspiring followers to insist that he was truly risen, even at the cost of their lives.

As Wright points out, no other messianic group of that era made such a claim, nor were they willing to sacrifice their lives for it when they could have spared themselves much trouble by simply claiming Jesus as an enduring spiritual presence.

Reductionists perform a service by challenging orthodoxy to be more self-critical. But they are disingenuous when they claim no bias. They dismiss a physical resurrection because it doesn’t fit their worldview. But their alternative explanations seem strained and no less incredible.

Jesus always defies our comfortably preconceived notions. It is his defiance that makes him so alive and a scandal to the orthodox and unorthodox alike.

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If You Look in the Canon, You’ll Find the Canonical Jesus

N.T. Wright’s reconstruction of Jesus, like so many others these days, relies on an essential circularity. Wright speaks of Jesus doing things and saying things, and then tries to find the pattern that best accounts for those acts and claims. In particular, he hopes to reason from the acts and statements to a set of beliefs that Jesus appears to have held.

But any account of what Jesus said and did relies, of course, on written reports of what he said and did. That is not unusual; virtually all our knowledge of historical figures derives from written records. The circularity comes in, though, in the selection of which written records to credit.

Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and the Pauline letters are, after all, edited texts based on many borrowings (from “Q,” from each other, maybe from a whole lot else). They took the shape they did, and, much later, entered our tradition as canonical because they gave expression to views of Jesus that were gradually displacing other views en route to becoming the received orthodoxy.

What other views? Perhaps a great many. We know that by about 50 C.E. at the latest Paul was in conflict with opponents who held to different visions of Jesus—and presumably, different accounts of what he’d said and done. On the whole those accounts have been lost, successfully suppressed or absorbed into later writings (and thus reinterpreted). Fragments, though, may still exist within the canon, in the Gospel of Thomas and in other apocrypha, and we never know what someone is going to stumble across in some Egyptian desert or West Bank cave.

To the extent that we can still retrieve them, why shouldn’t those other views and reports of Jesus figure just as importantly in our reconstructions as the canonical views? And to the extent that we can’t retrieve them, mustn’t reconstructions based on the canonical views always come with an asterisk, an acknowledgment that something else that we know to be out there might, if it came to light, dash to pieces everything we’ve been saying?

Wright may feel that, by contrast with the radical claims of the Jesus Seminar and other modernist critics, it counts for a lot to be able to go back to the texts and find that, on the whole, they confirm key features of traditional faith: that Jesus was more than a teacher of wisdom and that he rose bodily from the dead. But it counts for little if the texts in question are those of the canon. For the canon is an accretion of that very tradition and a proclamation of that very faith. It is the essence of circular thinking to announce that one has dug down and discovered what was deliberately put there to be discovered. And the final question is, if we’re going to accept the church’s received selection of texts, why dig at all? Why not, like any uncritical believer, just accept the church’s received account of what they mean?

N.T. Wright responds:

Mr. Smith’s letter addresses an issue I discuss fully in my forthcoming book, Jesus and the Victory of God, but hardly at all in the article. Of course, if we are prepared to invent all sorts of groups within early Christianity for which there is virtually no evidence, history becomes extremely difficult. In the book, I have tried, as a 008historian, to consider all the scraps of evidence available, from whatever source. If Mr. Smith thinks the picture I draw is derived simply from orthodoxy, rather than from fresh historical study, I invite him to read the book and think again.

The Temple Mattered to Jesus

I enjoyed N.T. Wright’s article and applaud his intriguing interpretations. However, I fear that he has slipped into a common scholarly error in describing Jesus’ eschatological movement as a repudiation of the Temple. This interpretation, though quite common, is inconsistent with a credible picture of first-century Judaism. One need only refer to the Testament of Moses¹ or the Qumran Temple Scroll² to witness the expression of discontent for the Temple as it currently functioned, yet a definite recognition of the edifice as the cosmological center of spiritual endowment. The community at Qumran, like Jesus and others of the period, made a distinction between the Temple as a divine institution and the way that it actually functioned. Not only had the priestly lineage been altered with the onslaught of Hellenization, but ample evidence from the era indicates an overall dissatisfaction with the method by which the priestly impostors conducted Temple affairs. Jesus’ cleansing must surely be interpreted in this light. Jesus would not have cleansed an establishment He perceived as an obstacle to the Kingdom of God.

N.T. Wright responds:

Mr. Bokovoy has misunderstood me: I do not say that Jesus ‘repudiated’ the Jerusalem Temple, but that, like the prophets, he declared the judgment of Israel’s God upon it. It won’t do to cite other first-century groups as counter-examples. Precisely the question at issue is whether Jesus was just like such groups or not.

The Priestly Source

BR Author(s) Unmasked!

I have long enjoyed your excellent magazine and have found the presentation of opposing views to be intellectually stimulating. However, when reading Victor Hurowitz’s “P—Understanding the Priestly Source” in the June 1996 BR and 048applying the principles of documentary criticism contained therein, I discovered that a hoax had been perpetrated on your unsuspecting readers! Indeed, I am now convinced not only that Hurowitz never composed this article, “but that no one person could have possibly done so” (First Glance, BR 12:03). I have divided the sources into G, Y or G₁, S, W or S₁, and possibly R.

The G source, so named due to the preference for the word “God,” predominates from pages 30 to 37 of the article. Among its characteristics, G has a more folksy and humorous style. It is G that compares the documentary hypothesis to “a bowl of alphabet soup—or perhaps perusing a catalogue of foundations and corporations.” G compares teaching the documentary hypothesis to a scene in The Sound of Music where Julie Andrews teaches her young charges to sing. G suggests that the biblical narrator might be suffering from amnesia. It is G who points out, with a line reminiscent of Bill Cosby (a possible source for G?), that “Noah is told twice to enter the ark (and not because he went back to kiss the wife and kids, for they are in there with him!).” G shows true insight and genius in noticing how inconsistent it would be for the Almighty to repeat Himself within eleven verses for emphasis. G also displays an interest in and concern for students. Students’ difficulties in understanding the somewhat less than intuitive documentary hypothesis figure prominently on pages 30 and 32. Perhaps G is a collection of students and teachers. This might be hinted at by the inconsistent terminology used for the Pentateuch (i.e., “Pentateuch,” “Torah,” and “Five Books of Moses”).

The Y source, so called because of its consistent mention of YHWH, the name of God, is a minor contributor and is only found inserted in G passages (for example, pp. 32, 34). Y does seek to emulate G’s humor by questioning if the use of several divine names meant that God was having an identity crisis. For these similarities, I consider it possible to designate Y by G₁. G₁ could perhaps be considered G with an identity crisis.

The S, or scholarly, source begins to make its presence known on page 34, where it is interjected into a G passage, and by page 37, S has taken over the article. S’s style is completely different from G’s. S has no humor or warmth. S does not attempt to persuade, as G does. Rather, S seeks to intimidate by repeated references to “scholars,” “most scholars,” “the majority of scholars,” etc. S must be right, since as S asserts, “few biblical scholars” and “no modern scholar” would disagree with S. Therefore, those who might disagree are marginalized and denied the status of “modern scholars.” S is also notable for its paucity of references to God. The word “God” never appears in S, and the name “YHWH” appears only twice and that is when referring to another’s point of view. (Could this be a Y incursion?) S does not seem to be concerned with God. In an apparent contradiction, S dogmatically asserts a secular scholarly viewpoint. As an aside, it should be noted that G and S offer differing definitions of the Hebrew word kavod: “divine substance” versus “presence.” S prefers “Pentateuch” for the first five books of the Bible.

The W source, so named because of numerous references to Julius Wellhausen, begins to appear in connection with S on page 44 and dominates until the end of the article. This close association leads me to suggest that it may be considered S₁. However, one important difference between S and W does exist. In an apparent reaction to S’s secularistic neglect of God, W has adopted a humanistic worship of Julius Wellhausen! W refers to Wellhausen in reverent tones as 049“a giant whose shadow still looms large over modern biblical research.” This difference leads me to conclude that W is a separate source from S, although closely aligned to S in outlook.

The handiwork of the R, or redactor, source is seen throughout the article, weaving together the divergent sources of the article. No doubt R has obscured many other clues that we otherwise would have seen of the other sources. R is seen most clearly towards the end of the article, where his personal conclusions are stated.

I propose the following chronology. G, with its student emphasis and emphasis on God, is the oldest source. Y came somewhat later and, while largely agreeing with G, wanted to emphasize God’s personality, as reflected by the use of the name “YHWH.” Much later, the S source added its dogmatic secular scholarly approach. W, while agreeing with S, found it to be a little cold; therefore, the W source added a reverence for Julius Wellhausen. Finally, R wove these sources together and summarized the article in his own words.

I challenge BR never to attempt such a deception again. Your readers, armed with the principles of documentary criticism, will be watching!

Victor Hurowitz responds:

You caught me! I am indeed a corporation, but as a corporation, all parts of me speak with a single mind. When writing about an array of issues to a non-homogeneous audience, I must invariably vary my style to suit all needs. There is a crucial difference between a single author writing to fulfill multiple needs and the Pentateuch, which has been put together by several authors or schools. The stylistic complexity of the individual author does not dovetail with contradictions and different worldviews and outlooks, whereas in the Pentateuch, there is such correlation. It is the combination of all the factors, and not an individual one, which is the giveaway. I am gratified that Hurowitz, Inc., has provided you with the tools of higher criticism and hope you will practice them until you learn how they are to be used.

Columnists

Bridge of Sighs

I liked very much the column “When God Repents,” by Bernhard Anderson (June 1996). I too have found it theologically troubling to say that God “repents” for anything. Let me suggest that our problem lies less with the textual word than it does with our translation of it. Anderson correctly points out that the Hebrew word nicham is often translated as “regret,” “relent” or to “be sorry,” but the root is also found in the nouns “comfort” (Isaiah 57:18; Psalms 119:50) and “consolation” (Isaiah 66:11), and the verb “to comfort” (Job 6:10; Jeremiah 16:7). How is it that the same root can convey such opposite ideas as regret and consolation? As a pre-Hebrew root, N-Ch-M can mean “to breathe deeply”—in other words, to sigh.

The same physical and emotional action, a heartfelt sigh, can express sorrow, regret or comfort. What is it that God does in the biblical texts noted by Anderson? God gives a deep and sad sigh after seeing what we have done with our freedom. Does this mean that God “regrets” or, even worse, “repents”? No, it is only that God is disappointed with what we have done with His gifts.

What Does It Take to Be Saved?

Helmut Koester (“Paul, Christian Community and the Jews,” BR 12:03) says Paul was painfully aware that Jews “were rejecting the message of justification by faith in Christ apart from the law and the radical contraction of the entire law into the commandment of loving one’s neighbor.” He combines these two ideas as though they are one.

That the law could be contracted into the commandment of loving one’s neighbor was accepted by many Jews of the time. Hillel, a revered Jewish sage, said that after this commandment the rest of the Torah is commentary. But when Paul referred to justification by faith, he meant something very different: that the first requirement for salvation was accepting the right theology. He said, “If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, you shall be saved…if the law can justify us, there is no point in the death of Christ.”

In contrast, the parable of the good Samaritan implies that theology doesn’t count for much. Jesus chose as his protagonist a good man from Samaria, 050although the Samaritans were regarded in Jerusalem as theologically impure. What mattered was the man’s compassion and actions.

Dr. Koester quotes Paul as denying that God has rejected those Jews who don’t accept Christ. But what Paul says is that such Jews, who are branches cut off for their unbelief, will eventually be grafted back when they give up their unbelief (Romans 11:23–24), that is, when they become Christians. I can’t see invoking Paul in Dr. Koester’s thesis that Jews are not automatically excluded from God’s approval.

Helmut Koester responds:

In Paul’s thought, justification by faith in Christ and the proclamation that Christ is the end of the law certainly belong closely together. Romans 3:21–22 states clearly that “now, apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been revealed…through faith in Jesus Christ for those who believe.” Throughout the Letter to the Romans, it is clear that the faith that accepts God’s justification has nothing to do with works of the law. At the same time, Paul raises the question several times of whether the law has therefore completely lost its validity. His answer is that the law remains valid in several respects. First of all, the promises remain valid; see the close connection of Romans 3:31 (“Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the law!”) with the discussion of the promises given to Abraham in Romans 4. Second, the law is fulfilled in the commandment of love; see Romans 13:8, “Owe no one anything, except to love one another, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law,” and Romans 13:10, “Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.”

It is true, of course, that a similar reduction of the law of the commandment to love is also ascribed in Jewish tradition to the sage Hillel. Hillel’s statement, however, does not imply that, as a result, circumcision and the entire ritual and dietary law have lost their validity.

With respect to the question of the ultimate salvation of Israel (Paul does not use the term “Jews” in this context), it is true that Paul speaks about the possibility that “even those of Israel, if they do not persist in unbelief, will be grafted in” (Romans 11:23). This, however, is not the entire story. Paul goes on to say that there is a mystery, namely, “a hardening has come upon part of Israel until the full number of the gentiles has come in. And so all Israel will be saved” (Romans 11:25–26). At this point, the ultimate salvation of Israel is no longer made conditional upon Israel’s belief but depends exclusively upon the mercy of God (Romans 11:30–32) because “the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable” (Romans 11:29).

I would take exception to Mr. Villchur’s statement “that [for Paul] the first requirement for salvation was accepting the right theology.” Central to Paul’s view of salvation is not a human commitment to some theological statement but God’s action, namely, the revelation of God’s righteousness through the giving of his son. Faith is nothing but the acceptance of this divine act of love, which transcends the boundaries established by the law—just as the simple act of love of the Samaritan in Jesus’ parable transcends those same boundaries.