Wedding Textual and Rhetorical Criticism

THEME SECTION / SEZIONE MONOGRAFICA
THE HISTORICAL JESUS:

CONTEMPORARY INTERPRETERS
AND NEW PERSPECTIVES
ed. PIERPAOLO BERTALOTTO, GABRIELE BOCCACCINI and
JAMES H. CHARLESWORTH
Yeshua haNotzri (Jesus of Nazareth) is a character that since antiquity

has attracted the interest of many, and not primarily for intellectual or
academic reasons. Jesus is the founder of one of the largest world
religions, Christianity, and a recognized figure in Judaism and Islam.
Over the centuries, his figure has been at the center of innumerable
controversies. The understanding of his words and deeds has shaped, and
at the same time has been shaped by, the self-understanding of millions of
people. Moreover, Jesus is also a historical character and as such has been
the object of historicalinquiry.
Scholars in the field usually refer to three main stages in the history of
research on the Historical Jesus, the so-called Old Quest, the New Quest,
and the Third Quest (or Jesus Research). The first two phases were
characterized by a certain degree of uniformity in the proposed solutions.
The Old Quest was dominated by the image of Jesus as a teacher of
ethics, a sort of projection of the expectations of liberal theology of the
time. The main purpose was that of triggering a reformation of
contemporary churches through a restoration of the core of Christian
ethical message, as Jesus himself preached it, in opposition to later
interpretations by the various church traditions. This phase was closed by
the seminal work of Albert Schweitzer, who recognized the biases in that
approach and offered a reconstruction of the historical Jesus as an
apocalyptic preacher of the coming age, closer to the image provided by
the canonical gospels, especially the Synoptics.
The New Quest started as a reaction to Rudoph Bultmann’s rejection
of the Gospels as reliable sources for the Historical Jesus and his
dismissal of the necessity of such a research for theological purposes. The
scholars that participated in the New Quest were all somehow personally
connected with Bultmann. Their main concern was to reaffirm both the
possibility and the opportunity of continuing the research on the
Historical Jesus. No distinctive feature has emerged from the Third Quest.
This phase has been rather marked by the diversity of proposed solution
and by the participation in the debate by scholars from all over the world
Hen 32(2/2010)
The Historical Jesus: Contemporary Interpreters and New Perspectives 251
who have looked at the issue from very different perspectives and
according to different methodologies. A side effect of this otherwise very
enriching pluralism has been the difficulty (if not the impossibility) to
reach any kind of consensus on almost every point under discussion.
As a result, the scholar’s interest in the search for the Historical Jesus
faces today two major problems: (a) the enormous amount of scholarly
and non-scholarly literature continually produced on this topic, especially
in the last decades, and (b) the great diversity of approaches and proposed
solutions, which has resulted into an increasing fragmentation of the field
into separated schools.
The processes of democratization and globalization of research and the
irruption of the web as a new, powerful means of expression have only
exacerbated an existing situation. Besides, the fortune of pseudo-historical
theories out of any control from the scholarly community has added
skepticism and cynicism, as every theory seems able today to receive easy
legitimacy, while serious work struggles to stay afloat in the mare
magnum of untested hypotheses.
The recognition of this complex situation prompted our project of
presenting together, in the synthetic form provided by an open forum, the
variety of voices active today in scholarship. The goal was not to single out
one approach or school over against the others, or to reach any possible
compromise but to foster dialogue, mutual understanding, and open channels
of communication. Although diverse, scholarly research on the Historical
Jesus stands firmly on the established foundation of literary criticism and
critical analysis of historical evidence, and on the rejection of a-priori
assumptions and double standards in the reading of ancient sources.
We summoned a group of distinguished specialists in the field, from
different countries and different scholarly traditions. The group had to be
large enough as to be representative of the geographical and methodological
diversity of contemporary scholarship. Each scholar had to be given the
opportunity to express him or herself, while their contributions as a whole
had to be shaped in a format that could facilitate interaction and comparison
by the reader. We therefore asked all participants in the forum to focus their
attention on the following three questions:
1. The last three decades of the 20th and the first of the 21st century
have seen the explosion of new interest in the Historical Jesus. The record
of such interest is commonly known in the academic environment as the
Old Quest, the New Quest, and the Third Quest or Jesus Research. Do you
think that this phase is now over? What are the most interesting and
promising future perspectives in the field? What are the specific problems
that you think more than others deserve or require further analysis?
2. Every scholar today would agree on Jesus Jewishness. However,
when it comes to defining in more detail what this acknowledgement
actually entails, scholarly opinions tend to diverge greatly. How would
you define the specificity of Jesus’ cultural background? What kind of
252 Theme Section / Sezione monografica
Judaism was the one in which Jesus grew up? To what group or
ideological stream, if any, did his family, and the people who influenced
him the most, belong? In short, what kind of Jew was Jesus?
3. Every scholar would agree that Jesus was an original thinker and he
was deeply engaged in the religious debate of his age. How did Jesus
personally rework the cultural features that he inherited? Which are the
most original elements of his thought?
The first question required an assessment upon the past, present and
future of research in the field and an effort by each contributor to locate
his or her work within the provided framework. The second and third
questions went directly to the core of the inquiry on the historical Jesus.
As every person, Jesus both was influenced by, and influenced, the world
in which he lived and operated. Defining his Jewishness means
delineating how he re-elaborated, in a personal and distinctive way, his
culture and religion, how he reacted to the events of his life and tried to
cope with them, and what kind of relationships he established with his
contemporaries.
Consistent with the goals and stated rules of engagement of the forum,
no summary or conclusion was added to the received answers (which are
listed according to the alphabetical order of their authors). Yet the result
goes far beyond a mere survey of the wide variety of contemporary
research. The authors were asked to look ahead and did not hesitated to
provide new perspectives and fresh suggestions. Now and then we see
some common and solid ground for future research emerge behind the
diversity of approaches and conclusions. Common and solid ground is the
consciousness to which research on the historical Jesus should be
sensitive, but not dictated by theological concerns. Moreover, the history
(and periodization) of past research also should be rewritten outside of the
theological frames in which it has been constrained. Common and solid
ground is the strength with which the Jewishness of Jesus is confirmed as
the central key of interpretation of his thought and historical role. This
calls for a better interaction between New Testament and Second Temple
specialists and a closer look at interdisciplinary contributions from social
sciences and archaeology. Common and solid ground is the new emphasis
that the search for the distinctive features of Jesus should not be
understood as the search for an abstract uniqueness that would separate
Jesus from his environment, but on the contrary, as evidence of the deep
involvement of Jesus in the cultural and religious debate of his time.
Common and solid ground is finally the desire for a new model of
scholarship in the field in which different approaches may coexist and
flourish by listening and contributing to each other.
We hope and believe that this scholarly conversation will contribute to
facilitating the difficult task of identifying convergences and divergences
among the many reconstructions of the historical Jesus, thus improving
the mutual understanding as well as the probability of finding some
synthesis. We thank the distinguished scholars who have taken part in this
forum, from Europe, America, Australia, and Israel.
The Editors
Dale C. Allison (Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, USA)
1. The standard typology – old quest, new quest, third quest – distorts
much more than it illumines, and so it is best abandoned. Moreover, the
current books and articles on Jesus, as well as the books and articles of the
last several decades, exhibit such a wide range of diverse interests,
methods, and conclusions that I can make no enlightening generalizations
about them. All of which is to say: I do not view the present moment and
recent past as constituting a well-defined phase or period of research, and I
cannot contemplate the end of a period or phase whose existence I do not
recognize.
As for interesting and promising directions for future scholarship, I see
at least three possibilities. First, we have learned a great deal about human
memory, individual and social, in the past forty or fifty years, how it works
and how it fails to work. New Testament scholarship is only beginning to
apply the findings to its work. I suspect serious attention to the scientific
literature on memory will have major implications both for methodological
issues and for our conceptions of history. Second, critical scholarship needs
to rewrite its own history. The old – new – third quest scheme needs to give
way to a more informed and nuanced history that gives credit to work
before Reimarus, recognizes the foundational importance of the first half of
the twentieth century for all subsequent scholarship, and abandons every
simplistic characterization about the present. Third, the field will continue
to progress above all as NT specialists learn more and more from the ever-
burgeoning study of early Judaism and its texts, especially the Dead Sea
Scrolls, the Pseudepigrapha, and early rabbinic sources. Most of the lasting
advances in the study of Jesus over the last fifty years have been by-
products of major advances in the study of Judaism, and much more of
significance will undoubtedly come to light as the extant Jewish sources are
subjected to more and more detailed analysis.
2. I do not believe that it is possible to be very specific about the sort of

Judaism in which Jesus grew up. The extent and importance of differences
between Judaism in Galilee and in Jerusalem during Jesus’ time is still
unclear to me. Unfortunately, the archaeology of Galilee has not helped us
enough with this question. Moreover, the religion of Jesus’ family cannot
be directly associated with the Pharisees or the Essenes or with what some
now call Enochian Judaism or with any other well-known group. Beyond
that, the sorts of good guesses that we can make about the Judaism of Jesus’
youth do not take us very far because they remain very broad
generalizations, such as that Jesus’ immediate family members spoke
Aramaic, that they were well-acquainted with significant portions of the
Tanak, which they accepted as revelation, that they gathered for religious
services on the sabbath, that they reverenced the temple, that they used
miqva’ot, that they attended, at least on occasion, festivals in Jerusalem,
and that they expected God, in the latter days, to bring to pass the scriptural
prophecies of blessing and judgment.
We can say, however, that Jesus and the early traditions about him
reflect a Judaism in which God was at the center of everything, in which
Scripture was the lingua franca, and in which eschatological ideas were
very much in the air. To what extent all this reflects the personal
contributions of Jesus and his followers and the extent to which it rather
reflects the religious environment in which Jesus grew up we cannot know.
But these three elements were, its seems, part and parcel of John the
Baptist’s movement, and I am convinced that, if somehow we could learn
more, we would see that the Judaism of Jesus was in great measure the
Judaism of John the Baptist, and indeed that Jesus continued to be heavily
indebted to John throughout his ministry.
3. Regarding Jesus’ originality, any number of things may be said. First,

I believe that at the heart of his ethical message was a provocative dialogue
with Leviticus 19, a very important text in much Jewish tradition. He
followed Leviticus 19 in countering vengeance, encouraging love, and
prohibiting usury, but he otherwise modified and added to the Mosaic
demands. He substituted mercy for holiness (see Leviticus 19:2), enjoined
his hearers not to judge (Leviticus 19 commands one to judge one’s
neighbor), spoke of love of enemy rather than love of neighbor, and insisted
that it is not enough to have right fraternal relations (the subject of Lev
19:17), for even Gentiles do that. It is also possible that he promulgated a
positive form of the golden rule and so intended to transcend the well-
known negative form of the golden rule.
Second, Jesus characteristically spoke of God as father, seemingly more
frequently than other Jews in his time and place. Further, although God’s
character as father was a well-known Jewish topos, Jesus appears to have
been distinctive in his emphasis upon it.
Third, the ubiquity of the word “kingdom” in the earliest sources seems
to mark another distinctive element. Most of the ideas that Jesus associated
with that term can indeed be found elsewhere (many of them in connection
with the “world to come” of apocalyptic and rabbinic texts); but his
fundamental focus on that term appears to have been unprecedented, and
the result was the creation of a unique constellation of associations.
Fourth, whereas most of Jesus’ eschatological convictions were taken
from Judaism, he applied them directly to himself and the group around
him. This involved more than just proclaiming that the end was at hand. It
rather involved the large claim that he and his movement were at the center
of the end-time scenario. I indeed believe that he thought of himself as
Israel’s eschatological king in waiting. In this he likely resembled some of
the sign prophets that we learn something of through Josephus.
Finally, I should like to add that the question concerns the most original
element in Jesus’ thought. But I wonder whether this does not put undue
emphasis upon the content of his proclamation. One should also recognize
the importance of form. Jesus was rhetorically interesting: he composed
memorable aphorisms and parables, he made provocative statements about
the Torah, he employed counter-intuitive illustrations, he was fond of
startling hyperbole, and he may even have created some idiosyncratic
idioms (for example, prefatory “amen”). Moreover, my sense is that, for his
contemporaries, Jesus was as much miracle-worker as teacher. He attracted
attention and people not just because of what he had to say but because he
was a very charismatic individual. In particular, he was known as a
compassionate healer and exorcist – this must have won him a large and
sympathetic following in Galilee – and clearly many believed that, in his
presence, they experienced the presence of Israel’s God.
Daniel Assefa (Capuchin Franciscan Institute, Ethiopia)
1. The third Quest is not over, unless one assumes that its purpose was
merely to prove that the historical Jesus should be studied against a
Palestinian Jewish background. Demonstration of this necessity is by itself
a great achievement. However, the Palestinian Jewish context itself needs to
be refined. The fact that Palestinian Judaism was diverse should not be
ignored. Theories about this diverse reality need to be revisited in the light
of the ever growing understanding of the New Testament literature, the
pseudepigrapha, the Dead Sea Scrolls and Archeology.
The question of apocalyptic worldviews within Palestinian Judaism
requires further analysis. Terms frequently used to define apocalyptic
elements need theoretical discussions. What do we understand by
apocalyptic? Should we not revisit our definitions? Should we not check
whether we are imposing alien concepts on our sources? Perhaps the
concepts we are advancing are not supported by the written sources. Surely
preconceptions, irrespective of the adopted approaches, require caution.
Besides the studies of Palestinian Judaism, progress in historiography
and literary theories deserve more attention. Confronting archeological
discoveries with the narratives of the Gospels is quite important. For the
study of the historical Jesus, the Gospels own a prominent role as primary
sources whether we like it or not. This implies that the texts need to be
studied further and that exegesis can not be neglected. Given that the
gospels have been studied throughout centuries, the history of their exegesis
still maintains a prominent and precious place as secondary sources.
Historical approaches need not to be opposed to literary theories. It
seems that more researches need to be done in terms of how a gospel, a
narrative which does not belong to the genre of pure historiography, refers
to historical persons and events. It does not mean that studies have not been
carried out in this area. Literary critics and philosophers, among others,
have dealt with these issues. The question is one of taking into
consideration the results of such researches in the analysis of sources
appropriate to the study of the historical Jesus.
It may be useful to examine how the gospels and archeological data are
interpreted in order to reach conclusions on the historical Jesus. For one
thing, it would remind scholars that both archeological and textual data hold
topics that are far from being exhausted. For another, it would enable us to
assess affirmations on the historical Jesus. On what basis do we build our
hypotheses regarding the historical Jesus? Are we open to critique with
regard to our methods? When we describe the historical Jesus, are we
realizing that we are writing, in our way, a history of Jesus or a story of
Jesus? What is the relationship between history and story, between the
attempt of discovering what really happened and what could have
happened, between historiography and literature? Methods need to be re-
examined keeping the balance between historicism and historical
skepticism. Every description of the historical Jesus includes narratives on
Jesus. Now the “narrative” written by the searcher of the historical Jesus
should be exposed to “historical critical” analysis. Historical studies should
be aware also of their limitations.
Perhaps, the Quest needs some “pause” for the sake of appreciating its
achievement, assessing its methods, and recognizing its shortcomings. The
criteria of authenticity can be checked and revised. Besides, the Quest
should not ignore previous and current studies that may not fit into the
categories of “Quests”.
If scholars approach the same source material differently, no approach
can claim the monopoly of the interpretation. No approach may exhaust the
issues. Approaches that are complementary imply humility and openness to
other approaches.
2. Jesus’ cultural background is the one of Palestinian Judaism which

was quite diverse. It was expressed in different groups like the Pharisees,
the Essenes, the Sadducees, and the Zealots. In order to be more precise
about this cultural background, one needs to be precise, among other things,
about the Pharisees, the Essenes, and all other groups. However, scholars
diverge significantly in describing these various groups. It is therefore
extremely difficult to depict the portrait of Jesus’ family in terms of its
cultural background. If John the Baptist seems to have been close to the
Essenes or to an apocalyptic group, this is less clear with regard to Jesus. In
some respects Jesus was close to the Pharisees and in others to the Essenes.
On the one hand, the announcing of judgment and the imminence of the
Kingdom of God are reminiscent of apocalyptic world views. In so far as
his kingdom does not have a social or political solution it is transcendental,
otherworldly. Yet, Jesus’ kingdom of God has a distinctive element. Jesus
does not limit his focus on the otherworld or the future time only. What is
expected through the Kingdom of God has also the characteristic of being
already fulfilled. The Kingdom of God concerns this World too. Moreover,
the kingdom of God is not depicted by Jesus the same way as the
otherworldly is described in apocalypses.
With regard to the genre of the apocalypse, there is a paradox. Neither the
mediator of the revelation disclosed in apocalyptic literature, nor the recipient
of the revelation do claim much authority. Jesus, on the other hand, identifies
himself with the revealed mystery and claims authority higher than the angels
who are the ordinary mediators of apocalyptic messages.
3. Like other biblical prophets Jesus announced the imminence of God’s

intervention and the coming of a new reality, namely of God’s rule.
Although to a limited extent, his prophecy had apocalyptic traits. As
mentioned above, not all scholars have the same understanding concerning
the elements that constitute an apocalyptic world view. Be that as it may, let
us take the theme of dualism which is often mentioned in connection with
apocalypticism. If dualism belongs to an apocalyptic world view, it can be
said that Jesus does not maintain the same kind of dualism as found in
apocalyptic literature. In the case of ethical dualism, the difference between
the just and the unjust, the pure and the impure, as delineated by Jesus, does
not correspond to the distinction found in the Qumran community, the
Essenes or the Pharisees. Similarly, the “spatial dualism” described in
apocalyptic literature does not coincide with the space which covers the
Kingdom of God proclaimed by Jesus and the space that does not belong to
that kingdom. Moreover, the temporal distinction between the present and
the future in apocalyptic world-views does not synchronize with the
temporal contrast depicted by Jesus. Therefore, Jesus’ references to the
kingdom of God makes Jesus original. What is done with dualism, can also
be done with other elements of apocalypticism, like, for instance,
determinism or divine judgment, in order to verify whether there is
continuity or discontinuity between the Jewish matrix and Jesus.
Was Jesus original in his use of the expression “Son of Man”? The fact
that Jesus is the only person who uses this expression in the Gospels
deserves much attention. Let us put in brackets for a while all questions as
to whether the expression comes from Jesus or from the Christian
community. Similarly, let us ignore temporarily, the question of whether
the son of man seen, as a particular individual with messianic prerogatives,
comes first from the Book of the Parables or the Gospels. Now just a mere
synchronic reading of the Gospels leads one to conclude that Jesus’ use of
the term is original. In the world described by the Gospels, that is, the
World of the text, the phrase “Son of Man” becomes one of the elements
that make Jesus peculiar. The “Son of Man” described in the Gospels is
much more variegated than in the Book of the Parables. Even if we admit a
dependence on the Book of the Parables, we can not ignore the fact that
there is more than mere borrowing from the Enochic writing.
Now the real meaning of the expression “Son of Man” in the Gospels is
still much debated. Some scholars link it to Jesus’ messianic role while
others contend that the expression has no particular eschatological
connotation. Apart from the much debated sentence in 1 Enoch 71: 14
concerning which scholars speculate on whether Enoch himself may have
been identified with the “Son of Man”, no human person is identified with
the Son of Man taken as a particular individual. The case of Abel, son of
Adam, in the Testament of Abraham, is more a reaction than a sign of
influence on the Gospels. For one thing, the identification of the Son of
Man with Enoch is highly problematic. For another, in Second Temple
Judaism, nowhere is he identified with the Son of Man. If Jesus identifies
himself with the Son of Man, that is something original anyway.
Even if the Son of Man were not understood as a particular individual
and if that expression did not have any special connotation, Jesus would
still be original by “creating” a peculiar meaning for that phrase.
Finally, Jesus proposes a new way of understanding his Jewish tradition,
whether apocalyptic or non apocalyptic, whether Essene or Pharisaic. He
claims to hold an extraordinary intimacy with God and special authority
with regard to the Law. Love of enemies figures among the distinctive
elements promoted by Jesus.
Gabriele Boccaccini (University of Michigan, USA)
1. The distinction among First Quest, New Quest and Third Quest is
only one possible way to look at the history of research and provides only a
partial picture. I find more useful a periodization that would follow the
debate of the Jewish vs. the Christian Jesus. It has the advantage of being a
very old paradigm and including in the picture the entire history of research
without creating an artificial watershed before and after Reimarus. This
debate is at the center of the historical controversy since antiquity. Yaqub
al-Qirqisani already claimed that Jesus was a Jew (not a Christian), and
Christianity was the invention of Paul of Tarsus. Yaqub al-Qirqsani was a
Karaite, expressing a minority position. In the heat of the controversy, the
Christians and the Rabbis had already came very soon to agree that Jesus
was not a Jew or only accidentally a Jew and definitively the one who
wanted to destroy Judaism as it was.
The search for the Historical Jesus has long followed the same path of
al-Qirqisani in rediscovering the Jewishness of Jesus while separating him
from his own movement. Christian theologians like Rudolf Bultmann came
to agree on this position by claiming that after all Christianity was not
based in the historical Jesus (the Jewish Jesus) but on the risen Christ (the
Christian Jesus of faith). More recently, some scholarly reconstructions of
the historical Jesus have offered us the image of a “marginal” Jesus who is
equally detached from his Jewish world and from the movement that arose
in his name.
In my opinion, the gulf that separates the historical Jesus from the Christ
of faith, i.e. the Jewish Jesus from the Christian Jesus, can be reconciled
without going back to uncritical fundamentalist or theological approaches.
The emphasis on the diversity of Second Temple Judaism allows scholars
to rediscover fully the Jewishness of Jesus without downplaying his role as
the founder of a reform movement, that would later develop into the
religion we now call Christianity. The crucial historical problem is not
whether Jesus was “a Jew or a Christian,” or even whether he claimed to be
the Messiah. There were in fact many different ways of being a Jew in the
first century and many competing ideas about the Messiah. Continuity as
well as discontinuity are both part of the experience of the early Jesus
movement, a movement that was far from being the totally “new”
revelation it claimed to be. On the contrary, the birth of Christianity was the
ultimate outcome of ancient Jewish controversies – an inner-Jewish
struggle that started centuries before Jesus was born. By combining the
results of research on the diversity of ancient Judaisms and the diversity of
early Christianities, it is possible to recover a “Jewish and Christian” Jesus
who belonged fully to Judaism of his own time and at the same time started
a new trajectory which after the destruction of the Temple gradually parted
from other parallel Jewish trajectories, yet never parted from its roots in
Second Temple Judaism.
2. The problem of the kind of Judaism from which the Jesus movement
was born is inescapable. In history there is no such thing as an individual or
a social group that suddenly emerges coming from nowhere, taking a little
from everywhere. The problem of Jesus origins cannot be easily dismissed
simply by arguing multiple and (equally relevant) influences. Origins and
influences are not coincidental. Obviously if we compare the gospels with
what we know about any of the Jewish movements of the Second Temple
period we can only reach the conclusion that Jesus was influenced by all of
them and did not belong to any. Jesus was neither a Sadducee, nor a
Pharisee, nor a Zealot, nor an Essene, nor an Enochian… But the gospels
testify to a stage in which Jesus and his movement had already reached a
distinctive identity within the diverse world of Second Temple Judaism.
The problem is simply ill-posed. When we ask the question about which
kind of Jew Jesus was, in reality we inquire about the kind of Judaism from
which Jesus developed his own interpretation of Judaism. In other words,

we search the foundations upon which Jesus built his preaching, the open
questions he tried to answer. As we have no direct information about his
childhood or education we can only understand the problem looking, on one
hand, at the people who mostly influenced the beginning of his ministry and
on the other, at the conceptual premises of his thought. Concerning the first
issue, all sources agree on indicating in John the Baptist the one whose
teachings were decisive in shaping the worldview of Jesus. Now all
indications seem to lead to the conclusion that John was somehow linked to
the Essene movement. Jesus, at least initially, adhered to the message of
John the Baptist with so much enthusiasm that this relationship could not
completely severed by Christian tradition even when the baptism Jesus
received on the river Jordan became the source of no little embarrassment.
Second. As Jesus was an original thinker, his preaching does not coincide
with any other known teacher or group, yet he shared the same premises
that we also find in the Enochic (and Essene) literature, that is, the
superhuman and cosmic origin of evil, the existence of the devil and evil
spirits, the expectation of the world to come, and yes the coming of the
eschatological judge, the Son of Man. This set of ideas were strongly
opposed by the Sadducees and the Pharisees (even though some of them
were shared by the latter, which explain the closeness with them). Unless
we assume that the worldview of Jesus had nothing to do with that of his
disciples (but the relationship with John the Baptist shows that this was part
of the early experience of Jesus), these elements concur to suggest Enochic
Judaism as the kind of Judaism to which the Jesus movement was born.
3. Of course, Jesus was not an Enochian (at least, since he identified

himself as the Son of Man) and he was not an Essene, as he developed his
own understanding of Judaism. I see in the proclamation of forgiveness of sin
by the Son of Man the single most innovative element in Jesus’ thought. With
the Enochians and the Essenes, Jesus shared the idea that the world was
corrupted by a cosmic sin and evil was spreading as a disease, and waited for
the coming of the world to come and the last judgment. From John the
Baptist Jesus learned that the central problem prompted by the imminent
coming of the kingdom was that of forgiveness of sin. The sick needed a
doctor and a medicine, or at least some hope before the impending doom.
John relied on God’s mercy. God could not be so cruel and John saw in an act
of penance the ultimate prayer for forgiveness. It was a logical development
of Enochic thought. After all God had already once cleansed the world with
water in the Flood before the final judgment by fire. “Be cleansed with the
water of baptism, if you do not want to be destroyed with the fire of
judgment” – had to be John’s message. Jesus went further by claiming that
the Son on Man had authority from God to forgive sin on earth (Mk 2:10 and
parallels), something that John never claimed for himself.
Can we then talk of Jesus as an Essene-Enochic teacher? The Zealot

movement provides a useful parallel. Josephus tells us that the Zealots were
Pharisees who began to believe God was the only King on earth. This
simple shift-in-focus reshaped the entire Pharisaic worldview and created
the “fourth philosophy.” Likewise Jesus was an Enochic-Essene teacher
who believed that the Son of Man had a mission to accomplish on earth,
which was to provide forgiveness to the sinners who believed in him. The
entire Essene-Enochic world view was reshaped by this simple idea and all
extraordinary developments in Jesus ethical teaching derive from this
simple idea. We may then conclude that as the Zealots were not identical
with the Pharisees but came from and belonged to the Pharisaic galaxy, so
Jesus was not an Essene-Enochic teacher but came from and belonged to
the same Essene-Enochic galaxy.
Darrell Bock (Dallas Theological Seminary, USA)
1. The third quest continues because people still try to balance the
growing appreciation of the Jewishness of Jesus with the use of the criteria
of historical judgment. To this there has come, in the last decade or so, a
growing engagement with the oral features of the tradition in an ancient
context. We are still working out how orality functioned in that time (as
well as analyzing how orality works in a mostly non-literate culture). So the
manner in which the tradition developed, especially in its oral phase, will
continue to be a key question. Our understanding of the complexities of the
relationship of Judaism to Hellenism also complicates matters, making it
harder to assert what is late and early, as has our growing appreciation for
the diversity of Second Temple Judaism and the variety of ways
eschatological hope could be expressed. I think that the traditional claims of
authorship and the roots of that tradition are viewed with too much
skepticism by many historical Jesus scholars today. The names of the
authors of the gospels do not leap out at us as the logical names to have
surfaced from a mere later choice of luminaries from the church. So efforts
to determine how these specific names would come to be attached, as they
have, needs more attention. There may be more to the tradition here than
many think.
2. Jesus appears to me to be a popular pious Jew raised in the Galilee.

By popular, I mean someone who operated at the level of popular, not
official (professional), religious practice. I suspect this meant synagogue
attendance and the basic keeping of the key elements of Jewish practice
(diet, Sabbath, purity, etc.). He is surely not a Sadduccee in perspective but
neither does he seem to have been as precise as the Pharisees and Essenes
on issues of halakah. Neither was he a Zealot. His driving desire seems to
have been to promote an integrity in his walk with God, encouraging others
along those lines, but in ways that reached out to those on the fringe and
that highlighted the relational dimensions and ethical implications of
knowing God. This is not a mere ethics, however, because he taught a
strong sense of accountability for each person before God. His more
eschatological orientation about eventual justice also makes this more than
a mere ethic. So this devotion is both ethical and religious, combining
themes of Jewish wisdom, the prophets and eschatological expectation. Any
effort to get rid of any of these elements, presenting one of them as early
and another (or others) as late is misguided, given the mix we have multiply
attested in our sources for Jesus. At the center of all of this stood Jesus’
own claims of personal authority with reference to the kingdom’s coming.
What Jesus preached and offered was a package involving the kingdom and
himself as its catalyst.
3. Most distinctive is the relational dimension that Jesus highlights.

Although there are places here and there where Second Temple Jews spoke
of God as Father, what seems most developed is the way in which Jesus
placed himself uniquely in a familial metaphor and then built upon it to
teach about God, himself, and his followers’ own relationship to God. At
the core of what was unique about this was the central role he gave to
himself. Jesus saw himself at the center of the eschatological drama that
triggered the announcement of the kingdom’s arrival. While other groups
shared an eschatological hope, Jesus personalized and made the kingdom’s
coming more proximate and intimate. As a result, Jesus expressed a
confidence that one need not merely wait for it to come in the future to
experience it. This relational dimension then drove how he handled the
controversial issues related to the Law. How our behavior impacted people
received such serious consideration that sometimes the letter of the Law
seemed not to matter as much. To speak of God desiring mercy, not
sacrifice says it with a motto. This served almost as a kind of relational
Credo for Jesus. His ministry sought to embody and image such mercy,
even though in doing so accountability to God was not lost either. This dual
track prevented mercy from moving into license and sought to make people
appreciate the grace of God and Jesus’ example as a motivation for trusting
God and loving others. This faith in grace and mercy response, including
seeking one’s own forgiveness from that gracious God, was the proper
embrace of Israel’s God and of the one offering the kingdom on his behalf.
James H. Charlesworth (Princeton Theological Seminary, USA)
1. (a) Since 1980, I have emphasized that we should use the technical
term “Jesus Research.” Scholars do not pursue their research or publish
their assessments as theologians questing for someone to follow or worship.

Jews [Flusser, Vermes, Segal, Mendels, Aviam, Arav, Levine] and others
who may have no interest in Christological affirmations are asking crucial
questions about a man called “Jesus, son of Joseph” [Jn]. While one might
contend that “A Quest” has waned, others could stress that Jesus Research
remains a healthy academic discipline and is a main industry for publishers.
(b) We must include archaeology; it is now, in many ways providing
evidence that is much closer to the historical Jesus than any New Testament
document. Archaeology has revolutionized our understanding of Jesus’
time and his message [viz., the DSS and OTP] and demonstrated that the
Fourth Evangelist sometimes knows more about the architecture and
topography of pre-70 Jerusalem than any other writer, including Josephus.
(c) We should be aware of our inclinations to ask questions that are
hidden ways of claiming answers. While rhetorical analysis of the Gospels
enriches our understanding of the Tendenzen of the authors, it can become
a well in which we fail to see Jesus and become enamored by the reflections
of the Evangelists.
2. (a) Well, first I am pleased that my emphasis that Jesus was a Jew and
must be understood “within Judaism” and not only within the history of the
emerging Church, has been influential. Jesus’ cultural background was not
that of a “peasant,” since archaeological work in Yodefat, Capernaum,
Bethsaida, Migdal, and Nazareth do not indicate such a sociological
construct; there is no cultural dichotomy between cities and villages. The
greatest divergence currently arises because of an extreme focus on only
one methodology. Some Jesus Scholars imagine ancient societies in terms
of sociological models; others interpret antiquity only through realia
produced by selective archaeological excavations. While strikingly
different, each methodology needs to be enriched by the other and an
exploratory synthesis of analyses needs to be part of our dialogue.
(b) Only archaeological research can help those of us who have devoted
our lives to studying texts obtain insightful and trustworthy answers
regarding Jesus’ type of Judaism. Many of the Jews living in Lower Galilee
migrated from Judea after the Hasmonean conquests around 100 BCE. In
Lower Galilee, we find mikvaot [Jewish ritual baths] and stone vessels for
the Jewish rites of purification [some of them were manufactured in
Jerusalem]. Excavations at many sites in Lower Galilee indicate a type of
Judaism shared and which helped to define Jesus’ Judaism; among the
common features are ethnicity, dietary restrictions, the importance of purity
(stone vessels and mikvaot), common symbols (as the Menorah in the
Temple and in the Migdal synagogue), shared Scriptures, the rhythm of
sacred festivals celebrated in the home and in Jerusalem’s Temple, belief in
inheritances (esp. the Promised Land), and common confessions (especially
the Shema in Dt 6:4 that articulated belief in only ONE LORD
[monotheism]).
(c) We cannot be certain, but Jesus and his family may have had deep
cultural ties with Judea and Jerusalem. Jesus was in Jerusalem to celebrate
Passover when he was crucified. Jesus revered the Temple; he worshipped
there and taught there. In many ways, Jesus and his family were defined by
“main-stream Judaism” [but one must be leery of proposals of a putative
orthodox Judaism]. Jews gathered and read Torah scrolls in synagogues.
Jesus is reported to have “preached” in the synagogues throughout Galilee.
New Testament experts and archaeologists have argued that there were no
synagogues in Galilee; their opinion is disproved by the discovery of a pre-
40 CE synagogue in Migdal, less than a one hour boat ride from Jesus’
headquarters in Capernaum.
(d) If we can trust the Evangelists, Jesus shared much with the Essenes,
but he was neither anti-Essene nor an Essene. Jesus’ moral message is
strikingly close to Hillel’s, but it is not certain that Hillel should be
categorized as a pre-70 Pharisee [we have no pre-70 Pharisaic writing].
Unlike Hillel, but similar to the Righteous Teacher, Jesus believed he was
continuing the work of the prophets and shaped his message with
apocalyptic warnings and expectations. But, Jesus was no apocalypticist.
3. (a) Jesus did not seek to establish a new religion. He called his fellow
Jews to return to devotion to God alone and to do God’s will with a radical
commitment. Jesus perceived that a New Age had begun to dawn through
his life, as witnessed by the miracles that validated his clams. A question
that disturbed his fellow Jews was “who is my neighbor” that I might love
him. Jesus answered that all “Jews” [he apparently included Samaritans]
should be considered a neighbor. A second question that perplexed his
contemporaries was: “How can I avoid impurity?” Jesus may have followed
the rigid Jewish laws, but he clearly fought against the “scribes and priests”
that were changing Torah and establishing new legal rules regarding purity.
Purity defined life more profoundly in Judea and Lower Galilee once the
Temple (expanded by Herod) defined city and land after 20 BCE.
(b) In seeking to find what is “original” too many scholars slip into
confession and usually expose an ignorance of Early Judaism [its texts and
its archaeology]. If Jesus chose to associate the concept of the Son of Man
with the Messiah, he may not have been original; that concept is clearly
found in the Parables of Enoch [and most specialists now conclude that this
document is profoundly Jewish, antedates Jesus, and may have been
composed in Galilee]. Jesus did emphasize that we should imagine God as
“Father;” but “Abba” was a well-known term in Jewish language and
liturgy. Moreover, a miracle worker prior to Jesus and in Galilee appealed
to God with these words: “Abba, Abba…” Admittedly, Jesus’ uniqueness is
to be found in the emphases he brought together from many types of
Judaism; these were woven within a morality that absurdly stressed love
and within an apocalyptic perspective that emphasized the “realizing”
dimensions of God’s Rule [the Kingdom of God].
Bruce Chilton (Bard College, USA)
1. Academic studies of Jesus typically begin with a survey of the types

of inquiry that have been involved. Reference generally appears to the
period between H. S. Reimarus in the eighteenth century and Albert
Schweitzer, when investigators from Thomas Jefferson to Ernest Renan
attempted – in good, Enlightenment fashion – to deduce reliable facts from
the Gospels, and portray a purely historical, as distinct from dogmatic,
Jesus. But Schweitzer’s complaint that the results looked more like the
authors’ projections than objective evidence brought about a period of
reserve during much of the twentieth century.
Dogma made a big comeback during the last century, whether in the
theological form of Neo-Orthodoxy, or the popular form of
Fundamentalism. Either way, the safest way for many scholars to deal with
Jesus was to say he was unknowable except by faith, and supply a footnote
to Rudolf Bultmann. Yet in the period after the Second World War, a self-
described “New Quest of the Historical Jesus,” championed by Günther
Bornkam and Ernst Käsemann, crafted portrayals of Jesus out of the
Gospels based, not upon a positivist historiography of supposed real facts,
but upon the language Jesus used, and the language used about Jesus, as
foundational to the growth of Christian faith. This highly concentrated
focus on the growth of the New Testament and of Christianity was
challenged by Ben F. Meyer in 1979, whose Aims of Jesus insisted that
Jesus could only be understood within the context of Judaism. That
challenge brought about what is today called a “Third Quest of the
Historical Jesus.”
Although influential as well as useful, this periodization – positivist
historiography, theological reserve, the “Second Quest’s” linguistic
emphasis, and the “Third Quest’s” sensitivity to Jesus’ Judaic environment
– should not be taken literally. Exploration of and comparison with Judaism
was a feature of Christian theology for centuries prior to Reimarus, while
positivist historiography has never been uniquely regnant, any more than
Neo-orthodoxy or linguistics approaches have been. There have always
been many exceptions to the model; it works only as a map of emphases,
and conceals a more important consideration.
What is routinely called “the Quest of the Historical Jesus” is in fact part
of a longer-term and deeper intellectual movement: historical engagement
with Jesus. That engagement has been an aspect of Christian theology
virtually from its beginning. All of the emphases of the various Quests –
verifiable data, the impact of faith on the sources, concern with Jesus’
meaning and with his Judaic environment – are by no means uniquely
modern issues. Which emphasis is most appropriate varies with the nature
of the evidence in a given case, as well as the concerns of the investigator.
2. The archaeological Galilee of the first century is a Jewish Galilee, as

far as Jesus and his movement are concerned; philo-Roman military
enclaves such as Sepphoris are notable for their absence from Jesus’
itinerary in the Gospels. Judaism has long been identified with what is
taught in the Mishnah and the Talmud. But those documents are much later
than the New Testament. So the attempts by scholars of the previous
generation to characterize Jesus in terms of Mishnah and Talmud run into a
simple chronological problem. Sadly, it is all too easy for partisans of the
Hellenistic Jesus to dismiss Mishnah and Talmud, as being too late to be
relevant, and to ignore the Jewish identity of Jesus altogether. But the Dead
Sea Scrolls have rendered that gambit untenable. In the case of the Scrolls,
anyone can see that the group that produced those documents focused on
maintaining the correct purity, and the accurate teaching, which would
assure that members of the community were included when God acted to
vindicate his people. The archaeological and textual scholarship of the past
decades has revolutionized how we should think about Galilee and about
Judaism, and that means the once fashionable (and in some circles, still
fashionable) picture of Jesus as an Athenian in Jewish dress must change.
The Scrolls opened a window on the extraordinary pluralism of early
Judaism. Judaism in the time of Jesus was not fixated as it later was on the
issue of how to keep the Torah, central though the Torah and the Scriptures
always were. That was the program of a later day, the time of the Mishnah
during the second century, to some extent part of an effort to compensate
for the destruction of the Temple by the Romans by fire in 70 CE, and then
by demolition (stone by stone) in 135 CE. The Judaism of the Rabbis, with
its emphasis on promulgating and interpreting the Torah as the center and
boundary of any true definition of Israel, was constructed on the ashes of
the Temple. Before then, various forms of Judaism vied with one another,
and in their competition many shared a single kind of hope: the hope that
God would personally and actively intervene on behalf of his people. That
was just the hope that Jesus articulated when he announced, in the Galilean
dialect of Judaism, the kingdom of God. His dialect of Judaism was one
among many, and they were to varying degrees Hellenistic (as well as
Egyptian and Ethiopian and Latin and Libyan and Persian, among other
cultural influences). Judaism was an international religion during the first
century, and it is impossible to reduce it to a single cultural form.
3. Captivating though Jesus remains as a person, his basic message was

not about himself. One reason there continues to be debate about Jesus’
identity is that for the most part he didn’t insist on a single definition of
who he was; he did not teach a creed or spell out doctrines. Other concerns
occupied him more.
Those of us who are interested in Jesus have sometimes become too
involved in our arguments about how we think about him. This becomes
painfully obvious, when you consider the substantial number of books

devoted, not to Jesus, but the history of the scholarship that talks about Jesus.
We should give more attention to a fundamental issue: what did Jesus
want to accomplish during his life? How did his purposes arise from and
interact with the environment in which he lived, as that environment can be
understood on the basis of historical, archaeological, and anthropological
study? Understanding Jesus’ goal and purpose will naturally shed light on
how he thought of himself, a question that perennially intrigues
investigators. But Jesus’ intentions are crucial historically in their own
terms. They will illuminate him in his first-century setting, of course. But
beyond that, Jesus’ teaching has shaped the actions, the attitudes, and the
sources of energy and inspiration that have motivated generations of men,
women, and children to change the world around them for the better part of
two millennia. Whatever their particular beliefs about Jesus, and whether or
not they belonged to Christian groups that readers today would approve or
disapprove, those people have been moving forces of transformation.
Through them, Jesus’ teaching has made history happen, and shows no sign
of losing that capacity.
Jesus wanted to unleash forces in people in order to produce change. He
took on that task because he stood in the lineage of prophets who came
before him, just as he inspired many prophetic figures who came after him.
Whoever else Jesus was, he was – as he said and many people in his time
recognized – a prophet. Attention to his prophetic purpose will bring home
to us truths about Jesus that are deeper than our disagreements over how to
identify him. We will better understand him, and ourselves – even with our
disagreements.
Michael A. Daise (The College of William and Mary, USA)
1. The Third Quest for the historical Jesus has in part been driven by
studies in Second Temple and Rabbinic Judaism. It has assumed Jesus to be
a synecdoche of his Jewish milieu – that is, a representative part of some
larger Jewish/Judaic context; and on that assumption it has revisited the
question of Jesus’ identity by drawing upon (and rolling over onto Jesus)
work being done in one or another subdiscipline of those fields. If these
once-new pastures now seem grazed to their full, we can reseed them, I
believe, by apprising ourselves of new theoretical and methodological
developments taking place in the very studies of Second Temple and post-
Second Temple Judaism from which the enterprise emerged.
I was struck by this while recently reviewing Lee I. Levine and Daniel
R. Schwartz, eds., Jewish Identities in Antiquity: Studies in Memory of
Menahem Stern (TSAJ 130; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009) (for the
Journal of Hebrew Scriptures); and, as a salient example of its prospects, I
would like to make mention of one contribution in this volume—Sylvie

Honigman’s work in regionalizing the identities of Ptolemaic Egyptian
Jewry (‛Jewish Communities of Hellenistic Egypt: Different Responses to
Different Environments’, pp. 117-135). Using various primary sources
(papyri, ostraca, inscriptions) to discern sociological differences between
and within regions of the Egyptian Diaspora, and applying Fredrik Barth’s
idea that ethnic groups define their identity by interacting with one or
several other groups, Honigman demonstrates how Jewish communities in
Edfu, Thebes, Herakleopolis, Trikomia and Alexandria responded to the
peculiar sociological stimuli of their regions so as to sustain core Jewish
identities that nonetheless differed from one another in emphases. The
approach nicely dovetails Eric Meyers’s earlier call to a regionalized study
of Lower (vs. Upper) Galilee, which is quite appreciated in the response of
James Charlesworth above (see Meyers’s ‛Galilean Regionalism as a Factor
in Historical Reconstruction,’ BASOR 221 [February/1976]: 93-101, and
‛The Cultural Setting of Galilee: The Case of Regionalism and Early
Judaism,’ ANRW II.19.1: 686-702). Were this used on the Galilee to create
a new heuristic grid for reassessing Jesus tradition, it would serve as one of
several new lines in the study of early Jewish history that could replenish
the soil of Third Quest research.
2. My interest in the historical Jesus lies less in the ideologies that

pervaded his mind than in the halakhic orientation that governed his praxis.
Not that the two are, should or can be separated, as Mauro Pesce makes
clear in his contribution to this volume. But in my investigation into the life
of Jesus I am more apt to trace how his ideas worked out in practice than
what his actions implied for his theology.
With this delimitation in view, I would note that, whatever other factors
affected Jesus’ upbringing, he very likely hailed from a background of (and,
in his public ministry, maintained an) observant Judaism. Allowing such a
conclusion is the fairly recent recognition that, notwithstanding some
differences between them, Galileans were as conscientious (if not more)
about halakhic matters as were Judaeans (see, for instance, Lawrence H.
Schiffman, “Was There a Galilean Halakhah?” in The Galilee in Late
Antiquity [ed. L. I. Levine; New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of
America, 1992], pp. 143-156, and Martin Goodman, “Galilean Judaism
and Judaean Judaism,” in The Early Roman Period [vol. 3 of The
Cambridge History of Judaism; ed. W. Horbury, W. D. Davies and J.
Sturdy; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999], pp. 596-617; see,
also, the comments in this volume by Charlesworth, Bruce Chilton and
Seán Freyne). But supporting the claim more directly are certain peripheral
glances to which we are sometimes privy in the canonical gospels and Acts.
To give a rough-hewn sketch, Jesus’ Synoptic Sabbath controversies (Mark
2:23-28 par.; 3:1-6 par.; Luke 13:10-17; 14:1-6) – and even the first
Johannine one (John 5:1-18; 7:21-24) – turn, not on the legitimacy of that
institution, itself, but on the degree to which its abstinence applies in

healing situations. His dispute with Pharisees over handwashing before
meals in Mark 7:1-23 (cf. Matthew 15:1-20), and perhaps also in Luke
11:37-41, concerned, not the authority of the purity code, but the extent to
which it was expressed in extra-biblical tradition (an argument that could
have been made by Sadducees) – in Mark 7 the matter may have only
involved the practice of Jesus’ disciples, not him, himself (on this point see
also the reflections by Craig Evans in this issue). And in a profile of Peter
that arguably meets the criterion of embarrassment, Luke has him respond
to the vision bidding him to ‛slaughter and eat’ unclean creatures saying,
‛By no means Lord, for I have never eaten anything common or unclean!’
(Acts 10:9-16). Contrary to the inference from Jesus tradition in Mark 7:19
(that Jesus cleansed all foods), this Petrine episode implies Jesus did not
teach against dietary laws and, as such, suggests that he kept (and had been
raised to keep) them himself.
3. I have not so thoroughly examined the breadth of Jesus’ thought in

relation to its milieu that I can distill its ‛most original elements’. Perhaps I
can contribute to this question, though, by returning to my interest in Jesus’
praxis and noting an intriguing point of departure for thinking about his
halakhic teaching – this, from Phillip Sigal’s The Halakhah of Jesus of
Nazareth according to the Gospel of Matthew (Studies in Biblical Literature
18; Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2008), first published in 1986 and now reissued
by Brill (I have recently reviewed this volume for the Journal for the Study
of the Historical Jesus 8.2 [2010], pp. 187-188). Sigal carried assumptions
that for some might set his work on the margins of Jesus research;
specifically, Matthean priority and the view that the precursors to the rabbis
were not the Pharisees of Josephus and the New Testament but a line of
sages left unlabelled in non-rabbinic sources. Moreover, as his title
suggests, Sigal’s conclusions ultimately count for the Matthean Jesus, not
necessarily for the historical one – despite the proximity he saw between
the two. That stated, Sigal argues persuasively that the narrow parameters
which the Matthean Jesus gives to the Deuteronomic grounds for divorce
(Matt 5:31-32; 19:3-9; cf. Deut 24:1-4), as well as the various conditions he
permits to supersede Sabbath observance (Matt 12:1-13), bear the leniency
(qoolah) that would later be the hallmark of the Tannaim. As such, he
reasons, the halakhic orientation of this Jesus (and perhaps of the historical
Jesus) was an element of his ministry that was not unique to him, but shared
by a contemporary party of peers – for Sigal, the forerunners to the rabbis.
Sigal’s work challenges the assumptions expressed by Darrell Bock,
Paolo Sacchi and (perhaps) Scot McKnight in this volume on the precision
(Bock), paucity (Sacchi) and circumscription (McKnight) of Jesus’
halakhic thinking. Moreover, whether we accept the details of his case or
not, Sigal’s claims serve the question of Jesus’ intellectual originality in at
least two ways: by raising questions about Jesus’ thinking on legal
adherence (see the appreciation and concern for this matter expressed,
respectively, by Simon Gathercole and Amy-Jill Levine in this volume);
and, second, by daring us to test the extent to which (if at all) Jesus’
scholarly identity is to be found within a proto-rabbinic trajectory.
John Dart (The Christian Century, USA)
1. If the Third Quest or Jesus Research phase has ended its pursuit of the
elusive historical Jesus, those most involved surely know best. But I hope
that New Testament scholars will continue to explain the uncertainties to
outsiders even as they examine new or neglected research avenues. This
journal’s invitation to identify perspectives that would be “the most
interesting and promising” emboldens me to point to an unfinished task.
That, stating it boldly, is to address why the oldest canonical gospel was
written in part as a calculated polemic against the family and close
followers of Jesus. I suspect that the author of Mark meant well despite how
risky it was to denigrate the movement’s earliest authorities. Peter, James,
John, Mary, Salome and Judas, the brother of James and Jesus, were cast as
dim-witted, skeptical and/or self-centered, and at the end as scared-stiff
deserters. By so doing, Mark could cast doubt on the reliability of the Jesus
sayings collections and primitive dialogues featuring the names of these
followers and family. The sayings and dialogues may have legitimately
depicted Jesus as a wisdom teacher in the Jewish tradition, but such texts
were vulnerable to addition of speculative, “secret” teachings. Beyond that,
Mark may have felt that a wisdom orientation fell far short of the broader,
apocalyptic schemas that were becoming orthodox Christianity.
Historians and journalists are only as good as their sources. One
difficulty in seeking the Jesus of history, in my view, has been the
enormous influence of Mark’s “fact-filled” story. It was not only an
engaging narrative (appreciated as such since the 1980s by literary analysts)
but also replete with names, nicknames, places and dramatic events. Few
scholars dispute that the characters closest to Jesus are harshly depicted in
Mark. Luke and Matthew start with nativity stories, end with resurrection
accounts, and make changes in between to soften or offset Mark’s story of
tarnished reputations.
Was Mark’s purpose really to portray flawed followers with whom
believers could identify, conscious of their own shortcomings but knowing
they are forgiven? That apology for “Mark,” I think, is an interpretation the
gospel writer would have rejected. For throughout the gospel appear brave
characters who quickly perceive Jesus’ divine connections (and testify to
his wisdom and mission) whereas the Twelve, identified women followers
and family members are unrelentingly shown to be wrongheaded and
fearful. Just as the disciples all forsook Jesus, so the three women at 16:8
were frightened into absolute silence.
Werner Kelber, one scholar who took the polemic seriously, has
suggested that believers living after 70 CE would understand the demise of
the Jerusalem church “as a consequence of the abortive discipleship” and
that the written gospel marked “a rebellion against orality and its
authoritative carriers.” Those ideas are close, but more answers may lie in
the contending ideas of the early church.
2. James M. Robinson and Helmut Koester long ago suggested that the
Q and Thomas sayings and primitive dialogues, in their earliest forms, may
have preceded the gospel narratives. If so, Jesus was surely influenced by
Jewish wisdom traditions, which should not rule out eschatological tensions
appearing in his teachings. I am agnostic on what other Jewish ideologies
influenced Jesus’ family, but I welcome the attention to his family. The
canonical Letter of James, attributed to Jesus’ brother who was martyred
before the Jewish war of 66-70 CE, echoes some Jesus sayings and
practical OT morality, and has been described as Christian wisdom
literature. If not written before James’ death, the unknown author wrote at a
time and place where the name of James still held great respect.
Paul had his issues in mid-century with James, Cephas and John – the
“reputed pillars” (Gal. 2:9, RSV) of the Jerusalem church, a trio that
affirmed his work with Gentiles. Paul stayed two weeks with Cephas on
another visit but saw no other apostle then except “James the Lord’s
brother” (Gal. 1-19). He complains to the Corinthians (1 Cor 9:1-7) that he
and coworker Barnabas have to work for a living, unlike the other apostles
and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas. As is well known, Paul mentions
precious little about Jesus’ life, teachings and associates – not even Judas
Iscariot, only an unnamed person who “handed over” Jesus (1 Cor. 11:23).
Several texts from Nag Hammadi, while showing the jumble of later
editing, also reflect a pre-Markan period when identities were apparently
uncomplicated. Just plain “Judas,” plus “Mary” and “Matthew,” question
the Lord in The Dialogue of the Savior. It reflects wisdom themes seen in
Thomas 2 about seeking, finding, marveling, ruling and resting. In a Coptic
translation of The Gospel of Thomas, the incipit introduces “the secret
sayings of the living Jesus which Didymos Judas Thomas wrote down.” But
a Greek fragment of the sayings collection identifies the writer as “Judas
who was called Thomas.” The text was attributed to brother Judas, but after
Mark introduced the nefarious Judas Iscariot, things had to change. Those
who cherished the sayings and their family link to Jesus, it would seem,
found a solution. This Judas was not the betrayer but a “twin” brother of
Jesus – one of the Twelve called “Thomas,” which means twin. Many
Thomas scholars suggest that sayings 11 and 12 were late additions –
naming “James the Just” as the future leader and depicting “Thomas” as the
most insightful disciple.
Using verisimilitude, Mark trumps all opponents weak on bios. Mark

challenges believers’ trust in Peter, originally Simon, a married man whom
Jesus once called Satan, and who denied his association with Jesus three
times. A “Simon” carried Jesus’ cross, but that was Simon of Cyrene, father
of Alexander and Rufus. Mark offers poor choices for other faith legends:
Take your pick: 1, James, a brother who took offense at Jesus in Galilee, or
2, James, the brother of John, and who together were fisherman Zebedee’s
two ‛Sons of Thunder.’ That pair of disciples deserted Jesus at his arrest.
“What about Mary?” Mark responds, “Both Mary Magdalene and Mary,
mother of Jesus, betrayed the risen Jesus at the end.”
3. Despite Mark’s disparaging treatment of three named women, Jesus

highly praises an unidentified woman who poured expensive ointment on
Jesus’ head (Mk 14:8), a female exemplar who serves Mark’s polemical
purpose. Mark’s depictions of the Marys and Salome (who also appear in
apocryphal material) indicate that women were among Jesus’ followers.
Paul’s creedal reiteration of the equality of male and female believers (Gal
3:11) also brings us close to Jesus’ legacy.
Contrary to the dissimilarity principle to determine original Jesus
sayings, I think Jesus’ wisdom must have been a clever mixture of the
familiar and unfamiliar. Gospel of Thomas 6 b strikes me as meaningful:
“Jesus said: ‛Do not lie. And do not do what you hate.’” The stricture
against deceit is one thing. But the next line seems to admonish bad
behavior you know is harmful to yourself or others and, at worst, a
surrender to evil.
Mark’s story-telling prowess, including novelistic techniques (Mary
Ann Tolbert), is increasingly acknowledged. One problem remains: many
literary critics treat each text as a whole, disregarding signs of redaction.
Another obstacle, I think, is to dismiss nearly all non-canonical texts and
their content as written well after canonical works.
The exasperations of Paul and the polemics of Mark indicate otherwise.
One example: The Apocryphon of James, a text predominantly independent
of NT influence but dated anywhere between mid-1st century to early 3rd
century. ApJas has the risen savior repeatedly urging James, Peter and other
disciples to “become filled,” once calling it “filled with the kingdom.” The
Jesus figure says they were healed that they might “reign.” Compare Paul’s
sarcasm in 1 Cor 4:8-10, beginning, “Already you are filled!” (RSV). His
opponents are rich, even kings! “And would that you did reign, so that we
might share the rule with you!” We are fools, Paul mocks, but you are
“wise” in Christ.
Later in ApJas, the Lord says a number of disciples have learned much
by listening to “The Shepherds,” “The Seed,” et al, citing seven parables by
name – a strong sign of the importance of sayings to faith. After the savior
departed, James and Peter knelt and sent their hearts to the first and second
levels of heaven. They ascended to the third level but were barred from
sights and sounds because the disciples interrupted them with questions.
This resembles 1st century CE Jewish mysticism, but also is reminiscent of
Paul’s “boast” that he knew someone (himself!) who was caught up into the
third heaven, hearing things no mortal should disclose (2 Cor 12:1-7).
Was Mark acquainted with ApJas? In the latter text, James says he will go
up to Jerusalem, praying he might enlighten the faith of new believers, a faith
even “better than mine, for I would that mine be the lesser.” The Coptic word
means, “be small, less or humble.” In Mk 15:40, among the women
witnessing the crucifixion is “Mary, the mother of James the younger
(mikros) and of Joses.” Some academics doubt that the mother of Jesus is
meant. Yet back at Mk 6:3, townsfolk identified Jesus as “a carpenter, the son
of Mary (a possibly pejorative reference) and brother of James and Joses and
Judas and Simon….” The KJV translated mikros in Mk 15:40 as “the less” –
probably the best choice. Accepting the polemical character of Mark, one
realizes that at the death and burial of Jesus no male member of his family
was present. A “Joseph” buried Jesus’ body, but Mark says that was Joseph
of Arimathea – not the father in lore known to Luke and Matthew.
James Dunn (University of Durham, United Kingdom)
1. ‛New Quest’ and ‛Third Quest’ designate not simply phases of the
Quest. They are also names for ways of tackling the issues of the Quest
today.
‛New Quest’ focuses on the Jesus- or Synoptic-tradition itself and
attempts to understand better the history of the tradition leading up to its
enduring Synoptic form. Initially that was by means of form-critical
analysis, then supplemented by redaction-critical analysis. As redaction-
criticism has been diverted more towards composition- or narrative-
criticism, to that extent the motivation provided by the Quest itself has
slackened. Form-criticism was also diverted into a quest for the social
contexts in which the tradition was framed – the Sitze im Leben of the
forms, the communities which used the tradition. But as a way of
penetrating behind the enduring forms of the Synoptic tradition, the original
motivation for form-criticism is still a force, and in principle form-criticism
(the New Quest) still provides a way to pursue the Quest.
More recently the original motivation of form-criticism (to explore
behind the written Jesus tradition into its earlier oral forms) has been
revived by a more explicit attempt to understand the processes of oral
communication in the earliest proto-Christian communities. This has been
the focus of my own contribution to the Quest. This is as or more
challenging than analysis of ‛forms’ (not least since the Jesus tradition is
available to us only in written form). But the inability of the modern literary
mindset to think outside the box of literary tradition remains a problem. The
lessons of form-criticism’s failure to make much progress on the issue of

how the oral Jesus tradition worked as oral, are still to be fully learned. And
the issue of how memory works (or worked) to preserve, shape (and
create?) traditions involving a figure who made a lasting impact could itself
be described as a further phase of the Quest.
Some include the theses of Crossan and Mack in the Third Quest. That
has some justification in that, unlike the New Quest, the Third Quest
focuses more on the social context of Jesus. I prefer to restrict the Third
Quest title to the focus on the Jewish context of Jesus’ mission, the
Jewishness of Jesus (§2 below). However, the issue should not be ignored
(since it was one which subverted the Old Quest), that the more Jesus is
read within a Jewish context, the larger the gap to be bridged from a very
Jewish Jesus to a Christ with strong appeal to non-Jews (the Christ of faith).
One other recent development is the strong attempt being made by some
to bring John’s Gospel back into the Quest, from which it has largely been
marginalized for about 150 years. The charges summed up in the phrases
‛the de-historicization of John’ and the ‛de-Johannification of Jesus’ have
some justification. Such a resort to an early casualty of the Old Quest is a
reminder that the ‛phases’ of the Quest may be more cyclical than linear.
2. One of the major developments feeding into the Quest in the last two
generations has been the recognition that ‛Judaism’ was a much more
complex phenomenon than had been previously thought. Even into the New
Quest phase the assumption remained strong that our information regarding
the Judaism of Jesus’ time could be read straightforwardly from the
rabbinic traditions. The prestige invested in Strack-Billerbeck by scholars
like Jeremias was immense, even though it should have been obvious that
rabbinic traditions from the third and fourth century were probably as far
removed from the context of Jesus’ time as was Jerome or Augustine.
The problem can be simply expressed, though not easily resolved. It is
that there was no single ‛Judaism’ in the first century; or, more acceptably,
‛Judaism’ covered quite a wide range of religious identity and practice. The
term itself had only been in existence for less than two centuries and had
been coined to express the Maccabean resistence to Syrian attempts to
crush Israel’s distinctiveness. It still had that sense of identifying a national
identity to be defended with zeal in its only occurrences in the NT (Gal.
1.13-14). So ‛Judaism’ is actually a too narrow term for the diversity of
Israel’s religious identity and practice in the first century. We should speak
more properly of Pharisaic Judaism, Essene Judaism, diaspora Judaism, and
so on, with ‛Second Temple Judaism’ as the most convenient blanket term,
or perhaps ‛Common Judaism’ to describe the general practice of Israel’s
religion as distinct from the factional Judaisms of the different ‛sects’.
All this bears directly on the issue of Jesus’ Jewishness. Jesus cannot be
directly associated with any of the factional expressions of Second Temple
Judaism, though it remains highly probable that he engaged with Pharisees
in particular, with sufficient allusions to Sadducees, and possibly even

Essenes, for knowledge of these ‛sects’ to provide valuable information
regarding the context and tensions of Jesus’ mission. More specifically,
there are sufficient indications in the Jesus tradition that Jesus himself grew
up as a devout Jew, a practitioner, one could say, of the Judaism common
among the villages of lower Galilee.
What we need to be wary of, however, is any argument which sets Jesus
over against ‛Judaism’, as though the religious context of Jesus’ mission
was uniform and monochrome, or as though (the older mistake) the rabbinic
Judaism of subsequent centuries was already the only definitive (or
‛orthodox’) form of Judaism. Such anachronisms prevent rather than aid a
clear perception of historical actuality. It is the recognition that behind the
Christianity and the Judaism, whose distinctive characters emerged more
and more clearly from the second century, lay the same diversity of Second
Temple Judaism which makes Jewish and Christian dialogical exploration
of their common roots such a positive outcome of the Third Quest.
3. In many of Jesus’ strongest emphases, such as his proclamation of

God’s kingdom and the priority he gave to the poor, Jesus was drawing on
emphases deeply rooted in Israel’s prophetic scriptures. But the most
distinctive and original elements of Jesus’ teaching and practice can
probably be summed up under three heads.
a) Jesus was as committed to doing the will of God as any of his
contemporaries, and probably acknowledged fully the importance of Torah
as indicating God’s will. But he was evidently unwilling to determine
God’s will by a straightforward reading of some of the laws – particularly
objecting to the developing halakhoth of Pharisees (and Essenes) which
were already accorded the same authority as the Law itself. Such an
attitude, penetrating to the priorities and basic concerns expressed in the
Law, seems to be sufficiently attested in the Sabbath day controversies and
in the teaching on particular laws preserved in the Jesus tradition. Most
striking and without earlier precedent was his selection of one of a sequence
of rulings (Lev. 19.18 – ‛love your neighbour as yourself’) as
complementing the Shema and as summarizing and as indicating the
essence of the responsibility towards others laid by God on his people.
b) Jesus was evidently notorious for his failure to observe some of the
key social and religious conventions of the time, including the near absolute
priority given to avoiding impurity. Most notable was the openness of his
message to and table-fellowship with ‛sinners’, that is, probably a
significant proportion of most of the communities Jesus had dealings with
who were regarded by the most religious (the ‛righteous’) as living
(including practicing their religious obligations – ‛common Judaism’?) in
ways that the religious disapproved of (and assumed God disapproved of).
The assertion that God’s good news is for ‛sinners’ before it is for the
‛righteous’ cut across the dominant principles of the factional Judaisms of

the time and became a foundational principle of the Christian gospel.
c) The recent emphasis of Third Questers, that Jesus’ mission had the
restoration of Israel very much in view, is well founded. The degree to
which he saw his own mission, including his death, as integral to that
outcome remains the most tantalizing issues for Questers. That would
certainly include ‛original elements’, though precisely what they were is
heavily disputed. At the same time, however, there are sufficient indications
that Jesus’ relatively few dealings with non-Jews indicated a refusal on his
part to assume that the restoration of Israel should be conceived in any
exclusive sense. His openness to human need, Gentile as well as Jew, is
sufficiently well attested – as also his expectation that other than Israelites
would be welcome at the heavenly banquet.
It is both the rootedness of Jesus’ mission in his heritage as a devout
Jew, and the priorities and principles which he taught and lived and which
became the roots of Christianity, which make Jesus the Jew such a pivotal
figure in history.
Craig Evans (Acadia University, Canada)
1. The Third Quest, as defined in the 1980s, is over. The Third Quest
will be remembered as a recovery of the Jewishness of Jesus and his world.
This recovery included important archaeological work and the publication
of the remaining Scrolls from Qumran’s fourth cave. For some of its
contributors, the Third Quest was a reaction to the theologically-driven
New Quest, which was insufficiently historical in perspective and simply
did not take into account adequately the world of Jesus and his first
followers. As the next phase in Jesus research gets under way, I do not
expect this sort of reaction to take place. The New Quest is dead and gone.
There will be little or no interaction with it in future studies. In contrast to
the New Quest phase, the Third Quest laid a foundation on which future
studies will build.
Cultural and contextual studies of first century Jewish Palestine will
continue and will provide the setting in which the next phase of Jesus
research will be undertaken. I say this because archaeological discoveries in
the last two decades of the twentieth century exploded dubious theories –
many of them oriented in a Greco-Roman, minimal-Jewish or non-Jewish
direction. For example, the theory that Jesus was influenced by Cynic
philosophy in nearby Sepphoris, where supposedly Cynicism and other
forms of Hellenistic thought flourished, has been shown, in the light of
excavations in the 1990s, to be very improbable. The physical remains of
culture, dating to the period prior to 70 CE, reveal a Sepphoris that was
Torah observant and a Sepphoris in which there was no significant non-
Jewish presence. Ongoing publication and study of the many scrolls from
Qumran have led to similar results. The old idea that exalted epithets such
as “Son of God” or “Son of the Most High” applied to Jesus reflect Greco-
Roman thinking, rather than Jewish thinking, has been seriously challenged
by the Aramaic fragment, 4Q246, in which an eschatological figure is
described with these very terms. Moreover, the idea of a Messiah figure,
whose appearance brings healing, resurrection of the dead, and good news
for the poor – concepts that define the identity and ministry of Jesus – is
now attested in 4Q521. Indeed, the idea of a figure who acts in the very
place of Yahweh himself, in fulfillment of Isaiah 61 and an expected
eschatological jubilee, is attested in 11QMelchizedek.
Archaeological and literary discoveries such as these will lead the way
in the future. This work is far from finished. Less than 10 percent of the
sites relevant to the life of Jesus have been excavated and tens of thousands
of papyri, inscriptions, and other ancient texts have yet to be published and
analyzed. The Third Quest moved scholarly discussion in the right
direction. The next phase will build on its success and correct its mistakes.
2. There is nothing in the teaching and activities of Jesus that suggests

that Jesus stood outside of or in someway over against the Jewish people.
Jesus accepted all of the major tenets of the Jewish faith. These tenets
include the unity and sovereignty of God, the value and sanctity of the
temple of Jerusalem, the authority of the Jewish Scriptures, the election of
the people of Israel, and the hope of Israel’s redemption. Jesus, moreover,
observed many of the practices associated with Jewish piety of his day:
alms, prayer, and fasting (Matt 6:1-18). Jesus fasted in the wilderness
during his period of temptation (Mark 1:12-13); he prayed and taught his
disciples to pray (Matt 6:7-15; Luke 11:1-13; 22:39-46); he and his
disciples gave alms, and he taught others to do likewise (Luke 11:41; 12:33;
John 13:29). Jesus presupposed the validity of the temple, the sacrifices,
and Israel’s holy days (Matt 5:23-24; Mark 14:14). He read and quoted
from the Jewish Scriptures and clearly regarded them as authoritative (Luke
4:16-22; 10:25-28; Mark 10:19; 12:24-34). Apparently he attended
synagogue services regularly (Luke 4:16); his style and interpretation of
Scripture reflect at many points the style and interpretation that emerged
within the synagogue.
Jesus may very well have believed that his own authority, which derived
from God’s Spirit, with which he had been anointed (Mark 1:10; Luke
4:18), equaled that of Torah. But his authority did not undermine the
authority of Torah; it explained it and applied it in new ways conditioned
by his strong sense of the dawning of the kingdom (rule) of God and the
changes that it would bring. Jesus’ innovative interpretation is consistent
with parallel innovations expressed by Israel’s classical prophets. As did
theirs, Jesus’ interpretation challenged conventional interpretations and
applications of Israel’s sacred tradition.
Jesus was criticized by some Pharisees, mostly for failing to hold fast to
the Oral Torah as it was understood in his time. These “failings” largely
centered on questions of Sabbath and purity. Healing, as well as other
activities, on the Sabbath and eating and associating with “sinners” were the
principal points of debate. Jesus was also criticized by Sadducees and ruling
priests, who probably viewed Jesus and his enthusiastic following as
dangerous. There is no evidence that Jesus had any encounter with Essenes.
In all probability, these men would have ignored Jesus.
There is no indication that Jesus was aligned with any sect. His
interpretation of Scripture and his manner of teaching at points overlap with
the sages of his time, but at many points Jesus’ teaching and behavior are
distinctive. So what kind of Jew was Jesus? He was a pious, charismatic
Jew, who believed himself to be anointed and enabled by the Spirit of God
to proclaim the arrival of God’s rule “on earth, as it is in heaven.” But there
are also important indications that Jesus saw himself and his mission in a
very unique way and not simply as one more prophet and one more
ministry in an unending succession.
3. Most of what Jesus proclaimed and did had precedent and was hardly
controversial, from a pious Jewish perspective. What Jesus proclaimed was
rooted in the Scriptures of Israel. Jesus did not appeal to any authority other
than Israel’s God and what Israel’s God has revealed in the Scriptures. But
Jesus did rework, even subvert some of Israel’s sacred tradition.
In his well known “antitheses” Jesus challenged several points of the
Oral Torah, as taught by the scribes and Pharisees of his day. Jesus did not
challenge Moses, but the interpretation of Moses. But in some cases Jesus
seems to have subverted Scripture itself. For example, whereas Daniel
thanks God for revealing his insights to the wise and learned (Dan 2:21,
23), Jesus thanks God for withholding his revelation from the wise,
disclosing it, instead, to mere “babes” (Matt 11:25-26). Or, for another
example, whereas in Daniel the Son of Man figure will be served by the
nations (Dan 7:13-14), Jesus says that the “Son of Man came not to be
served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45).
Jesus’ surprising interpretations of Scripture sometimes grow out of a
conflation of texts. In the last example, the inversion of Dan 7:14 is
accommodated (or necessitated?) by allusion to the Suffering Servant of
Isaiah 53, who suffered and “bore the sin of many” (Isa 53:12).
Sometimes Jesus tempered judgmental aspects of the Law of Moses
with appeals to the prophets or other Scriptures. Mercy, forgiveness, and
reconciliation figured prominently in Jesus’ teachings. The temple and
sacrifice are important, but love and mercy are more important. Similarly,
the Sabbath was not to be given priority over human needs. “The Sabbath
was made for humankind, and not humankind for the Sabbath” (Mark
2:27). Nor were purity concerns to be given priority over human needs.
Hence Jesus was willing to eat with tax collectors and sinners.
One of the most surprising elements in Jesus’ thought was his teaching
that “sinners” and outsiders (Samaritans and Gentiles) would be included
among the righteous. Gentiles, like the centurion of Capernaum or the
woman of Syro-Phoenicia, can possess more faith than Israelites
themselves. Indeed, even a Samaritan can fulfill the Great Commandments
of love of God and of neighbor (as in the parable of the Good Samaritan).
But perhaps the most original element of all is seen in the words of
institution, where Jesus, faced with the grim reality of his approaching
death, spoke of his death as in some sense bringing about the promised new
covenant. We have in Jewish thought the idea that through the death or
suffering of the righteous divine judgment upon Israel is ended or averted,
but the idea that through the shedding of his blood (and here we have an
allusion to the language of Exod 24:8) Jesus himself brings about the
prophesied new covenant is truly remarkable. This teaching, in combination
with the resurrection, is what gave rise to the distinctive essence of the
Christian movement.
Sean Freyne (Trinity College Dublin, Ireland)
1. The notion of a ‛Quest’ for the historical Jesus suggests an intensive,

yet ultimately inconclusive search for a figure who, as Schweitzer reminds
us, is always eluding our best efforts to catch up with him. This experience
calls to mind Mark’s evocative comment about the Galilean crowd’s
attempt to trap Jesus in a manner similar to hunters attempting to corner
(katadiôkein) their quarry in the chase. The notion of a Third Quest is
something of a misnomer since it comprises so many conflicting
presuppositions, explores such a range of diverse sources and applies such
different methodologies. In these respects at least it is truly a post-modern
enterprise, one that is doomed to achieve no certain outcome, despite the
protestations of liberal and conservative scholars alike.
The quest for the reality of Jesus’ life and ministry will always be
hugely important for Christian believers and for others who might find his
story moving or meaningful. Following Jesus has been a significant form of
discipleship within the Christian tradition, whether one thinks of the first
Galilean disciples, the mendicant orders of the middle ages, the Spiritual
Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola or the Base Communities of the Third
World who have enriched the work of Liberation Theologians in our own
time. The success of such an enterprise should not, however, be measured
in terms of adherence to the principles that allegedly bring objectivity to the
task in accordance with the norms of secular historiography. Rather, its
results should be judged in terms of the possibilities it generates for
reinvigorating Christian life and praxis in Western societies in an age of
consumerism that has lead to the exploitation of vulnerable humans and the
limited resources of our planet, alike. When one compares the

presuppositions and motivations (explicit or not) of many engaged in the
so-called Third Quest as distinct from its two predecessors, it often seems
to be driven by decidedly post-Christian perspectives. The attempt to isolate
a free standing figure of Jesus from the data about him that we have
received, smacks of an idealist fallacy, one that seeks to abstract some pure
essence from the external phenomena of our everyday experience. Such an
enterprise inevitably leads to ideological reductionism in the name of
scholarly neutrality. What emerges is a figure of Jesus that may satisfy the
inquisitiveness of the secular mind-set, without having to commit to his
way in any recognizable fashion.
The belated acceptance by historians of Jesus of the importance of the
archaeological investigation of Galilee has given a false sense of objectivity
to this idealist myth. It often ignores the fact that post-processual
archaeologists are keenly aware of the provisional and interpretative nature
of their findings. This is not to deny the contribution that archaeology can
make to gospel studies, but rather to emphasize the importance of
recognizing its limits when it comes to discussions of the historical Jesus as
this project has traditionally been understood. The original 19th century
quest was an enterprise that sought to rescue remnants of Christian belief
from the ravages of the Enlightenment critique. Equally, the new or second
quest provided an historical underpinning for Bulmann’s kerygmatic
approach. In essence both were theological in inspiration and intention.
Archaeology makes no such lofty claims. Its contribution, rather, is to
provide New Testament scholars with a more plausible context against
which they can read the relevant texts without resorting to the dubious
exercise of attempting to identify layers within the Jesus tradition in their
search for a literary, as distinct from an archaeological ‛bedrock.’
2. The history of scholarship on Galilee shows repeated attempts to

establish its non-Jewish character by emphasizing the inroads that
Hellenization had made on the region by the first century c.e. Literary
references such as Isa 8, 23 and 1 Macc 5,15 – texts which speak of
‛Galilee of the nations’ (ethnôn) or ‛heathens’ (allophylôn) – are deemed to
support such a view. The archaeological evidence of Greek-style cities such
as Sepphoris and Tiberias is also adduced in support of such opinions. This
picture of a thoroughly Hellenized Galilee has been used to present a de-
Judaized Jesus, whether it be Renan’s notoriously anti-Semitic version or
more recent proposals for a Cynic-like Jesus.
Such understandings of the relationship between Jesus and his Galilean
upbringing and later ministry are deeply flawed. They misconstrue the
impact of Hellenization and Romanization on indigenous peoples of the
East in general and on Judeans in particular. The archaeological record
strongly suggests a close affinity with Judea/Jerusalem of many of the
inhabitants of Galilee, demonstrated in terms of their household pottery,
their cooking habits, their ritual observances and burial practices, not just in
the rural village culture, but also in the larger urban environment of
Sepphoris and Tiberias. The more obvious signs of Greco-Roman life that
archaeology has uncovered in these places are to be dated to the second
century c.e. and beyond. Even then, however, the many synagogue remains
now coming to light in the region indicate the continuation of a vibrant
Jewish life well into Byzantine times.
However, the recognition of an observant Jewish culture in Galilee does
not answer the question of Jesus’ Judean identity. Other factors must be
taken into account, particularly Jesus’ association with John the Baptist and
his movement, something that is amply attested in the gospel records.
While appeal to John and his movement might be seen as a case of
explaining the ‛ignotum per ignotious,’ it can clearly be asserted that the
movement which John initiated in the desert did not conform with the
standard of ‛a common Judaism’ such as that which was propagated by the
priestly and scribal classes that represented the Jerusalem elite.
Comparisons with the community behind the Dead Sea Scrolls is only
partially informative in view of the very different profiles of John’s and
Jesus’ movements to that of the Qumran group, on the basis of the sectarian
documents in their library. Yet all three, and presumably other groups also,
might be deemed ‛dissident’ in terms of the Jerusalem cult-centre and its
guardians. Despite his admiration for John ‛than whom no one greater has
been born of women,’ Jesus signals his difference from him (and the
Qumran group) in terms both of his strategy of visiting the people in their
local environment, and in his understanding of the present as a period of joy
and grace rather than one of mourning and judgment in terms of God’s
dealing with Israel. The realization that the most appropriate way of
interpreting and naming Jesus’ ministry of healing and teaching was the
claim that the definitive establishment of God’s kingly rule was taking
place now, marks him off from other reforming groups, no matter how
much all these may have shared common sources that were inspired more
by the prophetic than the legal traditions of Israel.
3. In seeking to develop an appropriate profile of Jesus I must confess

that ‛thinker’ is not the one that immediately comes to mind. The framing
of the question situates Jesus in a more scholastic setting of philosophical
schools and learned debates, something that does not capture his essential
persona. Missing from many of the contemporary profiles of Jesus, even
those that situate him in a thoroughly Jewish matrix, is any discussion of
the mystical dimension of his life and person. This omission may well be
due to the fact that the Christian tradition has tended to see the active and
the contemplative life as two quite separate and discrete ways of Christian
discipleship. Yet all the gospels clearly indicate that as well as a ministry of
teaching and healing, Jesus also engaged in contemplative communion with
the deity, whom he called by the intimate name of Abba/Father. Indeed the
one example of his prayer that we possess shows an interweaving of

thoughts about the heavenly realm with concern for the necessities of
everyday life, namely, bread and debt remission.
This observation is the key to my understanding of the question
regarding Jesus’ religious insights that has been posed. His character is
complex, original and not easily categorized in terms of the various ‛types’
that are known to us from that society: rabbi, prophet, healer, revolutionary,
ascetic, holy man. All of these labels capture aspects of his personality
without doing justice to the remarkable synthesis of the varied strands of his
own tradition that is reflected in his deeds and teaching. When one searches
for possible prototypes from Israel’s past clear echoes of such figures as
Noah, Abraham, Moses, Elijah. Daniel and the Servant figure from Isaiah
all come to mind, and where appropriate, he could cite their words or recall
their deeds.
His ‛uniqueness’ in human terms would seem to lie in his ability to
adopt varied features of his own tradition and weave them into a pattern
that suggests an extraordinarily charismatic personality. Yet he is also
mysterious, ironic and decisive. The outstanding feature of his person and
ministry that stands out in all the accounts is his empathy for the weak and
the marginalized of his own society, and his recognition that in singling
these out as ‛the blessed,’ he was accurately representing the God of
Israel’s designs for his people. As a country prophet, it called for courage to
challenge the prevailing values of his own society, especially the inherited
religious symbols of his people. Above all, his call to love one’s enemy, in
a climate where hatred of the foreigner had become a sign of national
heroism, was so remarkable that his contemporaries could begin to interpret
his ministry as the dawn of the messianic era.
Simon Gathercole (University of Cambridge, United Kingdom)
1. One might first begin by asking how valid this division into different
“quests” is. It can be a useful pedagogical tool for students, but we should
not use them unthinkingly. Schweitzer imposed a very artificial
organisation on his questers. Similarly, in our own day, a “third quest”
which can embrace John P. Meier and N.T. Wright on one side, and a
Dominic Crossan on the other, is a very broad church indeed. So one might
say that rather than such a quest being over, it is not clear whether there has
been any such thing as a “third quest”. Additionally, since some scholars
like Crossan have a good deal in common with the second questers, it is
hard to say that (even if one accepts the groupings) these quests are
sequential epochs like Egyptian dynasties.
Perhaps one of the achievements of the last four decades, however, has
been a gradual erosion of the authority of the “criteria of authenticity”. A
number of Morna Hooker’s essays were instrumental here. This has led to a
much greater emphasis on the coherence of a whole picture of Jesus, a
much more satisfactory way of proceeding. Dale Allison and N.T. Wright
are examples of scholars who, with quite different results, have recently
eschewed the criteria as conventionally understood, and embarked instead
on constructing portraits which take into account as much of the relevant
data as possible.
Most recently, there has been a renewed appreciation of the eyewitness
character of the material in the Gospels (particularly in the work of Richard
Bauckham). This is a promising development which can pave the way for a
greater optimism in Jesus-research than was the case a generation ago.
Another result of Bauckham’s work, along with that of the John, Jesus and
History group at SBL, may be useful in breaking the Synoptic monopoly
(or tripoly?) in characterisations of Jesus. Even conservative scholars who
do attach great historical significance to John’s Gospel, such as Wright and
Keener, have restricted themselves to the Synoptics in practice. While not a
“quester” myself, I would be fascinated to see the results of scholarly
attempts to give accounts of the historical Jesus in a way which take
seriously John’s Gospel.
2. As with other figures from early Judaism and Christianity, it is hard to

identify Jesus with a particular party. With Paul we know that he had been
aligned with the Pharisees (but Hillelites or Shammaites?). With both John
the Baptist and Jesus it is more difficult, because their public lives appear to
have begun without any prior affiliation to a group or ideological stream. It
may well also be true, in any case, that there was more fluidity among the
different streams. This may help to account for the fact that Jesus agreed
with the Pharisees against the Sadducees on the matter of resurrection, but
also disagrees sharply with the Pharisees on some matters: some of the
more deterministic (Enochic?) aspects of his thought (reference to ‛his
elect’ in Mk 13.27, for example) would probably have provoked
disagreement with the Pharisees. He often came into conflict with them on
halakhic issues, while at the same time sometimes approving of Pharisaic
positions against those represented by others (Lk. 14.5; cf. CD 11.13-14)
If Josephus is to be believed, the Pharisees exerted most influence on the
populace. On this point, it seems that he can be believed, because of the
way in which the Pharisees are spoken of both in the NT and in the Qumran
literature (e.g. in the Nahum pesher’s description of their influence upon the
simple-minded of Ephraim). In light of this, it may well be that Pharisaic
views were influential upon Jesus’ family. This may be corroborated by the
priestly opposition to James which led to his execution – to the apparent
disapproval of the Pharisees as suggested by Josephus.
3. Three of the key guiding principles in Jesus’s reinterpretation of the

tradition appear to be (a) eschatology, (b) his view of who he was, and (c)
his view of his death.
Eschatology is central, because his view that the kingdom was near
shaped a great deal about what is distinctive in his thought, as is apparent
from the parables and his other teaching about the kingdom, not least in
the statements of realised eschatology according to which the ‛kingdom of
is among / has come upon you’ (Matt. 12.28/Lk. 11.20; Lk. 17.21).
Parallels may be drawn here, however, with the impact of eschatology
upon Qumran thought.
Relatedly, the matter of Jesus’s own identity is crucial, because of his
place in the kingdom of God. His own coming is so closely tied to the
kingdom that it has become increasingly clear to scholars in recent years
that Jesus thought himself to be the messianic king of that kingdom.
Moreover, in his teaching, Jesus is not a bearer of tradition, but one who
speaks without mediation as the direct mouthpiece of God. This is
interpreted by some in terms of Jesus’s position as the final eschatological
prophet, which is indeed important. Other aspects of Jesus’ teaching,
however, identify him as qualitatively different from the prophets. In Mark
12.6 he is both in the line of prophets, but also identified as Son of God (cf.
Mk 13.32; Matt. 11.27/Lk. 10.22, and passim in John). Elsewhere he can
identify himself even with God, in events such as the forgiveness of the
paralytic’s sins (Mk 2.1-12 and parallels), in his electing action (Matt.
11.27) and the sea-miracles (Mk 4.35-41; 6.45-52 and parallels).
Finally, a vitally distinctive aspect of Jesus’ thought concerns his death.
Jesus brings with him a time of divine judgment and tribulation (Lk. 12.49),
indeed, a judgment and tribulation in which he himself is caught up (Lk.
12.50). The repeated statements about the ‛necessity’ of his undergoing
death is not a tragic circumstance, however, but the means by which in
God’s plan he will rescue ‛the many’ (Mk 10.45; Mk 14.24 and parallels).
Christian Grappe (University of Strasbourg, France)
1. (a) For practical reasons, these three quests have been and can be
distinguished. However, the frontiers are not so clear, and each quest,
especially the third one, can lead to a great diversity of results. The three
“quests” can interact, in some cases and in different ways, and that can be
fruitful for further research. The third quest is not over, nor are some
aspects of the former ones. They have to continue and to conjoin in new
ways, in order to achieve new insights and new results.
(b) Research in the historical Jesus has taken several positive steps in
recent years :
– Archaeology (archaeological discoveries in Galilee, notably in
Sepphoris, which corroborate that Jesus grew up in a rather sophisticated

environment that remained properly Jewish, and in Jerusalem, notably near
Dormition Abbey, which could corroborate that the first community in
Jerusalem lived in proximity to the Essenes and that they were influenced
by their particular way of life)
– Important literary discoveries, such as the Dead Sea Scrolls (whose
importance has not yet been fully taken into account for the study of the
New Testament and of the historical Jesus)
– Progress in reassessing the political, economic, and social setting of
first-century Palestine.
These remain, even today, the most interesting and promising future
perspectives in the field.
(c) According to me, the specific problems that more than others deserve
or require further analysis are:
– Comparison of the Gospels texts with the intertestamental literature
(including the Dead Sea Scrolls)
– Comparison of Jesus with other prophetic figures of his time who
were convinced that they had to play a role, either as agents or as heralds, in
the process through which God had decided to grant an imminent triumph
to his Kingdom or to his people
Refining the definition of messianism by integrating the distinction
introduced by Henri Deroche, in his Dictionnaire des Messianismes,
between pretender Messiah and pretended Messiah, and by taking into
account that Jesus did not announce himself but the Kingdom of God.
2. (a) and (b) Jesus seems to have had a good knowledge of the Judaism
of his time, but it seems to me very difficult to determine exactly his
cultural background, beyond the influence John the Baptist could have had
on him. The proximity of Nazareth and Sepphoris, and the high cultural
level that is now established for this city, may contribute to explain his own
knowledge of Judaism and of the debates that took place. At the same time,
the rapid change generated by the development of such urban centers as
Sepphoris and Tiberias did provoke the emergence of a value system very
different from the one of the Galilean rural hinterland. That could have
catalyzed an apocalyptically inspired response such as the one attested in
Jesus’ proclamation.
(c) The meeting with John the Baptist and the proximity to his
movement, corroborated by Jesus’ baptism, remains the main element that
can help us in defining in more detail which ideological stream Jesus
belonged to. The implicit critic of the Temple cult involved in John’s
baptism for the forgiveness of sins and the apocalyptic accent of his own
proclamation characterized by an imminent expectation of the end can
contribute to a better understanding of Jesus’ own proclamation of the in-
breaking of God’s Kingdom.
(d) Jesus was a Jew who was well up on his own tradition. He was
influenced by the apocalyptic proclamation of John, the prophet and baptizer.
3. (a) Jesus did personally rework the cultural features that he inherited
in his proclamation of the in-breaking of God’s Kingdom. In Biblical Israel,
the divine kingship was associated in a specific way with the Temple-
Palace which was conceived both as the earthly counterpart of the celestial
sanctuary and as the place of the mysterious residence of God as King
among his people. In Jesus’ proclamation, the Kingdom of God is no longer
associated with the Temple but with his own proclamation and action.
Hence, the Kingdom of God is no longer centered around the Temple but
present wherever it is proclaimed in word and in action, and its coming is
corroborated by the defeat of Satan (Luke 11,20 // Matthew 12,28; Luke
10,18), which has an eschatological meaning (// Assumption of Moses 10,1;
Testament of Dan 5,10-13…). The Spirit plays a leading role in the
dynamics of the in-breaking Kingdom and generates a new relationship
between purity and impurity. Formerly, impurity was thought to be
contagious and always threatening. From now on, holiness invades the
secular sphere and opens up space. In return, this gracious occupation of
space by holiness results in high ethical standards. So, wherever the radical
newness of the in-breaking Kingdom comes to light, one can see a new
understanding both of space and of human responsibility.
(b) As a consequence of the former observations, the proclamation of
the irruption of the Kingdom of God can be regarded as the most original
element of Jesus’ thought. It has to be understood against the background of
the Psalms, as Chilton has demonstrated, and conceived in all its originality.
That Jesus, as a prophet, announced the Kingdom and not himself is also of
main importance in order to understand the origins of Christology. As
herald of the in-breaking of the Kingdom of God, Jesus was not a pretender
Messiah, even if he was condemned as a pretended Messiah. Nevertheless,
his claim to authority was such that, after Easter, his disciples could draw
all the consequences of a puzzling and incomparable proximity to God
which the apostrophe Abba could also suggest.
Santiago Guijarro Oporto (Pontifical University of Salamanca, Spain)
1. The division of the quest for the historical Jesus into three periods
(Old, New and Third Quest) is artificial. In my opinion there has been only
one search that has been improved by a better knowledge of the ancient
Christian texts, of the social and cultural context in which Jesus lived, and
especially by the refinement of the criteria for establishing the historicity of
the traditions about him. In any case, in recent years the production of
books on the “historical Jesus” has decreased considerably, so yes, I would

say that the so called “Third Quest” is over.
At the same time, I think that recent research has not clarified some
important issues, which I believe deserve further analysis. I will mention
three of them. The first one is the relationship between Jesus and the
groups of disciples that continued the movement started by him. Recent
research has focused on the association of Jesus with Judaism and has
clarified many things about this relationship, but it has not considered in
detail his relationship with earliest Christianity, which is also very
important to understanding him. I think the increasing production of
books on the “beginnings of Christianity” suggests that this aspect
requires further analysis.
The second issue that I believe needs to be clarified is the eschatological
dimension of Jesus’ preaching. Some individual researchers and groups
have promoted an image of Jesus as a Wisdom teacher oriented toward the
present. This image mirrors current Western sensibilities but does not take
into consideration many aspects of our sources that speak about him as a
prophet who preached a kingdom God with eschatological overtones.
Finally, I believe that recent research has neglected a critical aspect that
was very influential in Jesus’ life, namely his religious experience. Jesus
was a religious man and his message was a religious message. Although
some authors have highlighted this fact, I think that a more detailed study is
needed in order to identify its influence in the life of Jesus and in the
movement promoted by him.
2. Research on the historical Jesus in the last years has rightly insisted
on the obvious fact that he was a Judean, lived as a Judean and promoted an
intra-Judean renewal movement. This insistence, which was favored by a
more detailed knowledge of Second Temple Judaism(s), was a reaction
against the detachment from his life context prompted by the systematic use
of the criterion of dissimilarity.
One of the traits of Judaism in Jesus’ time was its plurality. It is not
enough, then, to say that Jesus was a Judean, but we have to specify what
kind of Judean Jesus was. It is a difficult task, because the ancient sources
provide little information about the clues that define his place within
Judaism. These clues are, in my opinion, three. The first one is that Jesus
was a Galilean. This means that in order to state what kind of Judean Jesus
was, it is necessary to establish the characteristic traits of Galilean Judaism.
The second clue follows from the fact that Jesus lived most of his life in a
small village. His natural environment was not the urban milieu, but the
rural setting of villages and towns. Finally, the third clue is provided by the
fact that his family most probably came from Judea, as suggested by the
Judean names of all his relatives, and by their close relationship with the
region of Judea that appears in the infancy narratives.
This peculiar setting in the Palestinian society of the first century makes
it difficult to ascertain what kind of Judean Jesus was. To the difficulty of
determining the peculiar characteristics of Galilean Judaism it must be
added the complexity of identifying the traits of rural Judaism, which was
probably the most widespread, although it left no evidence in the material
remains and in the written sources. The relationship of Jesus’ family with
rural Judea is in my opinion a quite significant fact. It points to the so called
“common Judaism”, traditionally rooted in ordinary people (amme ha-
Aretz) who were little interested in the disputes between groups and
schools. This connection between Jesus and common Judaism rooted in the
rural areas of Judea may explain Jesus’ success among peasant population
in Galilee (many of them immigrants like his own family), and at the same
time his controversies with the scribes and Pharisees, and his confrontation
with the priestly aristocracy of Jerusalem.
3. In my opinion is very important to underline the fact that the

originality of Jesus needs to be understood in the context of ideas and
beliefs that were shared by his contemporaries. The original aspects of his
message are the result of reworking aspects already present in this context. I
would like to mention three of them that seem to me particularly original.
The first and most important is the new image of God that appears in his
prayer, in his teaching, and his behavior. The God of Jesus is indeed the
God of Israel, but the way he experienced him was quite original. He had an
intimate familiarity and an absolute confidence in Him that resulted in a
radical obedience to His will. The most characteristic expression of this
relationship, which is at the root of Jesus’ religious experience, is the
invocation abba, which was preserved even in the Greek-speaking
communities as a reminder of his particular way of relating to God (Rom
8:15; Gal 4:6). His close relationship with God explains other aspects of his
message as for example his ethics of loving enemies, which is based on the
imitation of God’s way of acting (Luke 6.35-36 par.).
I find also very original Jesus’ message about the kingdom of God. It is
clear that in his environment everyone had an idea of what this expression
meant, but Jesus gave it a new meaning that awakened great expectations.
To establish what exactly Jesus meant when he talked about this coming
kingdom is not easy, probably because his sayings, as preserved in the
Gospels, represent different stages of a progressive understanding on the
part of Jesus himself. But it is clear that this was a central and novel aspect
of his message and of the renewal movement promoted by him.
Finally, I think that the behavior of Jesus that presupposes an unusual
authority is also very original. His teaching was not based on an interpretation
of Torah, but in his immediate relation to God. Jesus spoke in the name of
God without relying on any external authority. And the same can be said
about his behavior. His way of dealing with people and, above all, the way he
called his disciples revealed an authority that comes directly from God.
Richard Horsley (University of Massachusetts Boston USA)
Without responding directly to them in the ways they were posed, the
following reflections should address the gist of the questions.
Significant shifts in the scholarly interpretation of “the historical Jesus”
both in the very beginning and in the last decades of the twentieth century
resulted (mainly) from increased attention to ancient Judean texts. The
(re-)discovery and (somewhat literal) reading of Judean “apocalyptic” texts
in the late nineteenth century led Schweitzer to present Jesus as fully
sharing and preaching an “apocalyptic” scenario of the end of the world. In
the second half of the century, many Christian interpreters embarrassed
about Christian anti-Judaism implicated in the tragedy of the Holocaust
were eager to understand how Jesus belonged fully in ancient “Judaism.”
The discovery of Qumran texts and their apparent similarities with some
aspects of Jesus’ teachings represented in the Gospels contributed to the
“apocalyptic” Jesus. It is sobering to realize that, following a few
significant books in the 1970s-80s, the production of books on Jesus
burgeoned only in the 1990s, enabled by intense marketing by one
publisher. A wave of books by critical neo-liberal interpreters eager to
present a Jesus compatible with modern scientific sensibilities was followed
by a wave from more conservative interpreters eager to restate more
traditional theologies. Nearly all of these presentations of “the historical
Jesus” work on the basis of the standard assumptions, procedures, and
conceptual apparatus of New Testament studies, which is one of the fields
of Christian theology. This is only to be expected insofar as Jesus-
interpreters are trained in the field and usually have professional
responsibilities as well as personal commitment to religious education
and/or the education of the clergy.
Meanwhile, during the last several decades, research into texts, history,
material remains, and cultural features of ancient Judea and Galilee in
particular and their Roman imperial context in general has proliferated in a
number of areas closely related to the understanding of the Gospel sources
and the political and cultural context of Jesus and the movements he
catalyzed. The increasing specialization and proliferation of knowledge,
however, makes it difficult for interpreters of Jesus to keep up with
developments in other special areas that are directly relevant to or may even
undermine previously standard assumptions, approaches, and major concepts.
We only need to read Judean texts, from Ezra-Nehemiah to Josephus to
realize that there was a fundamental division in Judean society under
imperial rule, compounded by escalating conflict between circles of learned
scribes and the high priestly aristocracy whom they supposedly served as
advisers. Second-Temple Judea (“Judaism” is a later construct imposed on
earlier history) was not an independent society. The Persian imperial
regime backed the “return” of some of those deported by the Babylonians to
establish a temple-state that would maintain control over those still on the
land and collect revenues to support themselves as well as to send as tribute

to Persia. The Persians had to send Nehemiah as governor to forcibly check
the divisions among the powerful families and to restrain them from their
disastrous exploitation of the peasants.
Ben Sira (early second century BCE) indicates that a priestly aristocracy
dominated Jerusalem and Judea. He and other learned scribes (sages)
cultivated torah, prophecies, and various kinds of wisdom in order to serve
as advisers to the high priesthood and its councils. The wealthy and
powerful aristocrats and their scribal advisers were supported by the
produce of urban artisans and the villagers who worked the land. Loyal to
Mosaic covenantal torah and sensitive to the way the aristocrats exploited
the poor villagers, Ben Sira exhorts his scribal protégés both to be wary of
the power of their patrons and to mitigate the worst effects of the elite’s
oppression of the poor and to aid the destitute. Epistle of Enoch (1 Enoch
92-104) flat out condemns the wealthy and power aristocracy for brutal
exploitation of the righteous poor.
What Ben Sira ignores, as if Judea were an independent society, the
Book of Watchers (1 Enoch 1-36) and the subsequent historical visions-
and-interpretations in the Animal Vision (1 Enoch 85-90) and Daniel 7, 8,
10-12 “reveal:” the military violence and economic exploitation of imperial
rule, particularly of the Hellenistic kings. Certain renegade forces
(“watchers”) in the heavenly governance of earthly affairs, rebelling against
God’s commands, have produced a race of giants that had introduced metal
weapons of war and luxury goods with/for which imperial regimes had
wrought destruction and exploitation of subject peoples, such as the
Judeans. The Animal Vision and Daniel 10-12 see the (reforming) high
priestly aristocracy as implicated in the threat to the traditional Judean way
of live (the covenant). The visions in Daniel 7, 8, 10-12 say nothing about a
new Temple and the Animal Vision views the second temple regime as
corrupt and envisions a grandly restored “house of God” = the people/
Israel that pointedly lacks a new “tower.” What these “apocalyptic” texts
look forward to is not the end of the world but God’s judgment of the
oppressive empire and restoration of Judean society/ Israel.
This division and these conflicts in Judean society continued under the
Hasmoneans who consolidated and extended their power, mainly militarily,
following the Maccabean Revolt. And the same divisions, including the
scribal condemnation of imperial rule, continued after the (repeated) Roman
conquest(s) and under the rule of the Herodian client kings. The texts
produced by the scribal-priestly community at Qumran sharply reject and
withdraw from the Hasmonean high priesthood in a new exodus, set up a
renewed covenantal community as a restoration of Israel, and later
anticipate a decisive war against the Romans. In the Psalms of Solomon
another scribal circle condemns both the Hasmoneans and the Romans. The
wealthy priest Josephus presents candid accounts of Hasmonean conquests,
brutality to the Pharisees and other opponents, and unpopularity with both
scribal circles and ordinary people, Herod’s repressive rule, popular revolts
at his death, and devastating Roman reconquest. He then also presents a
picture both of scribal groups’ resistance to Roman and high priestly rule
(the “fourth philosophy” resistance to the tribute and the assassination of
high priests by the sicarioi) and of popular movements of resistance and
renewal led by either popularly acclaimed “kings” (reminiscent of the
young David) or prophets who promised that God was about to enact a new
exodus or entry in to the land (new Moses). The Similitudes of Enoch,
produced under early Roman rule, focus on the divine judgment of “the
kings and the mighty” who have been ruining life on the earth, i.e. the
Roman empire.
According to the Gospel sources read in the context indicated by the
above Judean sources for the historical situation, Jesus belongs squarely in
the context of these popular movements and scribal expectations of a
renewal or restoration of Israel. If we do not work from separate sayings of
Jesus separated from literary and historical context (which ignores the
literary integrity of the Gospels as sources), but read the portrayal of Jesus
in the Gospels as whole documents, then Jesus appears to have been
spearheading a renewal of Israel over against the rulers of Israel –
somewhat like the popular prophets (not “eschatological” or “apocalyptic”
prophets in Josephus’ accounts) and their movements.
Given our scholarly training as interpreters of sacred written texts it may
be most difficult for us to come to grips with recent researches in text
criticism and in the relation between oral performance and writing in the
predominantly oral communication environment of antiquity. Evidence
from the DSS indicates that the texts that were later included in the Hebrew
Bible existed in multiple versions that were all still developing and not yet
stable in late second-temple times. Evidence from the DSS also indicates
that “Enoch” texts may have been as authoritative (“scriptural”) as some
later included in the Hebrew Bible. Recent research has also demonstrated
that literacy was confined mainly to scribal circles in Judea and that even in
scribal circles cultivation of revered texts was as much or more by memory
and oral recitation as by making written copies. This evidence suggests that
ordinary people who were not literate and could not afford costly written
scrolls were not directly acquainted with the scriptures. This does not mean
that they were ignorant of Israelite tradition, just that they probably
cultivated popular versions of Israelite tradition orally in their village
communities (in their weekly assemblies/ synagogai). The conflict between
Jesus and the Pharisees would appear to be rooted in the differences
between the official version of Judean-Israelite tradition and the popular
Israelite tradition. Further work on Jesus in cultural context will have to
struggle with the implications of such researches.
Text critics of the Gospels have recently recognized the great variety of
versions in the second and third centuries, prior to the emergence of stable
versions in the late fourth and fifth centuries. This meshes with parallel
research into the Gospels that is concluding that, for example, Mark
continued to be performed orally even after it was written down – as
different versions/ forms of the Gospel proliferated. Thus, not only do we
need a more adequate understanding of the “oral-transmission” of Jesus-
materials prior to the “writing” of the Gospels, we must now also come to
grips with the probability that what we have are “transcripts” of oral
performances as our sources for Jesus. That our sources are probably
“orally derived texts” thus drives us further into the historical social
(“performance”) context of the oral performance of the Gospel stories in
Jesus movements of the late first century and into learning from recent
work on orally performed texts in other fields.
Much of the research in these related areas is very recent. Interpreters of
Jesus may well simply ignore it. After all, some of our most basic
assumptions and concepts are called into question. To struggle with the
implications of such research, however, will involve considerable new
learning and “retooling”. This suggests that it will take considerable
cooperative effort before we are able to rethink our assumptions and work
out more adequate procedures of historical research and reconstruction.
Dan Jaffé (Bar-Ilan University, Israel)
1. It seems to me that huge steps have been made in the past decades in
the search for the Historical Jesus. First, one must mention the removal of
Jesus from the confines of theology to bring him into history as a historical
personage. The searches for the historical Jesus have made it possible to
clear away faith and religious assumptions from the figure of Christ and
discuss only the man, Jesus. The scholar, regardless of his religious belief,
whether it be repressed, inhibited, or openly declared, is first of all a source
critic. In this sense, he must tend toward impartiality and objectivity if he
wishes to be regarded as scientific. To a certain degree, it would not be
erroneous to state that the source critic deconstructs established norms: if
his religious affiliation subtends his work, he is not a historian, but a
theologian. While the historiography regarding Jesus cannot be free of all
implicit influence of milieu, education, or the religion of the scholar, the
methodology used, the questions asked, and the problems evoked by
scholars must be related to the work of historians, not of theologians. This
is already an important step. For several decades, scholarship has been
seeking to place the personage of Jesus in perspective. An effort has been
made to contextualize Jesus in the Jewish society of his time, using
available literary, epigraphical, and archaeological evidence. As Alan Segal
has stated in “Paul et ses exégètes juifs contemporains,” Recherche de
science religieuse 94 (2006), pp. 440-441:
Is it impossible to do history, or just very difficult? And if it is extremely

difficult, but possible, we should try to make all our hypotheses
conscious, which is as difficult a job as writing impartially, as
controlling all our personal assumptions, and as wishing to go a bit
farther than before with each intuition. Perhaps objectivity is impossible,
but impartial research is a goal that can perhaps be attained, if, in fact, a
book resists and survives detailed examination over decades. If this is
the case, historians must learn the very difficult lessons of the future as
well as of the past.
Great light has been shed on the historical personage thanks to the Dead
Sea Scrolls and to inter-testamentary literature – the literature that
flourished at the end of the Second Temple Period. In the future it seems to
me that greater consideration of Talmudic literature is essential for
scholarship on Jesus. It is vital to lay bare the most ancient strata of the
Mishnah, the Tosefta, and Midrashei Halakha in order to grasp elements
that could have had an influence on Jesus’ way of thinking and teaching, his
sensitivities, and his message.
2. I think it is a good idea to put forward several axiomatic ideas before

trying to discover the trend within Judaism to which Jesus belonged.
a) Jewish society at the end of the Second Temple Period was extremely
heterogeneous, so it is impossible to speak in terms of a representative body
or of a dominant group that dictated norms for them all. Numerous texts from
that socially and religiously fragmented society show how fundamental was
the expectation of a messianic figures. Moreover, one must examine this
messianism. Was it political, royal, sacerdotal ? According to certain
sociological categories, was he someone who himself claimed to be the
messiah or a someone whom others claimed to be messiah?
b) Halakhah, which was to become the pedal point of Jewish life and its
principal vector of identity, was embryonic at that time. This is fundamental
and too often ignored in studies dealing with Jesus’ attitude toward the
Law. Halakhah as a final and codified law did not emerge in the Jewish
world until long after Jesus.
c) The Pharisaic movement was one of the groups active at the end of
the Second Temple period, and after 70 CE it very progressively became
the group that produced rabbinical Judaism. Jesus, as I understand him,
shows important affinities with this movement. However, a major
methodological axis must be taken into consideration: the Pharisaic
movement was not monolithic. It is composed of several branches, which
are quite different from one another. Moreover, these differences are to be
found among the great rabbinical figures of later times. Thus one must bear
these elements in mind when attempting to link Jesus to one of the Jewish
movements of his time and in the texts concerning the disputes between
Jesus and the “Pharisees.” In this respect one must concur with Etienne
Trocmé, Jésus de Nazareth vu par les témoins de sa vie, Neuchâtel, 1971,

pp. 17-18, who writes:
The historians will never be much more certain about Jesus. Many of
them rebel against the impossibility of writing a true biography of that
great man. Hence we find repeated efforts ... to find the key to a person
who was also mysterious. This key does not exist. There are only points
of view from which one may cast glances at the Nazarene without ever
drawing nearer.
In the same spirit, at the end of my own, Jésus sous la plume des
historiens juifs du XXe siècle. Approche historique, perspectives
historiographiques, analyses méthodologiques, Paris, 2009, pp. 352-353, I
wrote:
In conclusion, let us emphasize how much the scholarship on the Jesus

of religious history is simultaneously fascinating and disconcerting. The
scholar performs textual analyses and literary crosschecks. He examines
the available sources with the tools of historical and philological
science. He performs operations belonging to the social sciences.
Despite all this, he is necessarily left with the feeling that this research
remains asymptotic.
3. In the religious ferment of his age, Jesus offers an approach that has
been regarded as singular for too long. In my opinion, his teaching belongs
to the plurality of the Jewish world of his day. Let us emphasize a crucial
point: a reading of the Prophets as a background is vital for understanding
Jesus’ teachings, his relationship with God, repentance, and the relationship
with the Other. It also seems to me that some of the practices attributed to
Jesus in the New Testament have an echo in Talmudic literature. For
example, Geza Vermes and Shmuel Safrai have shown that Jesus’ practices,
such as healing from a distance, his filial relation to God – where Jesus
addresses the divinity as his Father – the ability to modify the natural cycle
of nature, etc. are found to a lesser extent among figures from the Talmud
such as Honi Hamaagel or Hanina ben Dosa. These men belonged to a
distinct group known as Hasidim (see my article, “L’identification de Jésus
au modèle du Hasid charismatique Galiléen: les thèses de Shmuel Safrai et
de Geza Vermes revisitées,” New Testament Studies 55 (2009), pp. 218-
246). The point is arbitrarily to note similarities between practices and
literary attestations: rather it is to bring out a continuum between the
practices and teachings of different groups, each of which belongs to the
mosaic typical of the Jewish world at the end of the Second Temple period.
In my opinion, one of Jesus’ most original teachings was the hierarchy that
he establishes between the relationship with God and the relationship with
man. His very high moral level and his consideration for others, going as
far as self-abnegation, makes the law relative, to be measured with respect

to human needs. With Jesus a fundamental point appears that one could call
going beyond the Law, wherein the Law, taken literally, is no longer the
ultimate way of establishing a bond with God, but it can be surpassed by
obligation to the Other. I find the categories brought out by Shalom ben
Chorin in his Bruder Jesus, Munich 1967, very interesting. Ben Chorin
develops two extremely relevant concepts, that of the third authority and
that of the internalization of the Law. In Ben-Chorin’s view, Jesus’ methods
of teaching derive from an authority that exists beyond that of Hillel and
Shammai. Jesus represents a third authority in that, while he specifically
does not refer back to a recognized and familiar master, he nevertheless
retains his own legitimacy within the Jewish people. This must absolutely
not be considered marginal from the point of view of the methods of
exegesis prevalent in the Jewish world at that time. Rather it offers another
voice in the Jewish polyphony of the interpretation of the Law at the end of
the Second Temple period. As for the concept of the internalization of the
Laws, Ben-Chorin does not accept the idea of a Jesus who adhered solely to
an internal practice of the law, leaving aside the external observances,
which are the precepts of the written and oral Torah. The expression,
“internalization of the Law,” is not to be understood in a ritualistic or
existential sense, but rather in a more psychological perspective. Jesus
advocates internalizing the Law so as to become one with it; he envisages,
de facto, perfect integration of Être and the Lettre [Being and the Letter].
Every act of omission or commission that is not scrupulously in conformity
with the Law is to be condemned. From this perspective, he violently
condemns and rejects that which appears to him to be a hypocritical
attitude, one not in conformity with strict observance, according to his own
way of understanding and interpreting Scripture. This internalization of the
Law characteristic of Jesus, which reflects an elitist and absolute vision of
the relation between humanity and the law, can be found in various sayings
that the Evangelists attribute to him, such as Mt. 5, 20-48 or Mt. 23, 16-32.
Giorgio Jossa (University of Naples, Italy)
1. Non credo affatto che la terza ricerca sul Gesù storico abbia esaurito il
suo compito. Al contrario. Essa ha fornito agli studi alcune nuove piste di
indagine di grande importanza e fecondità che devono essere ancora
percorse e portate avanti. Proprio le nuove prospettive che così si sono
aperte pongono però alcuni problemi e devono essere perciò approfondite e
precisate. Indico i problemi che mi sembrano più rilevanti.
Il primo problema è quello delle fonti. La terza ricerca sul Gesù storico
ha avuto il grande merito di contestare la limitazione tradizionale della
documentazione alla letteratura canonica, allargando lo sguardo ai testi
apocrifi. E nella stessa letteratura canonica ha messo in discussione la

“tirannia del Gesù sinottico”, rivalutando il Vangelo di Giovanni. Questa
apertura di orizzonti deve essere conservata. Ma dopo i legittimi entusiasmi
suscitati dalle nuove prospettive una più attenta e prudente considerazione
dei vangeli apocrifi (di Tommaso e di Pietro in particolare) appare ormai
necessaria per verificare quanto la loro utilizzazione porti realmente a
modificare l’immagine tradizionale del Gesù storico fondata sui testi
canonici. E bisogna anche chiedersi se e fino a che punto il Vangelo di
Giovanni possa nuovamente prendersi in considerazione come fonte storica
altrettanto, o ancor più, attendibile dei sinottici (nell’indicazione per
esempio di ripetute visite di Gesù a Gerusalemme, che comporterebbero
una diversa ricostruzione della vicenda di Gesù sia per quanto riguarda i
suoi rapporti con i farisei sia per quanto riguarda la sua condanna a morte).
A me sembra in realtà che i vangeli sinottici, e il Vangelo di Marco in
particolare, restino le fonti privilegiate della ricerca sul Gesù storico.
Il secondo problema, che è il problema veramente decisivo della ricerca
attuale, è costituito dal contenuto, e quindi dal significato, della espressione
“Gesù ebreo”, una definizione che rischia di diventare uno slogan vuoto.
Ma ne parlerò più diffusamente nella risposta alle successive domande.
La riscoperta del Gesù ebreo pone poi necessariamente il problema della
attendibilità delle tradizioni su Gesù, e pone quindi il problema dei criteri di
autenticità storica dei detti e dei fatti che gli sono attribuiti da quelle
tradizioni. La terza ricerca ha respinto giustamente il criterio della
dissomiglianza prediletto dalla seconda, che esaltava il contrasto di Gesù
col mondo giudaico, e quindi la sua originalità, e lo ha sostituito con quello
della plausibilità storica, che ne valorizza invece l’adesione al contesto
giudaico del tempo. Ma il criterio della plausibilità ha lo stesso limite di
quello della dissomiglianza. L’impossibilità che detti e fatti di Gesù
derivino dal mondo giudaico (che dovrebbe essere segno della loro
inattendibilità) non può mai essere provata con sicurezza, data la
conoscenza molto limitata che abbiamo di quel mondo. E non si può negare
d’altra parte la possibilità che Gesù abbia preso anche atteggiamenti che
non hanno alcun riscontro nel contesto giudaico del tempo. Un caso del
genere mi sembra essere per esempio la presa di posizione nei confronti
delle norme di purità di Mc. 7,15 (vero cavallo di battaglia della “nuova
ricerca”) che un numero sempre maggiore di autori ritiene non autentica e
che io continuo invece ad attribuire a Gesù.
C’è infine il problema di una più decisa e coraggiosa storicizzazione
della ricerca. Gli studiosi attuali del Gesù storico non sono più soltanto
teologi, come quelli della nuova ricerca, ma vogliono essere storici. Di qui
l’abbandono di presupposti confessionali che inquinerebbero fatalmente, e
in maniera inevitabilmente apologetica, la ricerca; e una salutare
secolarizzazione degli studi che vedono la collaborazione di protestanti e
cattolici, cristiani ed ebrei, credenti e non credenti. Di qui anzi il dichiarato
(ma non sempre vero) disinteresse degli studiosi per il problema stesso
della rilevanza teologica dello studio del Gesù storico (e purtroppo anche
per il problema, che è squisitamente storico, della continuità tra il Gesù
storico e il cristianesimo). Ma, rimanendo pur sempre legati a una
metodologia prevalentemente letteraria e teologica, gli autori si limitano di
norma a un’analisi puramente tematica dei vari aspetti della persona di
Gesù (il Gesù carismatico, il Gesù profeta, il Gesù maestro) o delle sue
prese di posizione nei confronti dei vari aspetti del giudaismo (Gesù e la
legge, Gesù e il tempio, Gesù e la speranza messianica), senza tentare di
scrivere una storia (non una vita) di Gesù che ne prenda in considerazione
gli eventuali sviluppi (e rinunciando quindi anche a fornirne una immagine
complessiva); e il ricorso stesso al contesto storico della sua vicenda, spesso
impreciso, risulta quasi sempre poco significativo ai fini della
comprensione di Gesù e molte volte anche strumentale a una immagine
ideologica della sua persona.
2. – 3. Rispondo insieme alle due successive domande sulla giudaicità e

l’originalità di Gesù. Gesù è cresciuto nel comune giudaismo del suo tempo,
come poteva essere vissuto in particolare in un piccolo villaggio della Galilea
quale era Nazaret e nella famiglia di un modesto artigiano quale era
Giuseppe. E di questo giudaismo galilaico condivide in maniera evidente la
religiosità. ö un giudeo praticante, che prega come gli altri Giudei, osserva la
legge mosaica, frequenta il tempio di Gerusalemme e attende con impazienza
un intervento potente di Dio nella storia di Israele. Non appartiene tuttavia a
nessuno dei gruppi e degli orientamenti giudaici del tempo da noi conosciuti.
Non è certamente né un esseno né un fariseo. Non aderisce a particolari
correnti apocalittiche né è un seguace di Giuda il Galileo. E neppure è
sufficiente a caratterizzarlo il definirlo semplicemente un giudeo carismatico
o un giudeo marginale. Quello che lo contraddistingue, almeno a partire dal
distacco dal movimento penitenziale di Giovanni Battista, è il sentirsi
investito di una missione profetica ed escatologica: una forte consapevolezza
cioè di essere l’ultimo e definitivo messaggero della volontà salvifica di Dio,
che lo spinge a rompere i rigidi limiti del sistema religioso contemporaneo.
Da questa consapevolezza deriva infatti tutta una serie di atteggiamenti e di
affermazioni di Gesù che lo differenziano profondamente sia dal Battista sia
da altri maestri del tempo. Provo a indicare sinteticamente gli elementi più
originali del suo pensiero.
(a) Quando ha lasciato Giovanni, del quale presumibilmente aveva
condiviso fino allora la predicazione profetica, Gesù ha annunciato la
venuta imminente non, come il Battista, del giudizio di Dio, ma del regno di
Dio: ha espresso cioè la convinzione del prossimo verificarsi di un
intervento meraviglioso di Dio che avrebbe trasformato in maniera radicale
e definitiva la realtà di Israele. Ha perseguito quindi l’ideale della
restaurazione escatologica di Israele: una restaurazione che io credo tuttavia
non semplicemente terrena, ma “celeste”, tale da implicare cioè una vera
trasformazione del mondo attuale, che va anche al di là dell’Israele terreno.
(b) Per svolgere la sua missione Gesù non soltanto ha lasciato la Giudea
(dove si trovava col Battista) per tornare nella Galilea dove era cresciuto,
ma ha frequentato prevalentemente ambienti marginali della società
giudaica galilaica: non le città più o meno ellenizzate di Sepphoris e di
Tiberiade, successive sedi del potere erodiano; ma i villaggi di pescatori e
di contadini intorno al lago di Genezaret; e ha praticato anzi una comunione
di tavola con pubblicani e peccatori (Mc. 2,16), che costituiva una evidente
provocazione rispetto a un certo modo di concepire la giustizia e la santità
da parte delle autorità giudaiche.
(c) Come altri personaggi carismatici del tempo Gesù ha compiuto
indubbiamente guarigioni ed esorcismi: quelle “azioni paradossali” di cui
parla Giuseppe (Ant. 18,63) che gli hanno assicurato in Galilea una
notevole popolarità. Ma a queste guarigioni e a questi esorcismi che egli
riteneva di compiere con l’aiuto di Dio ha attribuito un valore particolare:
essi erano la realizzazione del tempo messianico preannunciato dal profeta
Isaia (Mt. 11,4-5/Lc. 7,22); significavano per lui la vittoria di Dio sul potere
di Satana, e quindi la trasformazione già iniziata del mondo in regno di Dio
(Mt. 12,28/Lc. 11,20).
(d) Sollecitato dalle critiche dei suoi avversari per il suo comportamento
anticonformista, Gesù ha dato una interpretazione della legge mosaica che
era più libera e allo stesso tempo più radicale di quelle dei farisei, dei
sadducei e degli esseni: per lui non era la mancata osservanza delle norme
legali di purità, alle quali sembra comunque essersi sostanzialmente
attenuto, ma l’inclinazione del cuore, a determinare la contaminazione
dell’uomo (Mc. 7,15). L’uomo non doveva infatti essere schiavo della
legge, ma era invece la legge che era al servizio dell’uomo; e l’uomo aveva
quindi tutto il diritto di valutarne il contenuto (Mc. 2,27).
(e) Con questi atteggiamenti e con queste affermazioni Gesù ha
manifestato un’autorità, e ha avanzato quindi una pretesa, che, anche se non
si è tradotta nell’affermazione esplicita di essere il Messia atteso da Israele,
può essere tuttavia legittimamente definita messianica: ed è questa pretesa
(non la dimostrazione nel tempio) che ha spinto le autorità giudaiche ad
arrestarlo e processarlo e che, presentata al governatore romano come
pretesa regale, è stata motivo della condanna a morte di Pilato. Alla
preoccupazione religiosa per l’identità di Israele si è aggiunta la
preoccupazione più schiettamente politica per i rapporti con Roma. La
condanna come re dei Giudei da parte del prefetto romano ha infatti il suo
necessario fondamento nella condanna come Messia di Israele da parte
delle autorità giudaiche (come scrive Giuseppe, Ant. 18,64: «Pilato lo
condannò alla croce su denuncia dei primi tra noi»).
Amy-Jill Levine (Vanderbilt University, USA)
1. (a) The labels often serve more political than heuristic purposes.
Those who don’t like a particular scholar’s work consign that work to an
earlier period. The better focus is not by labels, but approaches.
(b) To a great extent, the so-called “criteria of authenticity” have failed
both to promote consensus and to withstand critical-historical challenges.
(c) New perspectives include the increasing use of the Gospel of John
and increasing use of rabbinic, including late rabbinic materials.
(d) Potential problems include the extent to which religious
confessionalism impacts the field, the dismissal or relegation to one approach
of many of equal value of historical work in favor of a Jesus constructed from
one’s subject position or social location, the favoring of sociological models
over the evidence provided by texts and archaeology, and the inattention of
many scholars to the history of the discipline, such that there is much
reinventing of the proverbial wheel. Matters that need to be better addressed
include the use made of vaguely defined sociological categories. For
example, today it is almost impossible to hear a popular talk (and a number of
academic ones) that does not mention Jesus’ mission to “the marginal and the
outcast.” Precision is needed: marginal to what? Cast out by whom?
Common also (although in U.S. scholarship, with the shift from the Bush
administration to the Obama administration, this tendency seems to be
waning) is the analogy between the Pax Romana and the Pax Americana,
with Jesus standing against “empire.” The study needs nuance (for example,
attention to Rome’s varying roles and presence in Galilee and Judea; in larger
vs. smaller towns; the naturalization of the imperial context; colonial
mimicry; focus on immediate [familial, village] vs. imperial concerns).
(e) Given the inevitable intermingling of scholarly questions and
cultural contexts, we may see a shift in historical Jesus studies from the
political focus to the economic one.
(f) Finally, today there remains debate over whether Jesus was
apocalyptically/eschatologically oriented, whether the texts that give rise
to this view are (merely) metaphor, and whether these texts are products
not of Jesus, but of his early, disappointed, and rejected followers. Instead
of looking at an either/or construct, perhaps we might see an interlacing
of the images: one can be both ethical and eschatological, metaphoric and
literal, apocalyptic and utilitarian. Jesus’ emphases may have changed
over time as well.
2. (a) Present views that distinguish an anti-Temple, “Little Tradition,”

bucolic, charismatic, non-halakhicly-observant, Hellenized/syncretistic
Galilee from the Temple-oriented, “Great Tradition,” urban, elitist, purity-
obsessed, Judea are often driven less by data than by projection of models.
While all historical work requires templates, those templates – and the
results of their application – require interrogation into their harmony with
personal ideological commitments. Any model that results in separating

Jesus from anything marked as particularistically [stereotypically] Jewish,
such as halahkic interest and concern for the people Israel, should be
suspect. The Galilean Jesus in some constructs threatens to emerge more as
a liberal Protestant, whose “Jewishness” is a connection to the liberating
word of the prophets and a summation of Torah as love of G-d and
neighbor. To some extent, this Galilean Jesus also stems from the
preference for sociological models over archaeological investigation (e.g.,
research revealing little Hellenism and much Jewish traditionalism, from
stone vessels to ritual baths to lack of pig bones) of lower Galilee.
(b) Apocalyptic eschatology still remains a litmus of Judaism, which is
unfortunate, both because not all Jews shared apocalyptic or eschatological
views and because apocalyptic/eschatological view are not mutually
inconsistent with ethical concerns and long-range plans.
(c) There are likely as many ‛streams’ of Jewish practice and belief as
there are villages, if not people within those villages. I do not find helpful the
attempt to locate Jesus within known groups. Adding to the difficulty of
classifying Jesus within and among these groups are the lack of clarity of
what the groups believed and practiced, diversity of views and practices
within groups, changes in group views over time and in different regions, etc.
(d) The social-science-based argument that Ioudaios should be
translated “Judean” (with a geographic and cultural emphasis) as opposed
to “Jew” (which would have “religious” connotations along with
geographical and cultural ones) complicates the description of Jesus’
identity, given that he is “Galilean”; some of the literature that seeks to
distinguish Galilean and Judean identity exacerbates the problem.
3. (a) I do not find the question in any of its permutations particularly
helpful.
(b) First, what Jesus “personally” reworked and what developed within
his group either contemporaneous with him or after his death and was then
attributed to him cannot be definitively determined.
(c) Second, since we have limited access to the cultural repertoire
influencing Jesus, we are hampered in determining what is original to him
vs. what was present in his environment but not recorded in the literature.
Absence of evidence is not the same thing as evidence of absence. Thus the
question of “the most original elements” may not be helpful; better would
be to inquire into distinctive elements.
(d) Nor is it necessarily helpful to approach Jesus as an individual
“thinker,” which connotes a focus on philosophical matters and which
focuses on thought as opposed to action. Since we do not have clear access
either to what Jesus said and did (as opposed to what was attributed to him),
it may be better to ask about the impact he had on others.
(e) Distinctive elements would include: teaching regarding the divine
vision for the world (“Kingdom” language and a plastic eschatology); use
of parables, hyperbole, and socially offensive language; fictive kinship
structures inclusive of women and likely promoting celibacy; personal

charisma and claims to authority; ad hoc halakhic engagement consistent
with other forms of Jewish debate; familiarity with Jewish Scripture;
exorcism and healing; visionary experience; and identification with the
divine (whether as, e.g., messiah [variously defined], prophet, child). This
latest point led to early high Christological views among his followers.
William Loader (Murdoch University, Australia)
1. The delineation of phases in historical Jesus research has always been

problematic, since it oversimplifies trends, ignores exceptions, and often
focuses on regional scholarship, such as that of northern Europe and its
scholarly influence. The globalization of scholarship renders such analysis
questionable. The current diversity is likely to continue, both inspired and
hampered by the desire to find a Jesus compatible with one’s own ideology,
conservative or progressive. Independent research will become stronger. I
suspect that increasing dissatisfaction among many about theologies which
reduce Jesus’ significance to the import of his death and resurrection, as
though what came before had little relevance and was not “gospel”, will
result in even more interest in the historical Jesus.
There appears to me to have been a significant shift away from the
confidence which deemed Galilee heavily Hellenized and Jesus like a Cynic
sage, allegedly reflected in the first layers of Q and the second century
Thomas, typical of much of the Jesus Seminar findings. Usually stripped of
the strangeness of Jewish future eschatology, its figure of Jesus was
eminently “preachable”. Among many of its scholars one now detects a
shift back towards giving greater recognition to Jesus’ Jewishness. This is
not least the result of archaeological finds which suggest lower Galilee
despite Hellenistic influence was fairly conservatively Jewish with an
abundance of stone jars, reflecting purity concerns, and absence of pig
bones. Debate continues about the level of poverty and exploitation in that
context, which would have been enough to make “good news for the poor”
meaningful, but it seems not to have been uniform destitution.
The recovery of Jesus’ Jewishness goes along with an increasing
willingness among former deniers to acknowledge, that Jewish future
eschatology did play a role in Jesus’ belief system, along with belief in
demonology and the cosmology of his time. While there are still likely to be
some who argue that, between John the Baptist and the earliest Christians
of NT records, Jesus was the odd one out, rejecting futurist eschatology,
and who even hail it as a theological virtue, this position will, I think, lose
ground, the more Jesus’ Jewishness comes to the fore. The socio-economic
dimension, and, not least, the recent emphasis on the impact of imperial
power, will probably enhance the sense that Jesus’ concerns were closely
related to national hopes, above all, for his people. The strangeness of the
exorcist and faith healer also belongs within the framework of such hope,
not only as fulfilling prophecy, but also as addressing indirectly what were
drivers of the poverty he saw among his people.
Beyond that, I would expect a growing realization that, however
optimistically one assesses the sources, they offer anecdotes and logia
deriving from at most the last two to three years of Jesus’ life and
selectively transmitted, so that historical reconstruction cannot short-cut its
own vulnerability and be credible.
2. Both the family names and the location in lower Galilee suggest a
conservative Judaean family. Jesus’ initial reluctance to respond to the
Syro-Phoenician woman and probably the Gentile centurion may reflect
such conservatism. He seems certain to have shared John the Baptist’s
Judaism, as did the earliest believers who continued his baptism, albeit
supplemented with claims of a degree of fulfillment, probably matching
Jesus’ own take on eschatology. He apparently shared John’s strict
application of incest laws to Antipas for marrying his stepbrother’s wife.
His views on divorce reflect a comparable strictness, perhaps even
influenced by Antipas’ divorces – one might speculate. Like Paul, Jesus, or
at least early use of scripture supporting his stance, assumes sexual
intercourse establishes permanence. Similarly his eschatology envisages no
place for sexual relations and he saw himself called already not to marry
when at 30 most did, but like Paul affirms the option for others. The closest
parallels to such eschatology are to be found in Pseudo-Philo and Jubilees,
which appears to envisage the age to come as one where all are children and
may have linked this to the notion of a return to Eden, which it understood
as a most holy temple where sexual relations had no place. Luke’s
adaptation of the saying about not marrying may reflect 1 Enoch 15:6
which sees sex warranted only for procreation, but Mark and probably Jesus
do not assume such limits (12:25; 10:2-9). The notion of the eschaton as
sanctum differs from the sectarian and most other writings at Qumran,
which saw the ideal future as matching the present, but functioning as it
should – with (extended) holy places (including even the whole city) and
time (even the Sabbath) as sanctum and so out of bounds for sex, but
affirming sex in the right places and times, much as in the present. This
places Jesus or early Jesus tradition in a Judaism which so emphasizes the
eschatological sanctum (and eternal Sabbath in its terms) that no other
space or time remains for sex.
These values co-exist with an approach to disputes over Torah
conformity which emphasizes response to human need over fear of impurity
or bad moral company and Sabbath observance. Expanded in Matthew to
become halakhic argument, Jesus’ consistently clever and bipartite
responses in anecdotes function, much like his parables, are provocative
and informed by prophetic perspectives. The conflict with contemporaries,
sometimes called scribes or Pharisees, is not over whether to adhere to
Torah, but over how to do so. That the issues arise almost always only
incidentally suggests that Jesus did not present primarily as Law teacher.
Conflicts in the early church make best sense on the basis that Jesus never
called Torah into question, but approached it with a typically prophetic and
sapiential perspective of seeing justice and mercy at its core, matching his
espousal of the most generous prophetic eschatological visions, which were
strongly inclusive.
3. Of the material available to us in the Jesus tradition very little if any

presents us with sustained thought or argument, in comparison, for instance,
to philosophical writings of the day or even Paul. Even to speak of his
being “deeply engaged in the religious debate of his age”, somewhat
stretches the evidence. We have brief anecdotes about conflict with largely
one-liner replies. Leaving aside the longer discourses in the fourth gospel,
best understood as later elaborations to promote christological claims, the
next most extensive units are parables and catenae of brief sayings,
probably secondarily assembled. Early tradition does not present Jesus as
philosopher, nor as Torah teacher.
His impact appears to derive less from reflective argument than from
action and attitudes, behind which we must reconstruct fundamental values.
Both the one-liner quips of his anecdotes and his parables reflect a brilliance
and sharpness of thought in what they do as performative utterance, using day
to day experience as the vehicle for theology. They make sense in the context
of his engagement of prophetic hope for Israel, especially for its people as in
need (“the poor”), and of his apparent belief that his ability to heal and
exorcise and his inclusive approach towards the marginalized and self-
marginalizing sinners was already a partial realization of that hope in the
present. The radical espousal of such hope for change was a response both to
need and to the forces of oppression, political, but especially religious. In this
he called into question the power of family and symbolized this in calling
some to abandon family systems and wealth.
He made creative use of the prophetic image of the eschatological feast,
in contrast to some contemporaries, depicting it as an open invitation. That
openness also found expression in his commensality even with the least and
those seen as the worst of his time. The underlying assumption appears to
have been that such inclusion works transformatively, in contrast to
demanding more directly that people first change to qualify for admission
and acceptance. He answered his critics consistently with a theology which
depicted God more on the model of caring parent than demanding judge.
This theology had deep roots in Jewish scriptural tradition: God’s constant
willingness to return to challenge his people to renewal. Jesus’ drive for
change, inspired by the hope of divine intervention, which he saw
beginning to happen in his own ministry, belongs within the range of
movements of hope of his time – but at the non-violent end. The values he
espoused, both in conflict and in contexts where he appears as prophetic
sage, match those of his eschatological vision. They reflect a creative

combination of prophetic hopes and their realization in the present, which
informed interpretation of divine law and action to bring change. Of
massive impact was his determination to bring this engaged hope to the seat
of power in Jerusalem and his resultant execution, which then challenged
theology to make sense of it or admit to defeat and hopelessness.
Scot McKnight (North Park University, USA)
1. In my academic career, which is now just about three decades old,

there were two awe-inspiring intellectual movements that seemed to shape
all discussions and reshape all answers. Those two movements are now
called The New Perspective of Paul, fashioned originally by E.P. Sanders,
and the Third Quest for the Historical Jesus, framed so it seems to me by
the influences of Joachim Jeremias, Geza Vermes, B.F. Meyer, James
Charlesworth, and E.P. Sanders. The Third Quest, and labeling a movement
like this is more for convenience than precise descriptive accuracy,
flourished in the 1980s and 1990s, but has spent itself as a leading shaper of
the discussions. N.T. Wright’s Jesus and the Victory of God more or less
was the last major creative proposal, though some would consider J.D.G.
Dunn’s Jesus Remembered (2003) to be a methodological proposal.
However, that book did not make a new proposal for what Jesus was like.
The historical Jesus movement has done what it could do, hasn’t done what
it thought it might be able to do, and is now little more than a background
actor on the academic stage.
The essence of the movement was to get behind the Gospels and the
Church’s creedal faith. It worked hard at devising a method that would be
objective, scientific and verifiable. On the basis of such a method, a number
of scholars – Dom Crossan, B.D. Chilton, D.C. Allison, Jr., J.P. Meier, M.
Borg – tossed onto the working table their own proposals. The method has
been proven to be incomplete, the proposals too constrained by other
questions, not the least of which is the faith and disposition of the
individual scholar, and the conclusions hardly a consensus. We made
progress in methodological discussion and the rooting of Jesus in his Jewish
world has opened up plenty of vistas for understanding the canonical Jesus
in his historical context, but overall the method didn’t get us where we
wanted to go.
It is impossible to find a consensus-Jesus because the scholars are too
diverse, the dispositions of the scholars too influential, and the methods too
incomplete. While it can be said that one can’t find an uninterpreted Jesus,
and this is in essence what J.D.G. Dunn has pushed hard, it is not hard to
find a “re-interpreted” Jesus on the part of individual scholars. Thus, Cross
and Borg and Wright and Meier each has his own Jesus, and that Jesus
shapes that person’s beliefs and faith and even worship. But the Church’s
Jesus, enshrined in the Four Gospels and then later codified theologically in
the ecumenical creeds, is the Jesus that the Church will believe.
2. To begin with, we are compelled to honor the scholars who have

labored on texts to make them available for readers, and one thinks here of
the Dead Sea Scrolls and their translators (like Geza Vermes), the rabbinic
documents (like Jacob Neusner), the targums (too many scholars to name),
the pseudepigraphical writings (like James Charlesworth), and the later
early church writings (like Bart Ehrman and Michael Holmes). These
scholars and the endeavors to make texts available transformed Jesus
studies and gave to us a much more complete profile of what Judaism at the
time of Jesus was like.
To discern Jesus’ location in Judaism, we can infer from what Jesus says
and what Jesus does, and we can infer from what we know about Judaism
to what we find in Jesus, and we can infer from those with whom Jesus was
most in conflict, and these inferences can give us a rough estimate of the
Judaism of Jesus’ world.
I’d categorize it like this: Jesus’ Judaism was Torah-centric with a
heavy emphasis on the Nevi’im, or Prophetic tradition. He doesn’t appeal to
other teachers as was the case with later rabbinic style; he appeals to Torah
and to the Prophets. He was a devoted “son of the Torah.” Furthermore, he
had an eschatologically-shaped vision of what God was doing and was
about to do. While he surely captured it all in the word “kingdom,” that
term brought together fundamental traits of Israel’s scriptures, not the least
of which would be the promises to David, the vision of God as king in the
Psalms, and the hope for restoration one finds in passages like Isaiah 40-66.
Tension with the Torah-observant, especially as it was shaped by
halakhic rulings, seems obvious to me in the traditions about Jesus. Hence,
while I would say Jesus was Torah-shaped and – observant, he
fundamentally disagreed with what Torah-observance looked like. In
particular, we find Jesus reducing Torah instead of expanding halakah, and
his reduction is now found in the Golden Rule (Matthew 7:12) and the Two
Great Commandments (Mark 12:28-34). That same perspective on how to
read Torah and measure Torah observance, that is, through the law of love
of God and love of others, emerges in the parable of the Good Samaritan,
where the priest and levite are skewered for following the mitzvoth but
failing to love the one in need (Luke 10:25-37). Having said this, Jesus’
form of Judaism was more at the Pharisee end than the Zealot end; it was
not like that of the Essenes and he repudiated the powers that be in the
Herodian and Sadduccee camps. He was for purging the place and starting
over with radical commitment to God’s vision for the kingdom.
Jesus was a Torah-observant (via the love commandments) and
Prophets-shaped Galilean Jew who believed God wanted to reshape the
entirety of Israel’s life. The Gospels rightly then connect Jesus to the word
“Messiah,” for there was no better word for the one who thought he was
God’s agent for eschatological restoration. The record we now have of
Jesus’ interaction with the Baptist, found in such passages (and their
parallels) as Mark 1, Matthew 11, Mark 9, Luke 7, and John 1 indicate to
me that Jesus and John both saw themselves as “scripture prophets” whose
role was sketched in the pages of Israel’s scriptures.
3. The word “original” gets us in trouble every time but the word
“distinctive” or the term “identity-shaping” will get us where we want to
go. One word gets us there: kingdom. Yes, this term emerges throughout
Israel’s history and is found throughout Israel’s scriptures in one way or
another. The essential idea of government by God, and we could begin with
Abraham’s call and move into the period of the Judges or into the Samuel-
Saul-David narratives, not to miss also the visions of Isaiah and Ezekiel,
shaped as all of this was by the vision of God in Israel’s worship book, the
Psalms, is at work when Jesus says “kingdom of God.”
Jesus’ distinctive emphasis though is that the long-awaited kingdom,
and one could dig here into specific ideas and hopes like the restoration of
twelve tribes, the purging of Mount Zion, the elimination of oppressing
enemies, and the moral conversion of all Israel, has now dawned. I’m of the
view that Jesus meant “has drawn near” more than “has already arrived
[and that’s all there is to it].” But what matters most is that Jesus thinks the
long-awaited promises were now coming to pass and he was the Agent of
God to make that happen.
Everything about Jesus flows from this fundamental platform. While a
previous generation fixed on his use of Abba for God, which is a distinctive
(but not unique or original) belief for Jesus, and found in Jesus a profound
religious genius, that term does not have the gravitas in Jesus’ teachings
and mission and vision that kingdom has.
Accordingly, since Jesus believed the kingdom was dawning, he called
to a radical vision of discipleship, and that discipleship is focused both on
following Jesus himself, which takes a profound sense of mission and
vocation, and taking up his vision of the kingdom with radical zeal.
Mauro Pesce (University of Bologna, Italy)
1. The historical division of research on Jesus in Old, New and Third

Quest has successfully asserted itself, but it is, perhaps, in need of
integration, since it is firstly limited, for the Old and New Quest, to German
theological faculties, and then, for the New Quest, above all to the English-
speaking world. Many important research contributions have been made in
the nineteenth century (from J.Salvador to A.Loisy), in the twentieth
century (modernism; M. Goguel, for example) and in twenty-first century,
that do not fit in with this threefold division. The history of exegesis has
often followed very diverse directions (M. Pesce, Il rinnovamento biblico,
in M.Guasco, E.Guerriero, F.Traniello (eds.), Storia della Chiesa. XXIII e
XXIV, Roma 1991-1994, 575-610; 167-216). In addition, Jewish research
on the historical Jesus over past centuries do not find a place within the said
scheme (to avoid a long bibliography, I merely cite, for example, S.
Heschel, Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus, Chicago, 1998; The Aryan
Jesus. Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany, Princeton,
2008; D. Jaffé, Jésus sous la plume des historiens juifs du XXe siècle, Paris,
2009). The reaction of churches to historical research on Jesus continues to
influence and condition both historians and exegetes, and not always with a
negative effect, as research on Jesus can have a broad social impact only if
it takes account also of this aspect. The various linguistic, disciplinary and
national perspectives, along with the immensely influential ecclesiastical
one, and the Jewish research should be taken into consideration by histories
of research on Jesus (something that is not the case in recent publications,
whether in extensive or short books).
With reference to the question “Do you think that this phase is now
over?”, I think, therefore, that the answer could be that serious and rigorous
historical research (and the modern age has seen many of them) can never
be “over”. Even the so-called Third Quest is very far from over (personally,
I am unconvinced by the neo-apologetic and neo-conservative line of
scholars such as J.Dunn, R.Bauckham, L.Hurtado and others, although
undoubtedly serious and interesting), while socio-anthropological
researches continue to provide a fresh approach even after the older
generation of the so-called “Context Group”. We must, therefore, maintain
contact with all of the previous history of research. The exegesis of
previous generations remains indispensable. Still today, the old problems
and solutions require our attention. The danger today is that of losing
contact with a long tradition of studies of extraordinary value. It is our task
to educate the younger generations to study the classics of the exegesis and
history of early Christianity from the sixteenth century to the present.
As to the question: “What are the most interesting and promising future
perspectives in the field? What are the specific problems that you think
more than others deserve or require further analysis?”, my answer is that
research should concentrate on Jesus’ life practice, without which the
conceptions of Jesus cannot be adequately understood. Jesus was not a
thinker, but a religious leader immersed in the life of people (I refer to our
book A.Destro – M.Pesce, L’Uomo Gesù, Milano 2008). It is also essential
to focus attention on anthropological and sociological aspects (I would like
to mention only H.Moxnes, Putting Jesus in His Place, Louisville, 2003;
W.Stegemann, Jesus und seine Zeit, Stuttgart, 2010). In second place, the
preoccupation with demonstrating a continuity between Jesus and
subsequent Christian theology or christology must abandoned: historical
research should also take account of the parameter of discontinuity. Many
representations of the historical Jesus are still conditioned by the wish to

prove the legitimacy of the orthodox theological and dogmatic
interpretation of him. The research that after Käsemann’s 1953 article has
attempted to seek out the pre-easter origins of Christology is conditioned by
a method that is hardly acceptable in historical terms (cfr. M.Sachot,
L’invention du Christ, Paris, 1999). The plurality of Christianities imposes
a different historical vision (cfr. K.King, The Secret Revelation of John,
Cambridge, 2006).
2. Bearing in mind the plurality of Judaisms, one of the tasks of research

is undoubtedly that of relating Jesus to those particular forms of Judaism in
which he was formed. Above all, however, it is important to understand that
a great religious personality such as Jesus, cannot have failed to reorganize in
a personal and original way the divers elements originating from different
religious, social and political environments of the Jews of his time and land.
He came into contact with some environments more than others, but he then
created something that was personal, a type of religiosity that it would be a
mistake to trace back to any single environment, adopting the partial criterion
of continuity with the past. Even towards his teacher, John the Baptizer, he
shows not only dependence, but also detachment. The figure of Jesus cannot
be simply identified with any one form of Judaism of his time. However,
greater space should be given to so-called Judeo-Christian sources, too often
neglected by recent research. The Judeo-Christian gospels, the Ascension of
Isaiah, the more ancient levels of pseudo-Clementine literature, for example,
offer us Jewish interpretations of Jesus (and I emphasis the plural) that can be
illuminating (see the new paradigm suggested by E. Norelli, in E. Prinzivalli,
L’enigma Gesù, Roma, 2008).
In all cases, the main task of any research on Jesus today is that of
providing a critical analysis of historical sources that speak of him. The
contributions of (a) the Jesus Seminar and the Association pour l’Étude de
la Littérature Apocryphe Chrétienne with regard to sources and (b) the
theoretical reflections of methods of enquiry, impose, first of all, a close
critical evaluation of each historical element used for reconstructing the
image of Jesus.
3. Research on Jesus’ thought is indispensable and cannot be separated

from the enquiry into his life practice, also because many of the words
attributed to him decades after his death are unreliable for the purposes of
historical reconstruction. For this reason, E.P.Sanders preferred to
investigate, rather than his words, Jesus’ actions. In our book (A.Destro e
M.Pesce, L’Uomo Gesù, 2008), we attempted to go beyond this hypothesis,
indicating not so much Jesus’ actions as his life practice as a whole, as the
most certain basis of our reconstruction. The point of departure of the
investigation is an important question of method, but also of historical
interpretation: Jesus is certainly aware of the diverse tendencies of his time,
but he is also deeply involved in the real needs of the people of his time and
in the historical destiny of the Jewish people in a precise historic-social
moment, more than in the debates of theologians, intellectuals or single
religious thinkers.
The psychological and psychiatric sciences reveal the contradictoriness
of each personality, often arising from a ceaseless struggle among divergent
tendencies that the individual rarely manages to dominate. The way of
thinking and the decisions of a person are mainly determined by a complex
of contradictory elements that are difficult to reconcile, rather than by any
central thought. We must try to learn everything we can from current
researches on the history of Jewish and Hellenistic thought at the time of
Jesus. However, his personality should not be reduced either to certain
elements of Jewish thought, or to certain religious practices alone. During
our research, we have become convinced that Jesus was, at one and the
same moment, a man of both a radically vertical and radically horizontal
orientation. This double dimension should encourage us towards
substantially complex representations of his thought and life practices.
Within this perspective, we are deeply interested in the visions that
integrate the eschatology of Jesus with his mystic dimension. The Gospels
of Thomas and of John, for example, develop aspects of Jesus’ religious
experience that should not be seen as in contradiction with or mutually
exclusive to his historico-social eschatology (vedi A.Destro - M.Pesce,
“Continuity or Discontinuity Between Jesus and Groups of his Followers?
Practices of Contact with the Supernatural”, In S.Guijarro-Oporto (ed.), Los
comienzos del cristianismo, Salamanca, 2006, 53-70; P. Craffert, The Life
of a Galilean Shaman, Eugene, 2008 and the research of A. DeConick on
early Christian mysticism).
Nonetheless, recent years have been characterized by a greater attention
for the history of previous research (as testified by the proliferation of
essays of a historiographic or dialogical character, see for example:
C.S.Keener, The Historical Jesus and the Gospels, Grand Rapids, 2009;
K.Beilby – P.R.Eddy (eds.), The Historical Jesus. Five views, London
2010) and by a diversity of approaches. It is my hope that the various
approaches will respect and nourish each other reciprocally, without
claiming any primacy, something that would be very difficult to attain.
Petr Pokorný (Center for Biblical Studies in Prague, Czech Republic)
1. Only some of the provoking theses of the Third Quest survived the
end of the last millennium. Some of them (like the early dating of some
non-canonical texts, e. g. the Gospel of Peter or the Secret Gospel of Mark)
were refuted in discussion, some were (unfortunately) neglected by the
scholarly community (attempts at interpretation of Jesus’ resurrection) and
some were in fact not so radically new (social dimension of Jesus’ activity).
Nevertheless, the Third Quest evoked a continuing Jesus Research as a
particular field which concerns history, theology, religious studies, and
philosophy. This is an inconspicuous comeback of Jesus into the present
cultural scene.
The most promising future perspective of Jesus Research is the
hermeneutics of human culture. In the European Union we experience a
new search for constitutive elements of humanity, for the meaning of
religion and for the anchoring the hope. The discussion about the “real”
Jesus, about his impact in history, literature and art is the best way to find a
basis for re-discovering the roots of European and American self-
understanding, for a dialogue with other religions and for a qualified critical
analysis of Marxist heritage.
The problem deserving the most attention is the inner consistency of
Jesus’ teaching and proclamation. We have to attempt to reconstruct his
theology. I am aware of the fact that Jesus has not created any theological
system. However, he must have an idea how the various themes of his
proclamation and teaching relate to each other: Kingdom of God, Last
Judgment, love commandment, authority to speak in the name of God,
promise to the poor, warning against mammon, Israel centered mission,
global horizon etc. To reconstruct the interrelation of these themes is one of
the basic tasks of Jesus research.
2. Jesus was a Jew. He was a pious Jew, but, since he intended to reform
Israel and got a new vision about its role in universal history, he took
distance from the piety of his family and his Galilean setting (Mark 3:31-
35par.). The fact that his family considered him to be “out of mind” (exestē)
may relate to his vision of the kingdom of God and of his expectation of the
Last judgment. He belonged to the reformers of Israel like was in the
Hellenistic time the Teacher of Righteousness and in Jesus’ time the
Pharisees and John the Baptist. Originally, Jesus was John’s follower, but
after his baptism he emancipated from his teacher. He presented the
expected kingdom as a promise for the poor and as a guarantee for the
victory of divine righteousness, whereas John’s preaching was rather based
on a warning against God’s judgment.
The intention to reform Israel attracted Jesus to the Pharisees who are
the most frequent partners of his disputes. Yet, the differences in
interpretation of Law (Jesus: reduction on basic commandments; Pharisees:
hundreds of instructions adapting the main commandments in a casuistic
way to the urban civilization) revealed that the programs are not
reconcilable.
Jesus’ concept of mission is Israel-centered (centripetal), expecting the
eschatological pilgrimage of nations to Zion.
Like in the late Hellenistic stream of the “rational piety” (logikē latreia),
in Jesus’ concept of the cult, the role of the temple was relativized. He
supposed either a creation of a new ideal temple, like it is described in the

prophecy of Ezekiel, or a direct presence of God among the humans like it
is described in Rev 21. This may be the original intention of his sayings
about the destruction of the temple. However this was obviously the very
reason for his charge, since the restricted autonomy of the temple territory
(a part of Judea) was executed by the temple hierarchy, as it was common
in Roman Empire. And for Romans it was an important instrument in ruling
the dominated territory. This is why attacking the temple was so dangerous.
The Passion story, which already in its Markan version represents a
composite structure, originated in its core (the arrest of Jesus, the
interrogation before Pilate, crucifixion) and obviously also in its second
expanded version (including the Lord’s Supper) earlier than the Gospel of
Mark. To define and interpret the core of the Passion can help us to know
better Jesus’ intention.
3. First of all we have to analyze the traditions about Jesus speaking

about the kingdom of God. It is an apocalyptic phenomenon, the coming of
which Jesus expected in the near future, during his life. And yet, according
to some sayings of Jesus it somehow penetrated into his present. Paul did
know the term kingdom of God, but he tried to interpret it in sense of
righteousness and brotherly love (Rom 14:17). The frequency of the term
Kingdom of God in the Gospel of Thomas confirms its pivotal role in
Jesus’ teaching, even if “Thomas” interprets it in a spiritual way. To
analyze the function of the term kingdom of God in Jesus tradition is the
key task of Jesus research.
The most original and deepest idea of Jesus is his combination of the
promise of the kingdom of God for the poor linked with the commandment
of love (even) of enemies. The problem of social deprivation and poverty
proved to be the central problem of human history. In 20th century the
Marxist philosophy got a wide response and attempted to create a political
and economical alternative of the classical capitalist democracies. However,
it collapsed because the Marxist philosophy includes an ideology of hatred
against the other classes. In this respect the demanding project of Jesus is
not only a morally correct, but also a pragmatic invention.
This realistic concept of faith in Jesus’ teaching is closely linked with
the problem of a realistic orientation in the human world. In Jesus tradition
the intransitive use of “to believe” (pisteyō) or “to have faith” (echō pistin)
means always the faith in the sense of a confidence towards God. To run
the risk of transforming the society through a universal vision and a positive
attitude towards a dangerous neighbor is possible only in full confidence
towards God as guarantor of a good aim of history as proclaimed by Jesus
(kingdom of God).
Rainer Riesner (University of Dortmund, Germany)
1. The so-called “Third Quest” has two great merits: Against a long-
standing tradition of Christian Anti-Judaism it greatly stressed the fact that
Jesus of Nazareth could only be appropriately understood against the
backdrop of First-Century Palestinian Judaism. The interest in the
contemporary social history and the integration of archaeological findings
led to a stronger anchoring of Jesus in historical reality. These approaches
were not completely new but they were conducted with broader knowledge
and methodological refinement. We now have a much more substantiated
picture of Galilee during the time of the Second Temple. This enables us,
for example, to disclose the assertion of a half-pagan Galilee as an
ideologically motivated construction. However, the optimism of some
scholars to find in the apocryphal gospels trustworthy information about
Jesus was not a historical-critical advance. In this respect older scholars like
Joachim Jeremias rightly adhered to more rigorous criteria of authenticity.
Nevertheless, we should not disregard the foregoing phases of the quest for
Jesus. Questions were asked that are still worthy of grabbing our attention.
The “Old Quest” stressed the literary critical problems of the Synoptic
Gospels. For many scholars these problems seemed to be solved by clinging
to a rigid Two-Source-Hypothesis. Stirred by American and French exegetes,
the discussion of the last years indicates, however, that this rather simplistic
solution does not match the complexity of the Synoptic phenomenon. The
following questions are still relevant in order to establish a solid source base:
Is it really possible to speak of Q as a unified source? Should one, not rather
presuppose the existence of numerous and early informal written notices as
they were commonly used in ancient school settings? How should we
evaluate the Matthean and, above all, the broad Lukan special tradition? Is it
not rather likely that these two streams of tradition extensively overlap with
the triple and double tradition? Are those scholars right who argue anew that
we should not exclude John’s Gospel from our quest? Did eyewitnesses have
a decisive influence on the origin and development of the Jesus tradition?
How should we judge the value of eyewitness reports in the light of modern
psychology of memory? Seen in light of the Qumran discoveries might it not
be probable that Jesus not only spoke Aramaic, but Hebrew and some Greek
as well? Did Jesus consciously formulate summaries of his teaching,
occasionally introduced by the unique amen-introduction, to impress them
upon the memory of his disciples and other hearers? Can the use of
mnemotechnical devices be demonstrated? Is there evidence of some care for
verbal transmission of the words of Jesus?
Even during the time of the so-called “No Quest” Anglo-Saxon scholars
like Charles Harold Dodd contributed to the quest. To speak of a “No
Quest” seems to be a rather Germanic perception on the history of Jesus
research. During the “New Quest” certain scholars, sometimes influenced
by an Anti-Jewish bias, overemphasized the uniqueness of Jesus. Could it
be, however, that today some scholars avoid the question of the originality
of Jesus intentionally?
2. If one accepts that the Lukan special tradition, including the first two
chapters of this gospel, was handed down in conservative Jewish-Christian
circles gathering in Jerusalem and Judea around James, the Lord’s brother,
and other relatives of Jesus, then several conclusions concerning the
religious background of his extended family might be drawn. Though the
Lukan special tradition partially accords with the Dead Sea Scrolls in terms
of language and concepts, the exclusivism of the Qumran group is absent.
Those family circles behind the Lukan special tradition held fast to both the
Jerusalem temple and the Davidic messianic expectation. New prophecies
as well as the belief in the angelic world mattered to them. Poverty and
asceticism had religious value. The piety of Jesus’ extended family
resembled the kind of piety of the older Hasidim (1Macc 2:42) from whom
Essenes and Pharisees split off as rather narrowed developments in the
pluralistic world of Second Temple Judaism.
One must reckon with the possibility that Jesus was already introduced
to scripture in his childhood years at home and in the synagogue of
Nazareth and its elementary school (cf. Luke 4:16). He surely learned in his
pious family not only the colloquial Aramaic but also the holy language. It
is improbable that Jesus was less “a Hebrew from Hebrews” than the
apostle Paul was (Phil 3:5). Being on pilgrimage to Jerusalem Jesus could
hear in the temple halls the famous scribes of his time. Apparently, the
Enochic writings (cf. Jude 14) and the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs
were also cherished in his extended family. This may partly explain why
Jesus pondered more intensely on the concept of the “Son of Man” than
was usual in contemporary Palestinian Judaism. Against a Messianism in
his extended family that was sometimes national-politically colored, Jesus
had to find his own way. Due to his preaching he aroused a mass movement
in Galilee and, thus, he had to distance himself from Zelotic tendencies
existent even by his disciples. Jesus accepted the prophetic call of the
Baptist instead. John denied that all children of Abraham were
automatically saved in God’s impending judgment (Matt 3:7-10 / Luke 3:7-
9). When Jesus himself announced the dawn of the time of salvation he
could not have learned this as a pupil from John. Jesus’ conviction, that
through his work the eschatological “kingdom of God” started to become a
reality, obviously calls for another explanation.
3. Jesus saw his healings and exorcisms as a confirmation of his claim

that God was realizing his kingdom through him (Matt 12:25-28 / Luke
10:18-20). Jesus differed from the Baptist particularly with respect to his
miracle-working. It is also remarkable that Jesus accomplished his mighty
deeds normally through a short command and not through a prayer to God.
The latter procedure was used by some charismatic proto-rabbis. Although
Jesus also was innovative regarding ethical aspects like love for enemies
(Matt 5:43-44 / Luke 6:27-28), he was in agreement with Old Testament
and early Jewish ethics in many other aspects. In order to legitimize his
authoritative preaching and his sometimes offensive behavior Jesus often
appealed to the Holy Scriptures but never to another teacher (cf. Matt 23:8-
10). His contemporaries felt that he spoke with the authority of a prophet
(Mark 1:22). Certainly Jesus acted like a teacher and prophet. His claims,
however, are not adequately evaluated by retreating to these two traits.
Martin Hengel has given many arguments that Jesus’ performance can only
be understood in Messianic terms. Had Jesus not been condemned as a
Messianic pretender (Mark 14:26), his being crucified under the Roman
prefect Pontius Pilate would be historically inexplicable.
However, Jesus’ originality became visible in the way he enacted his
Messianic claim. In his public ministry before the “Galilean crisis” (cf.
Matt 11:20-24 / Luke 10:13-15) Jesus did not proclaim himself Messiah,
although he inseparably bound the realization of God’s kingdom to his
person. The so-called Messiasgeheimnis was not a post-Easter theological
construction but part of Jesus’ history. After the refusal of his call to
repentance, being announced through the disciples in all Galilee (Matt 10 /
Luke 9-10), Jesus withdrew to an inner circle for esoteric instruction (cf.
Mark 8:27-33). The selection of “the Twelve” showed that he still felt
responsible for Israel’s fate (Matt 19:28 / Luke 22:30). In spite of his
rejection Jesus hoped for the redemption of Israel. He was willing “to give
his life as a ransom for many”, that is for Israel and all men. The
authenticity of the “ransom logion” (Mark 10:45 / Matt 20:28) and the
Eucharistic words (Matt 26:26-28 / Mark 14:23-24 / Luke 22:19-20) is
confirmed by Paul (1Cor 10:33-11:1; 11:23-25). The combination of the
Danielic “Son of Man” (Dan 7:13) and the Deutero-Isaianic “Servant of the
Lord” (Isaiah 52:13-53:12) embraced by Jesus had no early Jewish
precedents, at least as far as we know. The cleansing of the temple was not
simply a critique of the Sadducean upper-class (Mark 11:15-19). By this
prophetic and Messianic sign Jesus announced the end of the temple as a
place of atonement since he would fulfill and abrogate this function of the
holy place by his death on Golgotha.
Furthermore, one should not exclude the possibility that Jesus told the
inner circle of his disciples also about his extraordinary experiences in
connection with his baptism by John (cf. Luke 10:18-20). Of primary
importance in this respect is a logion whose authenticity can be defended on
philological grounds and by the witness of Paul (1Cor 1:19,21; 2:6-7,10-
11): “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have
hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed
them to infants; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. All things
have been handed over to me by my Father; and no one knows who the Son
is except the Father; or who the Father is except the Son and anyone to
whom the Son chooses to reveal him” (Luke 10:21-22 / Matt 11:25-27). In
this logion Jesus claimed to possess a direct knowledge of and an intimate

connection with God that reached far beyond prophetic inspiration. He
regarded himself to be the only mediator of the ultimate revelation of God.
Pronouncements like this contributed to the post-Easter insight that Jesus
stands in an exclusive relation to God, a relation that transcends a mere
prophetic or Messianic awareness on his part (cf. Gal 4:4-5; Phil 2:6-11; 1Cor
8:6). Even the high Christology of John’s Gospel has one of its roots here.
Paolo Sacchi (University of Turin, Italy)
1. Some time ago I wrote that I thought it opportune to open a fourth

phase in the research on the Historical Jesus. At that time I had the
impression that the research was moving too fast, trying to reach
conclusions before properly studying all the material that could aid in
reconstructing all the aspects of the Jewish society at the time of Jesus. For
this reason I created the project, and for the lack of material means, only
partially realized it, of a Conceptual Index of Middle Judaism.
I am still convinced that the historian needs instruments that help him in
managing a too huge amount of sources written in too many different
languages. The difficulties, however, seem today even greater than before
because they also involve methodological problems. For those sciences
which cannot rely on experimental proofs, the method is everything.
Why do we refer today to the problem that has engaged so many
scholars in the last three centuries with the label of “Historical Jesus
Research”? It was not born with this name. Just to give an example, if I
investigate the figure of Caesar, I do not need to specify that the object of
my enquiry is the Historical Caesar, as opposed to the one that was
celebrated on the altars of the Roman Empire. The latter is part of the
history of the Empire, not of that of Caesar himself.
In other words, either the adjective “historical” is a redundant definition
of the object – as in expressions like “wet water” or “gaseous air” – or it
aims at opposing Jesus, the man who lived in 1st century Palestine, to
another Jesus as a subject of faith, even considered God. The second Jesus
does not chronologically overlap with the first one and must not be
confused with that. Jesus died around the year 30 of the 1st century CE:
what followed does not describe his history. This does not imply that what
happened after his death has no connection whatsoever with him. It may
well have been strongly influenced by him, but the only Jesus in history is
the one who died under Pontius Pilate.
Therefore I think that it would be very important to turn back to the
starting point and to formulate our questions on the topic as Reimarus did in
the 18th century. The question is whether or not Jesus can be considered as
the founder of the religion that took its name from him. This problem is
different from that about the “historical Jesus,” because Remairus thought
that the only real Jesus was the one that lived and died. Was there in his
doctrine something that could make sense of why his disciples almost
immediately after his death started to believe that he had been resurrected
and even that he was God?
Reimarus’ answer to this question, as is known, was negative. His main
argument was that of the existence of an opposition between the doctrine
taught by Jesus and that of his disciples. In other words, his interest as a
historian did not involve Jesus as much as the origins of Christianity, which
the disciples tried to root in his precedents but which actually could not be
historically traced back to him.
Today the edges of the problem are not so clear-cut. This vagueness in the
question that we pose to the sources obviously determines the uncertainty in
the solutions that we observe. The amount of documents that can be relevant
to the inquiry has significantly increased. On the other hand, the canonical
texts, which are still the most used by scholars, are studied as if they could
and should provide conclusive answers. This approach is perfectly legitimate
from the believer’s point of view but not from the historian’s. For the non-
believer, these texts, critically interpreted, represent the misty background on
which to set those unclear images of Jesus given by the non-canonical texts.
On the other side, the believers insist that the canonical gospels are
theological texts. What is the meaning of this expression? Does this imply
that their authors had each his own ideas? The obvious fact that every author
has his own cultural background (non-Christian in the case of the evangelists)
and, therefore, his own viewpoint on what he narrates, has become a
justification for the diffidence of the historians, especially if they are
believers, towards the possibility of using them as reliable sources. The
projection of theological formulas, like that of the infallibility of the scripture,
on the history are perhaps preventing us from discussion on texts that actually
sometimes do not agree with each other, or are hardly reconcilable with those
formulae or even with the creed or contemporary catechisms.
2-3. In spite of the fact that the amount of available data has
significantly grown in the last century, we are still unable to delineate a
clear map of the various types of Palestinian Judaisms at the time of Jesus.
We could not effectively manage all the Qumranic material: we do not
know what was the relationship between Qumran and the rest of Essenism.
We cannot be sure of how influential Enochic Judaism, only recently better
defined, actually was. The relationship between Palestinian Judaism, to
which Jesus certainly belonged, and the Diaspora needs to be clarified. In
this case, it is the same nature of the materials that represents an obstacle or,
perhaps, it is the limitedness of our abilities. Anyway, I do not know of any
convincing attempt to solve these problems.
We could admit that the Pharisees dominated in the cities. The situation
of the countryside, however, is not documented. Some Pharisaic
preoccupations, like that about the payment of the tithes, or the disparaging
epithet ‛am ha’arets that they attributed to the country folk, seem to imply
that the people of the cities did not have a clear knowledge of the situation
outside of it. Probably the same contemporary classification of groups is
more suited to define ideologies than actual social entities. Groups existed
but they probably did not necessarily derive their identity from specific
ideological systems. Some important element puts Jesus close to the
Essene. Among these, very relevant is the rejection of divorce, which Jesus
affirmed not as an innovation of his own. Mark’s text is very clear on this
matter. Those who interrogate Jesus are already aware of the existence of
this idea, they are just interested to know what was Jesus’ position is in that
regard. Jesus confirms his adherence to that proposal. The scarce interest
that Jesus shows in his preaching for problems related to purity and the law
points towards some continuity with Enochism. Certainly, both the doctrine
and the practices taught by him were different from those of the Pharisees.
This difference is not perceived only by the contemporary reader of the
Gospels but was evident also to the actors of the events. Jesus did not come
from a Pharisaic setting, he was a peripheral Jew.
Jesus’ theoretical thought has few innovative features in respect to the
most widespread ideas at the time: he believes in the creation, in the
resurrection, in the immortality of the soul, in the existence of Satan, in the
last Judgment, in the obstacle of sin for salvation. A particular problem is
the relation he posed between himself and the Son of Man, both of Daniel
and of the Book of Parables. One of his original contributions to the
ideological debate of his contemporaries is his belief that everything
belongs to God. From this idea derives his prohibition of any kind of oath,
because whatever the object of swearing, it would always be on God. This
is also the deep-rooted reason why he rejected the distinction between pure
and impure animals.
His attitude towards life is substantially optimistic because he is
convinced that the kingdom of God is near and that it will be established
regardless of any human participation to it (Mc 4:26-33). When he becomes
conscious of the suffering that is coming upon him for the realization of the
kingdom, his spirituality becomes tragic but still optimistic, even at
Gethsemene: he believed that he was doing his father’s will for the
salvation of many.
Jesus’ ethical teaching is characterized by its radicalism. It is radical as
in Qumran Essenism but, opposite to that, with no sought support in the
Law. Every act is just a projection of a spiritual attitude: fornication and
homicide exist in the most intimate parts of the soul before they are realized
and even when they are not realized. It is the scripture as a whole that must be
followed, not the Law as a normative: “Do for others what you want them to
do for you: this is the Law and the Prophets” (Mt 7:12). Mark narrates the
entire Jesus’ story without ever explicitly mentioning the Law. I am not sure
whether on this point Jesus was an innovator, but he definitely was radical
and consistent on it. It was probably the reason why his claims were not
understood by the Pharisees and why also Paul had many of his troubles.
Going back to Reimarus and to his way of dealing with the problem, he
was right in singling out the existence of a fracture between Jesus’ death
and the origins of Christianity. He deemed it absolutely impossible that a
man could rise from the dead, while the emergence of Christianity could be
explained, since its very beginning, only assuming that the disciples and the
apostles actually believed that Jesus had been resurrected. This fracture was
explained by comparing Jesus’ doctrine with that of his followers. In the
story reconstructed by Reimarus on the basis of the documents, however, he
seems to miss a fact which, I think, has always been ignored since then. At
some point in his life, Jesus’ prediction starts to include an element that the
evangelists may have over-emphasized or somehow altered but which they
certainly did not entirely invent. Either because of the delay in the coming
of the kingdom or because of a new insight, he started to think that the path
of the coming reign had to pass through his own sacrifice. This was a
theological idea but, differently from that about holiness or purity, it could
not be simply taught: it had to be realized. Therefore, the last part of Jesus’
life cannot be studied only with regard to his teaching and doctrine: in his
last days Jesus did not only teach something, he did something. He
stipulated the covenant (without “new”, as in Mark and Matthew) with
God, a covenant in his own blood. It is not relevant for history whether he
actually established that pact or he just believed he did, the difference
between the two being simply a matter of faith. It was then this conviction,
reinforced in the disciples by the belief in the resurrection – we do not
know how the latter come into being, but it did – that pushed them to go
and preach the crucified and resurrected Christ all over the world even at
the cost of their lives.
To conclude: knowing Jesus is reconstructing his dialogues with his
disciples and the other people. The result of this enquiry will increase in
quality with our knowledge of Jesus’ time and setting.
James Strange (University of South Florida, USA)
1. There are several avenues that are opening up the text to new
perspectives beyond the “Third Quest.” The first is the now widespread
understanding that Scripture was a form of oral performance as well as
literature. Our colleagues in Oral Performance of Literature in Departments
of Communication (once called “Speech”) gained rapid insight into the
narrator as story teller first in the Hebrew Bible, but then in the New
Testament. If we study the story teller in Hebrew, Greek, and Roman
culture, we cannot help but notice that story-telling is often performed in
special structures such as the odeon or theater, that is, Romans liked their
entertainment in built environments, including the courtyards and dining

rooms of the elites. It should be no surprise that recitation of NT stories
surely repeated some of these cultural or similar norms at least in ancient
Judaea. This needs further study. One must mention Werner Kelber at Rice
University as a pioneer in some ways, though he was too long ignored.
A second avenue leading us to greater insight is archaeology understood
as retrieval and interpretation of artifactual patterns in order to construct
settings for human life. Now archaeologists are telling NT textual
specialists that the insights of archaeology not only allow one to construct
the built environment, but also human activities, social structures, and
values, often using the insights of cultural anthropology and sociology. In
other words, archaeology is much more than pottery. David Fiensy, for
example, has given a new impetus to using archaeological data in a recent
study (2007) on Jesus, as have Jonathan Reed and even J.D. Crossan. It is
difficult to wrench the interpreter away from lists of spectacular finds. Even
so the new synagogue at Magdala will give important insights into the
setting for Torah declamation and therefore possible settings for telling or
performing the NT stories in antiquity. Other avenues for research are
coins. Recent studies in coins reveal that political conflict is not always
reflected in coinage in the Early Roman period in Galilee. Many more such
studies have been undertaken (for example at Ephesus and Corinth) and
need to be developed.
2. Recent studies in “Jewishness” have been many-faceted, but it is

helpful to keep in mind that “religion” is mainly a modern idea. Shaye
Cohen’s definition of Jewishness as “behaving like a Jew” (rather than like
some other ethnos) is helpful, as it does not invoke beliefs or ideals as much
as behavior. Behavior itself is a kind of communication, however, so we
have not left “beliefs” entirely behind, especially in view of the NT reliance
on various vocabulary items formed on the root ΠΙΣΤ. Be that as it may,
Jesus surely “behaved like a [Palestinian] Jew,” which in the canonical
gospels seems to mean that he preached, taught, and healed in synagogues,
that he interacted with the Jewish population as a confrere, that he spoke
Aramaic, that he understood Torah requirements for disease and healing,
that he entered into the debate about purity, healing on the Sabbath, and so
on. This was apparently different from acting like an Iturean or acting like
an Idumean. On the other hand he was not as strict as some Jews, as he is
remembered as shared healing with the Syro-Phoenician woman, accepting
support from women, and speaking with Hellenes. We are far from
demonstrating ethnicity in any narrow sense from texts or archaeology, but
we do know that it is probable that we are digging in a Jewish context from
burial customs, chalk stone vessels, and ritual baths (even if some of them
are simply baths), and that goes for Sepphoris, Tiberias, Nazareth, and
many other localities into which the Jesus story is placed. This can stand
much more development, but it is very promising.
3. The more I read the canonical gospels the more I understand that they
present a Jesus with both a tender and a testy side (the latter if he thought
his audience was attempting to escape the demands of God). Our penchant
is to domesticate him and his teachings, and I think that penchant has
infected scholarship for some time. It is found in studies that remove the
apocalyptic element or eschatology or the miraculous or even thorny
personality traits. Perhaps those who thought Jesus was a Cynic philosopher
were trying to do justice to this irascible side of Jesus, as the Cynics seem
to be the same on occasion.
The same objective may lay behind identifying Jesus as an Essene. I
understand the Jesus of the canonical gospels is remembered as setting a kind
of tone in his teaching and preaching that is far less tolerant of those who
evade God’s commandments, such as the Rich Young Ruler, even though
others may have seen the latter as an exemplar of obedience. Some scholars,
like Albert Schweitzer, therefore interpret Jesus as advocating an ethic that
worked for a first century CE apocalyptic population, but hardly for any
other. I think Jesus is an original thinker in a kind of charismatic sense, not
like the philosophers. He saw through identifying current custom as the way
of God and often understood it to be disobedience. On the other hand I think
his followers would have been in a quandary, if they had lived to a ripe old
age, for leaving all (including family) and following him does not propagate
the human race. Rather, like those Essenes whom Josephus saw as
repudiating asceticism so that the human race could perdure, some
compromise was inevitable. I think it is correct to see a radical core of
disciples, a wider group less committed, and an even broader group who
accepted what he had to say, but would not move into refusing marriage and
avoiding wealth. His radicalism extended to the temple in Jerusalem, and he
appears to have been as adamant about the sacredness of God’s Temple as he
was about the commandments to love God and neighbor. I therefore do not
think that Jesus advanced new ideas so much as he saw deeply into Israel’s
sacred stories and practices and claimed them for the here and now.
That was an offense for some and still is for others.
Joan Taylor (Waikato University, New Zealand/King’s College London,

United Kingdom)
1. Whatever ‛quests’ are distinguished in terms of scholarly fashions,

the study of the historical Jesus is an exciting field and will never be over,
since Jesus is quite simply the most influential person that has ever lived.
Popular trends, theological/intellectual currents and academic theory
interact and pull the study from one polarity to another. Contemporary
perspectives are complicated by literary evidence that presents quite
different pictures of Jesus. While most researchers favor the synoptic
presentations (though interpretations can be diverse), scholars vary in how

much Johannine and extra-canonical material they count as historically
valid, which can change the picture considerably. There will inevitably be
new perspectives, using new critical methodologies, in future generations.
Scholars of decades to come will see us as both insightful and blinkered as
we explore different themes, whether context, empire, class, gender, or
regionality. Holding on to the whole picture is always the biggest challenge.
And we need to be modest in our expectations, and avoid the vanity of
assuming we know very much; we know in part and can only ever see in
part, from our distance in time.
The specific problem with all the phases of research into Jesus is the
issue of how much we read into our evidence, to suit the particular
perspectives of our own society, making Jesus into a comfortable exponent
of our beliefs and ethics. There has been a great deal of reflection among
historians about how we can actually represent the past, or any historical
figures, given our particular biases and locations. All too often Jesus
becomes a tool in pushing for a ‛correct theology’ now, whether this is
conservative or liberal.
I note this in the tendency to remove eschatological thinking from
Jesus.1 The scholars that have critiqued this presentation of a de-
eschatologized Jesus I think are right.2 Albert Schweitzer was right: Jesus,
the apocalyptic prophet, will always be to our time a stranger and an
enigma.3 However, I do not share Schweitzer’s discomfort with this. I think
an unsettling Jesus is what we should expect if we are doing our historical
work properly. If anything, there could be more emphasis on the
apocalyptic (mystically revelatory) Jesus, who developed John the Baptist’s
particular fusion of ethics and eschatology. The study of the historical Jesus
can be relevant to now, without ‛now’ obscuring the reality of the past, if
we accept that we do not need to sit comfortably with everything Jesus
believed. The questions are more interesting if we think about how Jesus
used the eschatology of his era in order to configure the Kingdom of God as
an inaugurated reality. What was his ultimate aim? There is surely a ‛crisis’
theology in the teaching of Jesus, one that takes a strong stand against
unjust practices and power-plays. He bothered people in authority. He was
killed by them.
____________________
1
E.g. John D. Crossan, The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish
Peasant (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991).
2
Against the non-eschatological Jesus, see Dale Allison, Jesus of Nazareth: Millenarian
Prophet (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998) and Bart Ehrman, Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New
Millennium (New York/Oxford: OUP, 1999) who follow the lead of Albert Schweitzer, The
Quest of the Historical Jesus, with an introduction by James M. Robinson (New York:
Macmillan, 1968), translated by W. Montgomery from the first German edition, Von Reimarus
zu Wrede: Eine Geschichte der Leben-Jesu-Forschung (Tübingen, J.C.B. Mohr, 1906).
3
Schweizer, Quest, p. 399.
2. There are few scholars today that would dispute the importance of
recognizing that Jesus was a Jew, understandable in his Jewish context,
though the term ‛Jew’ (Ioudaios: Judean?) has been problematized. We
have come a long way from the era in which Judaism was equated by
Christian scholars with Pharisaism, equated with Rabbinism, equated with
‛legalism’. In that era, there was no way that Jesus could properly be
considered a ‛Jew’, no matter how much scholars explored Jesus in context.
I like to use this quote from T. W. Manson to illustrate the old idea:
The difference between the ethic of Jesus and that of Judaism is again
simply this, that with Jesus the fact that the good heart is fundamental is
accepted and carried to its logical conclusion while in Judaism the whole
apparatus of Law and Tradition is still maintained beside the moral
principle which renders it obsolete. 4
We really need to give a great vote of thanks to two scholars in

particular for changing this picture: Geza Vermes and David Flusser. In
1973 Geza Vermes argued that he had inserted ‛the Jesus of the Gospels
into the geographical and historical realities and into the charismatic
religious framework of first-century Judaism’. Here, ‛Jesus the Galilean
hasid or holy man begins to take on substance’.5 Only four years earlier the
Israeli scholar David Flusser had published in English his book, Jesus, with
its cover image of the name ‛Jesus’ – Yeshua – written in Aramaic on an
ossuary; he too wrote with a strong emphasis on the Jewishness of Jesus
and his appropriateness in his own age.6 But it was Vermes’ work that had
the major international impact, seizing the imagination of an international
audience in the year of Norman Jewison’s film version of the rock opera
Jesus Christ Superstar, when the time was ripe for a thorough re-
examination of who Jesus was. Jesus was a Jew/Judean, and a man of his
time. We see now that the separation between Judaism and Christianity was
a slow, tortuous process that happened over generations after Jesus, and
Jewish-Christians (= Christian Jews) continued to maintain that there was
no separation for many centuries.
Jesus was surely ‛charismatic’, understandable within a revelatory
tradition that can ultimately be traced back to the Hebrew prophets, which
in Second Temple Judaism is indicated by a wealth of material that has only
now been properly explored.7 Over fifty years of scholarly research on
____________________
4
T. W. Manson, The Teaching of Jesus: Studies in Form and Content, 2nd ed.
(Cambridge: CUP, 1935), pp. 307-308.
5
Geza Vermes, Jesus the Jew (London: William Collins, 1973), p. 7.
6
David Flusser, Jesus (New York: Herder and Herder, 1969), translated by Ronald Walls
from the first German edition: Jesus in Selbstzeugnissen und Bilddokumenten (Hamburg:
Rowohlt, 1968).
7
See Peter Schäfer, The Hidden and Manifest God: Some Major themes in Jewish
Mysticism (New York: SUNY, 1992); James Davila, Descenders to the Chariot: the People
Enochic literature, the Dead Sea Scrolls, inter-testamental writings, Philo of

Alexandria and Josephus (as well as archaeology) have changed our
understanding of Judaism at the time of Jesus, so that Jesus has become
more clearly situated in his religious world. Scholars working in a great
range of studies have collectively created a new picture.
3. I like the notion that Jesus was actively thinking, as an intelligent

and sensitive human being, and that one can distinguish key features of
his thought. While we can only define originality insofar as we know, it
seems striking that Jesus called for an inverted hierarchy, focusing on
service, and thus undermined usual concepts of status. We see this clearly
in regard to meals.
Studies of ancient dining practices8 indicate how people were positioned
to eat in a hierarchy from top (first) to bottom (last), reflecting status in
society. In public banquets or private wealthy households, wine and food
were offered by slave servers catering to the needs of recliners, and
sometimes (inferior) sitters. In poor households women served the food to
the men (and guests), and then ate later. To be a server (diakonos/ē) was to
be inferior. Food preparation, reclining to eat and serving was a constantly
repeating pattern of hierarchy played out every day. In Judaism, however,
there was both the idiosyncrasy of Passover inclusiveness (m.Pes. 10:1),
and other innovations: Philo notes that the men and women Therapeutae
were served, unusually, not by slaves but rather by junior members, who
acted as diakonoi (Contempl. 71-72, 75), without hitched-up tunics
(indicating slave status). But in the community of Jesus’ disciples the
servers were the leaders, not the juniors. As Jesus said:
‛If anyone wants to be first, he shall be the last of everyone, and server
of everyone’ (Mark 9:35, and see Mark 10:43-44, parr. Matt. 20:26-27;
Luke 22:26).9
In the ‛multiplication of the loaves and fishes’ stories (Mark 6:30-44;

8:1-10 and parr.) Jesus blesses the food of the Twelve envoys (apostoloi)
____________________
behind the Hekhalot Literature (Leiden: Brill, 2001) and now Christopher Rowland and
Christopher Morray-Jones, The Mystery of God: Jewish Mysticism and the New Testament
(Leiden: Brill, 2009).
8
Matthias Klinghardt, Gemeinschaftsmahl und Mahlgemeinschaft: Soziologie und
Liturgie frühchristlicher Mahlfeiern (Texte und Arbeiten zum neutestamentlichen Zeitalter
13; Tübingen: A. Francke, 1996); and, Dennis E. Smith, From Symposium to Eucharist: The
Banquet in the Early Christian World (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003); Kathleen E. Corley,
Private Women, Public Meals. Social Conflict in the Synoptic Tradition (Peabody: Mass.:
Hendrickson, 1993), and see the SBL Seminar “Meals in the Greco-Roman World” on Philip
Harland’s pages at: http://www.philipharland.com/meals/GrecoRomanMealsSeminar.htm.
9
In Luke 12:37, there is a culmination of a story about slaves who stay awake and alert
when a master returns from a wedding feast; the result is that the master hitches up his tunic
like a table-serving slave; they recline and he serves them.
and then they serve the people. Jesus asks all the people ‛to recline in
groups on the green grass’ (Mark 6:39): an image of everyone being
properly set up for a mealtime, with green grass instead of mattresses they
would usually recline on. The role of the Twelve is defined as one of
diakonia – ‛service’, like women’s service10 – and apostolēs, ‛envoy-ship’
(Acts 1:25, and see Luke 17:10).
I think that such inverted hierarchy/gender modeling among Jesus’
disciples is indicated in Acts 6:1-6. We are told that in Jerusalem the
disciples of Jesus were eating communally every day (Acts 2:46-47), but
the ‛Greek-speakers’11 complain that their ‛widows’ were not getting served
enough in ‛the service’ of food. The ‛Twelve’ – having just been
imprisoned, then busy ‛teaching and proclaiming in the Temple and around
houses’ (Acts 5:42) – state: ‛It is not good for us to leave aside the teaching
of God to serve tables’ (Acts 6:2); rather, they would devote themselves ‛to
prayer and service of the word’ and let others focus on this task: one they
apparently previously did. Greek-speaking, male diakonoi are appointed
instead, to tackle the criticism on this occasion. So, among Jesus’ first
disciples it could at times be the job of free men to serve communal food to
women, here particularly the foreign widows. There is just no way of
explaining how bizarre that was in the first century.
As Jesus said: ‛For who is greater, the one reclining (at a table, to eat) or
the one serving? Isn’t it the one reclining? But I am among you as one
serving’ (Luke 22:27).
Gerd Theissen (University of Heidelberg, Germany)
1. Wer in einem Strom schwimmt, kann diesen Strom nur schwer

übersehen. Daher sind Prognosen über die zukünftige Jesusforschung nicht
möglich. Sie wird immer abhängig sein von neuen Erkenntnissen über die
Quellen zu Jesus sowie von neuen Erkenntnissen über das Judentum und
Urchristentum. Dabei stellen sich nach wie vor dieselben Fragen wie bisher,
wobei jede Generation von Forschern dazu neigen wird, ihre Fragen als
“neu” auszugeben – auch dort, wo im Grunde alte Fragen in neuem
Gewand aufgenommen werden. Ein gemeinsamer Nenner (oder ein neues
Etikett) für eine neue Phase der Jesusforschung könnte eine
“religionswissenschaftliche Frage nach Jesus” sein, nachdem man in der
“first quest” von einer Einheit historischer und theologischer Frage
überzeugt war, nachdem in der “new quest” die theologische Frage nach
Jesus dominierte und nachdem in der “third quest” die historische Frage einen
Vorrang erhielt. Eine “religionswissenschaftliche Frage nach Jesus” könnte
____________________
10
Mark 1:31; 15:41; Luke 4:39; 7:35-50; 8:1-3; 10:38-42, etc.
11
This meaning of Hellenistai remains to me the most convincing.
unter einem neuen “Label” die alten theologischen Fragen neu aufnehmen
und sie mit historischen Fragen verbinden. Sie könnte so die Bedeutung Jesu
für nicht-christlich geprägte Menschen verständlich machen.
(a) Wie sind die Quellen zu beurteilen? Jede Veränderung in der
klassischen Zwei-Quellen-Theorie, jede Neubeurteilung der apokryphen
Jesusüberlieferung, jede Neukonzeption des Verhältnisses von
Mündlichkeit und Schriftlichkeit, aber auch jede neue Erkenntnis über
Traditions- und Gedächtnisprozesse wird Folgen für die Jesusforschung
haben. Dabei werden in zunehmendem Maße analoge
Überlieferungssituationen zum Vergleich herangezogen werden: z.B. die
Überlieferungslage bei einigen alttestamentlichen Propheten oder bei den
montanistischen Propheten und Prophetinnen. Religionswissenschaftlich-
komparatistische Verfahren werden absichern, was wir über Jesus
überhaupt wissen können.
(b) Welchen Ort hat Jesus im Judentum? Seine kontextuelle
Individualität im Judentum zu erfassen, ist weiterhin eine zentrale Aufgabe.
Je mehr wir über die verschiedenen Gruppen im Judentum erfahren, umso
besser können wir Jesus in seinen jüdischen Kontext einordnen und ihm
innerhalb des Judentums ein Profil geben. Auch hier werden
komparatistische Verfahren systematisch angewandt werden – sowohl für
Vergleiche innerhalb des Judentums als auch für Vergleiche, die über das
Judentum hinausführen. Dabei werden theoretische Modelle der
Religionswissenschaft für Erneuerungsbewegungen und Religions-
gründungen eine Rolle spielen. Denn es muss verständlich gemacht werden,
warum von Jesus eine Bewegung ausging, die sich bald vom Judentum
trennte und von der sich auch das Judentum bald getrennt hat.
(c) Weiterhin wird die Frage nach seinem Verhältnis zum Urchristentum
gestellt werden. Nachdem die “third quest” nach Jesus forschte, ohne damit
Fragen der theologischen Identität des Christentums zu verbinden, bleibt
die Aufgabe, den Weg vom historischen Jesus zur urchristlichen
Verkündigung verständlich zu machen – nicht nur theologisch für die
christliche Gemeinde, sondern historisch und religionswissenschaftlich für
alle Menschen. Es könnte sein, dass Ansätze der kognitiven
Religionswissenschaft dabei eine Rolle spielen werden. Divinisierungs-
prozesse und ihre Voraussetzungen werden in der ganzen
Religionsgeschichte intensiver untersucht werden müssen, um die
Entwicklung von Jesus zur urchristlichen Christologie zu verstehen.
2. Jesus lässt sich nicht eindeutig einer bestimmten Strömung oder

Gruppe im Judentum zuordnen. Es ist angemessener, ihn mit allen Gruppen
zu vergleichen und daraus ein Profil herzustellen. Als gemeinsamen Nenner
bei vielen Versuchen, Jesus ins Judentum einzuordnen, kann man eine
Verbindung von Prophetie und Weisheit betrachten, so dass weder der
“eschatologische Jesus” noch der “non-eschatological Jesus” allein die
historische Wahrheit trifft, sondern eine Kombination beider Aspekte.
a) In seiner prophetischen Verkündigung steht Jesus dem (aus dem

Pharisäertum stammenden) Judas Galilaios nahe. Er teilt mit ihm den
radikaltheokratischen Ansatz, dass der eine und einzige Gott sich
durchsetzen wird, aber seine Alternative lautet nicht: Gott oder der Kaiser,
sondern: Gott oder der Mammon. Seine Verkündigung des Gottesreiches ist
radikalisierter Monotheismus. Mit den frühen Propheten des 1. Jh. n.Chr.
vor der Caligulakrise (Johannes der Täufer, der samaritanische Prophet,
aber auch Stephanus) teilt er eine kritische Haltung gegenüber dem Tempel,
die nach dieser Krise nur noch selten begegnet. Alle diese späteren
Propheten erneuern heilsgeschichtliche Traditionen – Traditionen des
Exodus, der Landnahme, vielleicht auch des Königtums. Nur der Prophet
Jesus, Sohn des Ananias, greift 62 n.Chr. nach einmal die Tempelkritik der
frühen Propheten und Jesu auf. Charakteristisch für das prophetische
Auftreten Jesu ist, dass er Exorzismen und Heilungen als prophetische
Symbolhandlungen deutete, in denen eine eschatologische Wende sich
ankündigte. Die anderen Propheten des 1. Jahrhunderts waren mehr von der
Erwartung eines großen kommenden Wunders bestimmt.
b) In seiner weisheitliche Verkündigung erneuert Jesus aber nur wenig
dieser “nationalen” Erinnerungen, sondern eine universale
Schöpfungstheologie. Daher werden Bildworte und Gleichnisse, in denen
diese Welt für Gott transparent wird, für ihn zur zentralen
Verkündigungsform. Das bringt ihn in die Nähe der Pharisäer, die das
ganze Leben mit dem Willen Gottes durchdringen wollen, und ordnet ihn
gleichzeitig in die Weisheitstradition des Judentums ein. Diese
Weisheitstradition wird mit eschatologischen Erwartungen verbunden.
Diese begegnen bei Jesus aber nicht in der kunstvollen Gelehrsamkeit
apokalyptischer Schriften, sondern in einer Reduktion auf einen dynamisch
sich durchsetzenden Monotheismus.
Seine Verkündigung, die Eschatologie des Reiches Gottes und die Ethik
der Weisheitstraditionen, gehört ins Zentrum des Judentums, seine
Lebensform als Wanderprediger und Wunderheiler aber an dessen Rand.
Sie gibt ihm eine Außenseiterrolle. Dass Außenseiter das Zentrum einer
Religion oder Kultur manchmal konsequenter darstellen als deren normal
lebende Bewohner, ist oft bezeugt. Die Kyniker sind dazu eine Analogie in
der paganen Kultur. Jesus ist von ihnen nur indirekt beeinflusst, eher Judas
Galilaios, bei dessen “vierter Philosophie” Josephus wahrscheinlich an die
kynische Philosophie als Analogie gedacht hat, aber auch bei Judas
Galilaios wird dieser kynische Einfluss oberflächlich gewesen sein. Gerade
von Judas Galilaios aber setzt sich Jesus im Streitgespräch über die Steuern
und in den Ausrüstungsregeln der Aussendungsrede ab. Jesus war
hinsichtlich seiner Lebensform ein “marginal Jew”, aber gewiss kein
jüdischer Kyniker.
3. Charakteristisch für Jesus ist in seiner Theologie sein radikaler

Monotheismus, in seiner Formensprache eine intensive Bildlichkeit in
Worten und Handlungen, in seiner Ethik eine Wertrevolution.
(a) Der radikale Monotheismus Jesu ist ein dynamischer Monotheismus,
der darauf vertraut, dass sich Gott gegen alles Böse (gegen die Dämonen,
gegen Krankheiten und die Sünde) bald durchsetzen wird. Gott wirkt dabei in
den Alltag der Menschen hinein. Daher werden Heilungen und Exorzismen
für Jesus zu Zeichen seines Kommens. Sein Monotheismus war so
konsequent, dass er sich auf keinen Fall selbst neben Gott gestellt hat. Er hat
aber darauf vertraut, dass Gott ihm seine Rolle in der Geschichte zwischen
Gott und dem Menschen zuweisen wird. Diese Rolle war mehr als die eines
letzten Propheten. Jesus verstand sich als Erfüllung der Propheten. Er weckte
damit schon zu Lebzeiten messianische Erwartungen, denen er nicht
widersprochen hat, ohne sie jedoch aktiv zu vertreten. Aber er blieb immer
auf Seiten der Menschen. Er beanspruchte nicht die Rolle Gottes. Selbst
wenn er die Rolle des Messias für sich in Anspruch genommen hätte, wäre
das eine menschliche Rolle gewesen. Erst seine Anhänger haben ihm
aufgrund des Osterglaubens göttlichen Rang zugesprochen. Hier gibt es eine
deutliche Diskontinuität zwischen Jesus und dem verkündigten Christus.
(b) In seiner Kommunikation findet sich sowohl in seinen Worten wie in
seinen Handlungen eine intensive Bildlichkeit. Die (aus weisheitlicher
Tradition heraus neu geschaffenen) Gleichnisse machen Alltägliches
transparent für Gott, seine (aus prophetischen Traditionen heraus neu
entwickelten) Symbolhandlungen nehmen die eschatologische Wende
vorweg – und haben manchmal eine symbolpolitische Bedeutung, d.h. sie
bringen eine Kritik an politischen Verhältnissen zum Ausdruck: Der Einzug
in Jerusalem könnte eine Gegendemonstration zum Einzug des römischen
Präfekten gewesen sein, die “Tempelreinigung” war gewiss eine Kritik der
Tempelaristokratie. Die Übereinstimmung von Worten und Taten durch
eine intensive Bildlichkeit und Symbolik zeigt, dass wir hier einem
wesentlichen Zug des Wirkens Jesu begegnen.
(c) In seiner Ethik finden wir eine Umformulierung von
Oberschichtwerten, die es ermöglicht, dass auch kleine Leute sie
übernehmen können. Es handelt sich um die Werte von Macht, Besitz,
Heiligkeit und Bildung (oder Weisheit). Gleichzeitig kritisiert Jesus die
Machthaber, die Reichen, die Priester und die Schriftgelehrten mit ihrer
Weisheit. Darin sehe ich eine Wertrevolution. Sie ist mehr als eine
Nachahmung der oberen Schichten durch das einfache Volk, wie wir sie oft
in der Geschichte beobachten können. Denn sie ist nicht Ausdruck der
Bewunderung, sondern der Kritik von Oberschichten – und wertet
gleichzeitig allgemeine, d.h. in allen Schichten einschließlich der
Unterschichten verbreitete Werte wie die Liebe zum Nächsten und die
Demut auf. Charakteristisch ist diese Öffnung von Werten für alle: Jesus
rückt das Liebesgebot ins Zentrum und erweitert seine Adressaten: Es gilt
auch den Sündern, den Fremden und den Feinden.
Mit seiner Botschaft ist Jesus auch heute für alle Menschen –
unabhängig von ihrer religiösen Einstellung – relevant: Er lebte einen
konsequenten jüdischen Monotheismus, der sich theologisch in Bildern und
Symbolen ausdrückte und ethisch zu einem humanen und sozialen Ethos
motivierte.
Eric Kun Chun Wong (The Chinese University of Hong Kong, China)
1.There is overwhelming discussion on the divinity of Jesus Christ,

especial in Systematic and Dogmatic Theology. The Historical Jesus
research aims to explore another dimension about him, Jesus the real human
being who actually lived in the world two thousand years ago.
Methodologically, scholars scrutinize every small hint from the text of the
NT to articulate how and what this Jesus could be. With the rise of the
sociological approach, scholars try to frame the boundary of Jesus in
history, as a Jew, a marginalized one, living in the Roman Palestine and
speaking Aramaic, etc.
Scholars in the past few decades have made tremendous contribution
and come to some tentative consensus about this Jesus. People can certainly
fine-tune this consensus today and in the future. However, I think we shall
go forward and explore further possibilities in understanding this Jesus in
history. Among them, I think Jesus’ personality can be explored anew in
psychological perspective.
About one century ago, Albert Schweitzer convincingly declared in his
doctoral dissertation in medicine that the three models attempting to prove
Jesus as having psychiatric problems were all fallacious. Since then,
scholars of the field seemed reluctant to devote themselves to this question.
However, with the advancement of psychology in general and the study of
personality particularly, with the growing interest in ‛Psychological Biblical
Criticism’, we may discern Jesus’ personality anew based on our text.
Among many models and perspectives in studying the personality of a
human being, the concept of the polarized pair, ‛extroverts and introverts’,
identity formation, cognitive development, child development, and the like,
could well be starting points to discuss Jesus’ personality. Although there
are still debates on defining the terms, for example, what the polarized pair
of words exactly should mean in psychology, it is, as Carl Jung says,
nevertheless a power tool to explain many human behaviors by utilizing
this concept. Perhaps with the scholarship of our biblical studies, we may in
turn contribute our findings to psychology in the future. If we may discuss
and come to some consensus whether Jesus belonged to either personality
type, say extroverts or introverts, we may then have a starting point for
further investigation of other aspects of Jesus’ personality.
2. If Jesus’ birth was concieved by the Holy Spirit, as Matthew and

Luke narrate, half of the chromosomes of Jesus were non-human and the
other half were Jewish [given Maria the mother of Jesus was a Jew].
Following the Chalcedonian Creed in the fifth century, which affirms
that Jesus the Christ was a real God as well as a real human being, we today
have to accept this mystery at the outset. Jesus was nevertheless a real
human being.
If Joseph was not Jesus’ father by birth, then he can only be regarded as
his step father. According to Matthew, Joseph wanted quietly to divorce his
betrothed Maria having known that she was pregnant. Yes, on the
theological aspect, Joseph obeyed the Lord and kept Maria as his wife.
However, on the human dimension, how would Joseph have perceived and
received this child? There are no hints, at least the obvious ones, allowing
us to further postulate the situation.
Jesus was perceived as a rabbi by his contemporaries. If he came to his
ministry at the age about 30 as Luke suggests, then he should have his
wife before the ministry. If he had not, how could the Jews regarded him
as a rabbi?
Family is regarded as the most basic unit of a society. A child grown up
in an educated family has great difference compared to a family in the
lower stratum of the society, especially from a broken family or criminal
parent(s). There are certainly some fundamental differences now and then.
We today have internet, just to mention one, which shortens distance
between human beings in many aspects. Children were more bounded by
their own parent-families as they received much less information in the past
than today. However, there must be still some core elements in childhood
development. Modern psychologists can tell us: how father or mother treats
a child has strong influence on his or her tendency, motivation, personality,
and even future career. Or the first-born child has some common
characteristics compared with the next ones, and so forth. In this respect,
psychologists have much to tell us. I think modern psychology, which
arises also from experiments and statistics, will give us some basic
framework and/or boundary on how Jesus’ psychological development in
his childhood would have been.
3. From the canonical Gospels, which contain most of our material

about Jesus and his life in history, we see that Jesus’ thought was different
from his Jewish contemporaries. He dares to change the old teachings on
murder, adultery, and swearing falsely, and to deepen their meanings into
anger [the original motif of murder], adultery in our minds, and not to
swear and oath at all. He further disagrees with the old teachings on
divorce, retaliation, and love of enemies. Besides, Jesus shows
distinguished insights about the old teachings on the Sabbath and
Defilement or Cleansing. He points out that all external rules and
regulations are made for and subordinated to human beings, but not vice
versa as his contemporary Jewish leaders understood. This humanistic

orientation seems distinctive and makes Jesus’ thought original.
As to the origin of Jesus’ thought, traditional Christian faith says that his
wisdom comes from God. The Historical Jesus research traces his origin
from John the Baptist. In psychological terms, I would say that it comes
from his intuition. But where does his intuition come from? Besides
environment, which contributes to shape one’s personality, there is another
factor, one’s own person. For example, all the children in the class room
learn how to be a ‛good’ child, but only some of them listen to and become
‛good’ children, and some others not. Besides the environment in
classroom, children’s own nature or personality does play an important role.
The environments of Jesus and his contemporaries were more or less the
same. What makes his thinking insightful was not simply the environment.
Apart from the possibility of genetic variations or mutation, of which we
today can hardly find hints, it is the intuition, which is something deep
down in one’s person internally, but does not depend on one’s external
environment. Jesus’ original thought comes from his intuition. Now
intuition belongs to the realm of personality in psychology. I think an
integration of this psychological aspect could shed light upon the Historical
Jesus research.

Wedding Textual and Rhetorical Criticism

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THEME SECTION / SEZIONE MONOGRAFICA

THE HISTORICAL JESUS:

Yeshua haNotzri (Jesus of Nazareth) is a character that since antiquity

Dale C. Allison (Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, USA)

2. I do not believe that it is possible to be very specific about the sort of

3. Regarding Jesus’ originality, any number of things may be said. First,

Daniel Assefa (Capuchin Franciscan Institute, Ethiopia)

2. Jesus’ cultural background is the one of Palestinian Judaism which

3. Like other biblical prophets Jesus announced the imminence of God’s

Gabriele Boccaccini (University of Michigan, USA)

which Jesus developed his own interpretation of Judaism. In other words,

3. Of course, Jesus was not an Enochian (at least, since he identified

Can we then talk of Jesus as an Essene-Enochic teacher? The Zealot

Darrell Bock (Dallas Theological Seminary, USA)

2. Jesus appears to me to be a popular pious Jew raised in the Galilee.

3. Most distinctive is the relational dimension that Jesus highlights.

James H. Charlesworth (Princeton Theological Seminary, USA)

their assessments as theologians questing for someone to follow or worship.

Bruce Chilton (Bard College, USA)

1. Academic studies of Jesus typically begin with a survey of the types

2. The archaeological Galilee of the first century is a Jewish Galilee, as

3. Captivating though Jesus remains as a person, his basic message was

painfully obvious, when you consider the substantial number of books

Michael A. Daise (The College of William and Mary, USA)

would like to make mention of one contribution in this volume—Sylvie

2. My interest in the historical Jesus lies less in the ideologies that

institution, itself, but on the degree to which its abstinence applies in

3. I have not so thoroughly examined the breadth of Jesus’ thought in

John Dart (The Christian Century, USA)

Using verisimilitude, Mark trumps all opponents weak on bios. Mark

3. Despite Mark’s disparaging treatment of three named women, Jesus

James Dunn (University of Durham, United Kingdom)

lessons of form-criticism’s failure to make much progress on the issue of

in particular, with sufficient allusions to Sadducees, and possibly even

3. In many of Jesus’ strongest emphases, such as his proclamation of

‛righteous’ cut across the dominant principles of the factional Judaisms of

Craig Evans (Acadia University, Canada)

2. There is nothing in the teaching and activities of Jesus that suggests

Sean Freyne (Trinity College Dublin, Ireland)

1. The notion of a ‛Quest’ for the historical Jesus suggests an intensive,

limited resources of our planet, alike. When one compares the

2. The history of scholarship on Galilee shows repeated attempts to

3. In seeking to develop an appropriate profile of Jesus I must confess

one example of his prayer that we possess shows an interweaving of

Simon Gathercole (University of Cambridge, United Kingdom)

2. As with other figures from early Judaism and Christianity, it is hard to

3. Three of the key guiding principles in Jesus’s reinterpretation of the

Christian Grappe (University of Strasbourg, France)

Sepphoris, which corroborate that Jesus grew up in a rather sophisticated

Santiago Guijarro Oporto (Pontifical University of Salamanca, Spain)

books on the “historical Jesus” has decreased considerably, so yes, I would

3. In my opinion is very important to underline the fact that the

Richard Horsley (University of Massachusetts Boston USA)

land and collect revenues to support themselves as well as to send as tribute

Dan Jaffé (Bar-Ilan University, Israel)

Is it impossible to do history, or just very difficult? And if it is extremely

2. I think it is a good idea to put forward several axiomatic ideas before

Trocmé, Jésus de Nazareth vu par les témoins de sa vie, Neuchâtel, 1971,

In conclusion, let us emphasize how much the scholarship on the Jesus

far as self-abnegation, makes the law relative, to be measured with respect

Giorgio Jossa (University of Naples, Italy)

apocrifi. E nella stessa letteratura canonica ha messo in discussione la

2. – 3. Rispondo insieme alle due successive domande sulla giudaicità e

Amy-Jill Levine (Vanderbilt University, USA)