1995 - Thomas G. Long - Stand Up, Stand Up for (the Historical) Jesus

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DOI: 10.1177/004057369505200101

1995 52: 1Theology TodayThomas G. Long

Stand Up, Stand Up for (the Historical) Jesus

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Theology T o d a y @EDITORIALStand Up, Stand Upfor (the Historical) Jesus

Heres what I imagine. If you were in Galilee, lets say in th e 30s, you wouldhave seen a person called Jesus. Lets imagine three different peopleresponding to that person. One says, This guys a bore. Lets leave him.T he second on e says, This guys dangerous. Lets kill him. Th e third onesays, I see God here. Lets follow this guy. Now each of these, in its ownway is an act of faith . -John Dom inic Crossan

ccording to the old joke, a little boy came home from school angrybecause he had been told by a playground informant the unset-A ling truth that there really was no Santa Claus, that all these

years his parents had been perpetrating a well-crafted hoax. The boy feltbetrayed. I found out today that Santa Claus is not real, he sputtered athis mother. And another thing, he hissed as he turned away. Im goingto get to the bottom of this Jesus business, too.

Getting to the bottom of this Jesus business has lately become amajor preoccupation in some quarters of New Testament research (and,indeed, serves as the theme of this issue of THEOLOGYODAY).HerschelShanks, editor of Bible Review, describes historical Jesus studies as oneof the hottest buttons in biblical studies. Albert Schweitzers old,turn-of-the-century quest of the historical Jesus and the revived questof the 1960s have now yielded to the new and improved quest for the hardcopy historical data regarding the enigmatic Jewish peasant who serves asthe key figure of the Gospels.Who was Jesus, really? Today, scholars employ an impressive array ofnew sociological, anthropological, and literary methods as they tweezerthrough the scanty textual and archaeological evidence attempting toanswer that question, and their efforts over the last decade have pro-duced a half dozen major books and numerous lesser ones on thehistorical Jesus.

What have they uncovered? As anyone familiar with academic wayswould expect, the researchers do not agree. Some scholars retain theview-the consensus until recently-that the Jesus of history was aneschatological prophet who saw himself standing astride the faultline of

Quoted in The Search fo r Jesus: Mode m Scholarship Looks at the Gospels (Washington:Biblical Arch aeology Society, 1994), p. 80.1

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2 Theology Todayhistory calling for repentance even at the very moment that the tectonicplates of the ages had begun to shift. Intriguingly (and controversially),most North American researchers have moved away from this position.They have turned their backs on the eschatological Jesus, the Jesus withhis eye on the coming cloud and his finger on the failing pulse of a dyingworld, and embraced a more wisdom-oriented, politically savvy, this-worldly Jesus. More and more, Jesus historians are seeing him as a cynic,a wandering sage, or a peasant mystic; a community organizer, a hippiepoet jabbing at the establishment, or a street smart provocateur who rapshis way through the seething, impoverished, socially volatile villages ofbackwater Palestine.

There is much novel, unexpected, and unconventional in these emerg-ing portraits of Jesus, but there is little new, of course, in the process bywhich they were produced. Ever since Reimarus in the mid-eighteenthcentury challenged, on historical grounds, much that the New Testamentclaimed about Jesus, each new generation of biblical scholars has, quitenaturally, inserted the known data about Jesus into the methodologicalmachinery currently in vogue, turned the crank, and announced whatevercame out the other end as the real historical Jesus behind the myth.

At least as interesting as the results of this latest round of research isthe wide public attention that it has garnered. The current quest for thehistorical Jesus has received front page treatment in The New York TimesBook Review and cover story status in popular magazines; television talkshows have discovered that Jesus is good for ratings; a pastor in theNorthwest reports that Marcus Borgs Jesus: A New Vision continues tobe the book of choice in lay discussion groups nearly a decade after it firstappeared.

In one sense, this is not surprising. The prospect of seeing the realJesus unprotected by his Sunday School bodyguards has always drawn acrowd. Over a century-and-a-half ago, David Strausss daring The Life ofJesus, Critically Examined cost him his teaching job at Tiibingen butearned him a massive readership, not only in Germany but throughoutEurope and America as well. The Life of Jesus became a nineteenthcentury media event. In a time when few German theological worksmade it out of the Black Forest, it was quickly translated into English,meriting the gifts of no less than George Eliot as translator.*

Admittedly, a measure of the current public curiosity about the histori-cal Jesus has been generated by the researchers themselves, some ofwhom have been deliberately playing to the gallery. The prime example isthe well-publicized Jesus Seminar, which has, among its aims, theotherwise worthy goal of drawing the general public into the scholarlyconversation about religion. However, their glitzy practice of tossingbeads of various colors into a box to vote on the authenticity of the sayingsof Jesus seems a contrivance, possessing a certain game show, cable-ready

2Cullen Murphy, Who Do Men Say That I Am? The Atlantic, 258 (December, 1986),p. 41 .by guest on January 28, 2013ttj.sagepub.comDownloaded from


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Stand Upfo r Jesus 3sparkle, the sort of thing that could end up on stage in Vegas (one caneven imagine Vanna White announcing the results of each ballot).But even if the scholars were not working the angles, even if they werenot trolling for press coverage, there would still be considerable layinterest in their work.Why?On the positive side, part of the reason is that thoughtful Christians areeager to see Jesus as a historically credible person. They may recognizethe vital theological truth in such statements as I am the resurrectionand the life or Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God hasbeen glorified in him, but they have a difficult time imagining a humanbeing actually speaking to other people in just that way. To find modernscholarship probing beneath the theologically freighted language of theGospels and discovering a Jesus who does not float above circumstancebut who makes sense as a participant in the social order of a specific timeand place comes as something of a relief.On the more negative side, however, there is the latent suspicion (or,for some, the anxious fear) that the real Jesus behind the traditions andthe Jesus of the Gospels are finally contradictory, indeed, that the realJesus is the victim of a churchly coverup, that there is surely a PassoverPlot or two waiting to be uncovered. The insinuation is that under theSanta Claus talk of Jesus as messiah, as worker of wonders, as the risenand living Lord, the church is hiding a disturbing little secret, namely amore honest, down-to-earth, factual, believable version of the story-therefore, the trembling eagerness to get to the bottom of this Jesusbusiness.It is fascinating, however, to observe that, time and again, the Jesushistorians themselves cannot quite get to the bottom of this Jesusbusiness. Tracking him down the corridors of history, they keep catchingglimpses of a Jesus who will not be domesticated, a Jesus who slips out ofthe scholars calipers, a Jesus whose force will not be tamed, even by theharness and bit of historical research. At the close of the second volumeof his massiveA Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, John Meierconcludes that his research has led him, not to a kind-hearted rabbi whopreached gentleness, troubled no one, and who is instantly relevant toand usable by contemporary ethics, homilies, political programs, andideologies of various stripes, but rather to a strange, marginal Jewwhose wild prophetic presence mediated the imminence of Gods reign.Not long ago, the Smithsonian held a public symposium on historicalJesus research. In the question-and-answer period, a curious member ofthe audience asked Marcus Borg if the new historians, for all theirsophisticated methods, were not simply treating the data as a mirror,claiming to see Jesus but actually beholding only their own reflections.Im wondering, said the questioner, . . . if these views of Jesus dontreflect more on the 20th century than they do on the first century. I mean,[Jesus is] sort of a stand-up comedian, a cynic, a sort of new age mystic.Are we hearing more about the 20th century than the first?



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Theology TodayIn reply, Borg admitted the obvious, that historians can only see from

where they stand, but, then, added that the Jesus he sees emerging fromthe research is, in fact, not the Jesus he would have preferred to find. Inshort, Borg said that if he had been trying to use historical research toshield himself from a troubling, demanding Jesus, he had failed. I donthave any interest in Jesus being a peasant reformer, he said. Id ratherhe was a middle class guy who drove a Mitsubishi. . . 3

In a deeper sense, not only is Jesus not a middle class guy who drove aMitsubishi, he also refuses to lie still on the examining table while thehistorians conduct an autopsy. He is a living presence who spills over thedam built to separate the past from the present. I began my scholarlystudy of Jesus, Borg reports, as an unbelieving son of the church. . . .did not yet understand (and therefore did not believe) its central claims.But something has happened to Borg. The study has continued, hestates, through the glimmering of understanding and the birth of belief,embryonic but gr ~w ing. ~

Even John Dominic Crossan, the author of one of the more provocativeof the new books on Jesus and one who shares a measure of the suspicionthat the church has produced Christs that mute, mitigate, or managethe program of the true, historical Jesus, nonetheless acknowledges thelimits of his method and the elusiveness of his subject. He imagines aconversation between himself and Jesus:

Ive read your book, Dominic, Jesus begins, and its quite good. Soyoure now ready to live by my vision and join me in my program?I dont think I have the courage, Jesus, but I did describe it quite well,didnt I, and the method was especially good, wasnt it?

Thank you, Dominic, for not falsifying the message to suit your ownincapacity. That at least is something.

Is it enough, Jesus?No, Dominic, it is not.5Research regarding the historical Jesus can and should continue.

Christianity, maintains Paula Fredriksen, lays upon itself the obliga-tion to d o history, since all of its major doctrines-incarnation, resurrec-tion, revelation-point to the importance of human time as the placewhere God speaks.

But history alone will not take us to the bottom of this Jesus business.Several years ago, Cullen Murphy, the managing editor of The Atlantic,produced a well-researched article on contemporary Jesus study. Hisinterests were more than journalistic, however. It would be fair, hewrote, to describe me as a person who wants to believe.

His project took him across the country and to Europe, tracing thecontours of the recent work on Jesus. He discovered the lines of the

3Asquoted in The Search forJesus, p. 106.4MarcusBorg,Jesus: The New Ksion, p. i i i .5Asquoted in The Historical Jesus: An Interview with John Dominic Crossan, TheChristian Century, 108 (December 18-25,1991), p. 1204.



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Stand Upfor Jesus 5current debate, the shaky historical character of the Gospel traditionsabout Jesus birth, life, and death. In the middle of his research, he spenta long day in Chicago interviewing several biblical scholars and theolo-gians. At times, he commented, I had the distinct impression of beingpresent at some sort of clinical procedure. But then, at the end of thisday, as he walked wearily up Michigan Avenue in a light snowfall, hecame to the brilliantly illuminated Water Tower.

O n the pavem ent nearby was a Salvation Army band, which as I approached,began to play0 ittle Town ofBethlehem. And I must say that it was quitea thrilL6Indeed.

Thomas G. Long

6Cullen Murphy, Wh o Do Men Say That I Am?, p. 58.by guest on January 28, 2013ttj.sagepub.comDownloaded from

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1995 - Thomas G. Long - Stand Up, Stand Up for (the Historical) Jesus