In thinking about these diffculties related to my Q1 for Jesus, I’ve had a Eureka moment, which I’d like Bart’s view on: The “get the behind me Satan” rebuke to Peter (which is in Mark and Matthew, but not in Luke) seems to me to fulfilll the criterion of embarassment, which is maybe why Luke left it out of his Gospel? Therefore, it probably is a true historical fragment of Jesus’s speech? Agreed so far? So, if he did say this to Peter in repsonse to Peter’s rebuking Jesus for saying “the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders, and of the chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again” (Mk 8:31), then doesn’t that give credence to the notion that Jesus knew in advance that he was going to be crucified (the answer to my Q3 for Jesus!)?
Robert said
No, Jesus’ prediction of his death and resurrection is most likely not historical. If the ‘get behind me logion’ is a fragment of what Jesus might have said sometime, perhaps to Simon Peter, it would have been on a different occasion.
So you say, and you may be right. But isn’t your view based on the criterion of anti-supernaturalism? If you are right in your supposition, do you have an alternative suggestion for what the “Satan rebuke” to Peter was in response to?
Neurotheologian said
You are only aloud three questions for Jesus (the historical Jesus was a busy chappy, remember!)Choose 3 from your 6 questions and then, like you did, I will put myself in the role of Jesus and give you my hypothetical answers from him 🙂
Hey, I want the REAL Jesus to answer my questions! This is a total rip! I want my money back! Oh right, this is free.
Neurotheologian said
In thinking about these diffculties related to my Q1 for Jesus, I’ve had a Eureka moment, which I’d like Bart’s view on: The “get the behind me Satan” rebuke to Peter (which is in Mark and Matthew, but not in Luke) seems to me to fulfilll the criterion of embarassment, which is maybe why Luke left it out of his Gospel? Therefore, it probably is a true historical fragment of Jesus’s speech? Agreed so far? So, if he did say this to Peter in repsonse to Peter’s rebuking Jesus for saying “the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders, and of the chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again” (Mk 8:31), then doesn’t that give credence to the notion that Jesus knew in advance that he was going to be crucified (the answer to my Q3 for Jesus!)?
I agree some version of that probably happened, but please note, it didn’t require any special foresight for Jesus to think he was going to be killed, after what happened to John the Baptist. And I think the prophecies he made about his death were, to some extent, self-fulfilling prophecies. That being said, we probably don’t have the original unredacted form of anything he said, and even if we did, his motivations would remain murky (as is the case with modern historical figures who we have endless reams of material on).
Has any one person ever fully understood any other person? We strive for it, and it’s a worthy thing to strive for, but even self-understanding is a chore.
Also, Bart argues that Jesus was referring to an angelic servitor of God when he used the term Son of Man. I tend to agree with him on this, though it’s possible Jesus’ own thinking on the matter was hazy at times. Since the Son of Man was something he’d imagined, he might as times have identified with his creation.
He was probably a bit mad, you know. But in a good way. Genius and Madness go together. As the Irish have long known. 😉
I think it would be pretty much a waste of time to ask the historical Jesus about events recounted in the Gospels because the stories hadn’t been invented yet and he would have no idea what you’re talking about. Better by far to ask him about his own ideas so you could then compare them to the later accounts.
The traditional idea of the Messiah was triumphalist. If Jesus believed he was the Messiah this mitigates against the idea that he had some notion that his ministry would end in disaster. I suspect that Jesus and the disciples went to Jerusalem expecting divine intervention and validation. I bet the most surprised person at Jesus’ arrest and execution was Jesus himself. The predictions of his fate in the gospels were after the fact rationalizations.
I’m not “anti-supernatural”. I’m just waiting for someone to demonstrate some compelling reason to accept the supernatural in the first place. A naturalistic interpretation of the events described in the NT simply follows from our knowledge and experience of what most likely happened based on what happens now. One should not believe anything without good reason for doing so.
Stephen said
I think it would be pretty much a waste of time to ask the historical Jesus about events recounted in the Gospels because the stories hadn’t been invented yet and he would have no idea what you’re talking about. Better by far to ask him about his own ideas so you could then compare them to the later accounts.
The traditional idea of the Messiah was triumphalist. If Jesus believed he was the Messiah this mitigates against the idea that he had some notion that his ministry would end in disaster. I suspect that Jesus and the disciples went to Jerusalem expecting divine intervention and validation. I bet the most surprised person at Jesus’ arrest and execution was Jesus himself. The predictions of his fate in the gospels were after the fact rationalizations.
I’m not “anti-supernatural”. I’m just waiting for someone to demonstrate some compelling reason to accept the supernatural in the first place. A naturalistic interpretation of the events described in the NT simply follows from our knowledge and experience of what most likely happened based on what happens now. One should not believe anything without good reason for doing so.
I don’t believe all or necessarily most of the stories in the gospels are invented out of whole cloth, though of course the parables were invented by Jesus himself as teaching stories–some of the ‘made-up’ stories in the gospel are intended the same way. My questions have mainly been about his ideas, but it wouldn’t be out of line to ask him about something like his baptism by John, which almost certainly did happen. Did he in fact have a vision then?
The traditional idea of the Messiah was triumphalist (not always military), but Jesus wasn’t all that traditional–that’s why he fell afoul of the Jewish religious order. There is the concept of the ‘suffering servant’ to consider–Jesus probably mixed and matches a lot from the traditions available to him. He’s not just copy/pasting. He’s innovating. So that seems like too much of an assumption to me (and not the Virgin Mary kind).
I don’t really see what the supernatural has to do with it. We’re talking about history. Basically everybody in this time period believed in the supernatural (as do a lot of people now, and not just the conventionally religious). But I’m talking about trying to understand what Jesus and his followers believed, not whether they could do cool magic tricks. Obviously there can’t be evidence for the supernatural. Evidence belongs to the natural world. If you can prove it, it’s not supernatural.
Putting aside the ‘magic tricks’ and any questions realting to a high Christology, can we come back to my Question 3 for the historical Jesus? That is: Did you know you were going to be crucified? Indeed, I could add: ….and did you plan it that way? – hence the self-fullfilling prophecy idea suggested by Godspell. In other words, Jesus, did you have a sense of destiny from the beginning of your ministry or at least early on, that you were going to die for the people, as in John the Baptsist’s alleged quotation in the 4th gospel: ‘behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world’ (John 1:29 – referrring to Isaiah 53)? The reason I ask this question, is that if I am to take the view that Jesus did not know he was going to be killed, and indeed that he thought the end was at hand (not just of Jersualem, but the end of the whole world and the coming of the Kingdom of God in power, perhaps by his own hand (although Jerusalem for the Judeans, was in a sense ‘the whole world’), then, even now, I would be deeply dissapointed. Wasn’t this the very disappointment that Judas felt and which motivated his betrayal? Wasn’t this the dilemma that the disciples faced after the crucifixion? Isn’t this the disappoinmtent that regards Jesus as an apocalpticist who was deluded or at least wrong in his prophecy and that he got killed against his own expectations and thus regards him as a failure in his mission and minsitry? Were the Gesthemene agony, the ‘Satan rebuke’ to Peter, the metaphor about knocking down the temple, the Baptist’s ‘Lamb of God’ proclamation and much more all the gospels refering to Jesus’s premonition that was ‘to suffer and die’, all made up as after-thoughts to re-intepret Jesus’s purpose after the disappointment of his death? This is the reason why my final question for the historical Jesus is: did you really know? It makes all the difference to me, as to whether I look up to Jesus in awe, wonder and gratitude, or whether I turn way shaking my head in deep dissapointment, turn away from the sight of his suffering with the thoughts: what a waste, what a shame, what a mitaken, deluded apocalpticist. (I stand on the asssertion that this is all one question, in case anyone acuses me of breaking the rules
)
I see no reason to be disappointed with Jesus, UNLESS you need him to be perfect. His achievements become all the more impressive if you think of him as a mortal being. And it’s pretty clear, even from the increasingly deified image of him presented in the gospels, that he still said our future depends on the choices we make. He certainly never believed that accepting him as your personal savior meant everything was copacetic. That is a gloss superimposed over his teachings, to distract us from them.
Robert said
I have not seen any evidence for the supernatural in general or, more specifically, for Jesus as a supernatural being. But even if this were a text about Julius Caesar predicting his own assassination, I would still suspect it as a literary creation, written after the fact. Predicting one’s own death does not require supernatural ability, but the resurrection part is somewhat unusual. But even assuming it occurred, I would still see these predictions as most likely a Markan literary motif. Sorry, I do not have a theory on the historical validity or origins of the ‘get thee behind me, Satan’ fragment.
It is probably part of the gospel writers’ endeavour to assign Jesus full foreknowledge about his martyrdom while in reality he was taken by surprise. This must have been an issue in early Christianity.
Robert said
It’s a really good question. All of these questions, really: whether and when Jesus knew that he would die, and what, if any, specifuc meaning he attached to his own death. Whether and how his view of his own death factored into his apocalyptic theology, what exactly were his apocalyptic views. Yes, there are a lot of good questions here, and, yes, it seems you have broken your own rule.
Robert, I stand by my assertion that this is all subsumed within my 3 questions:
- Did you really say to Peter “Get thee behind me, Satan” and if so, wasn’t that a bit harsh, insensitive and un-loving?
- Did you think that that people living at the time of your ministry would see the ‘the son of man coming in the clouds with great glory’ and all the apocalyptic events you said would happen before that?
- Did you somehow know in advance that you were going to be crucified, if so when?
You see, though apparently serparate, my 3 questions are all linked. I didn’t realise this when I first came up with them 🙂
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