I believe Stephen used the term “naive religious fanatic”–of course, he also said ‘prodigy’, when trying to rebut my claim Jesus was a genius. (Made my day there, Steve.)
There’s no consensus about a bunch of things (am I ever going to hear your opinion about my Son of Man theory I pulled out of my arse?), but of course there IS consensus that Jesus didn’t think he’d be an earthly king, and Bart doesn’t agree. Consensus isn’t sacred. You can contest it. Just don’t ignore it or pretend it doesn’t matter.
I think Mark had written sources, as well as oral, and there’s plenty of fine scholars who would agree, so what’s the problem? It’s my opinion, and this is an internet forum. An UNMODERATED internet forum. I am leaving work now. Good night, all. 🙂
first off
sources prior to Mark
Crossan enumerates 13 written sources prior to Mark
4 by Paul (Thess I, Gal, Cor I, and Romans), Gospel of Thomas, Cross Gospel, Miracles Collection, Sayings Gospel (aka Q) etc
and 6 other sources approximately contemporary (60-80) with Mark, which he dates different versions from the early to late 70’s
His book Mediterranean Peasant printed 1991 does not detail how he determines or approximates the dates but he references his own and other scholars earlier works.
Second
anvikshiki said
This is, as I understand it anyway, Crossan’s position. Jesus, in Crossan’s estimation, based on texts in the Synoptics and Q, sends his disciples out on missions to preach and heal, talking no provisions with them, and in exchange they are allowed to eat with those to whom they minister and those they heal. These communities are the proto-“kingdom,” and after the crucifixion, these communities, through the disciples’ ongoing work, continue to spread. Crossan sees all of this egalitarian community-building as fighting against the socio-economic agendas of Antipas and Tiberius, who want to exploit peasant labor, expropriate peasant land and increase rural production for the benefit of cities. “God’s kingdom,” as Jesus would have it, heals people and creates communities of interdependence for them, while “Cesar’s kingdom” exploits people and makes the poorer. That, as I understand Crossan’s larger narrative, is what is distinctive about the movement created by the historical Jesus; it is non-violent, egalitarian “resistance in the name of God” directed against unjust Roman rule. Jesus’ “kingdom of God,” seen in Crossan’s light, is distinct from apocalyptic, isolationist and violently rebellious resistance to Rome and Jerusalem collaboration with Rome. That, if I’m not mistaken, is Crossan’s meta-narrative regarding the movement of the figure he takes to be the historical Jesus.
What I’m saying is that I think this larger narrative itself is not that probable in terms of history. As Ehrman himself points out, a peasant movement in which goods were shared among people with certain Jewish religious convictions would not have been considered a threat by Roman authorities, nor would it have been in violation of its laws. It would not have obviously run afoul of the Sanhedrin either. So, if we are trying to figure out what about Jesus’ mission got him in trouble with the Sanhedrin and Rome, Crossan’s notion of “God’s kingdom” as egalitarian communities doesn’t explain it.
yeah alot of that is correct or at least let me say that is what I understand from reading one of his books, but let me mention a couple of points I am not sure (or at least that i did not pick up my reading)
1.the socio-economic agendas of Antipas and Tiberius, who want to exploit peasant labor, expropriate peasant land and increase rural production for the benefit of cities.
that isn’t unique to Antipas or Tiberius that is something all peasants had to endure at this time in history according to Crossan
2. egalitarian “resistance in the name of God” directed against unjust Roman rule.
I do not recall Crossan ever explicitly equating Jesus’ egalitarian program with resistance to Roman rule . I personally don’t even know how that makes sense.
3. I do not remember Crossan explaining what he thought exactly got Rome/Pilate/Ciaphas/Sanhedrian mad enough to do him in
Robert, I don’t take umbrage when you impute arguments to me that I never made (which I’m sure is unintended). But FYI, I don’t believe ‘whatever I like’. I change my opinions when I see a good argument, that tracks with my reading of the primary sources. Which is all you’re doing. And Bart does the same, just with a great deal more background than all of us combined–he can still be wrong. EVERYBODY could be wrong. But some are clearly on a better track than others. Frankly, I probably have depended too much on Bart recently, since this is just one of many interests I have, and it’s impossible to read all the scholarship. (Even Bart admits to skimming many new books in his field, just to get the gist of the argument).
“You can believe whatever you like” is a strawman argument. I’m thinking about the subject, not just parroting what I read. (If that isn’t what you meant to say, only goes to show that you might be misunderstanding me as well).
Most scholars find Crossan very interesting, or he wouldn’t be so influential. But being influential can simply mean that you stimulate the conversation in a new direction–your idea doesn’t take hold, but it leads to new ideas. It breaks the logjam of consensus, which leads to new positions. It’s a process, and it doesn’t end. Ever. In any field of study.
There are scholars right now, arguing that Lincoln was a bad President who totally screwed up the whole civil war and slavery thing, and a racist to boot (by whose standard?). They are, of course, in the minority, and probably always will be, but by questioning the consensus, they stimulate other scholars to come up with stronger and more nuanced arguments, new readings of the sources–none of it is objective fact. History is not just about facts, but about the interpretation of those facts, and the interpretation changes as we do. We can’t see the past from a stable objective POV, because we ourselves are constantly in flux–our discussion yesterday is part of history now, and we’re interpreting it differently. But just for the record, your interpretation is dubious and ahistorical.
😉
I’ve been rereading parts of Crossan’s The Historical Jesus recently, particularly those parts that deal with the “son of man” expressions in the NT and in other first century works (1 Enoch, 4 Ezra). I find the way he divvies up the “son of man” expressions for analysis to be quite confusing. He compares passages in Paul’s early letters (1 Thes, 1 Cor, 2 Tin) with Gospel sayings of Jesus that seem apocalyptic, and brings in Revelation and Didache references too, to show that “son of man” sayings in the Gospels really refer to Jesus. He, as is his habit, divides “Q” up into “Q1” and “Q2”, following Kloppenborg, and himself reconstructs sayings about the “son of man” in the supposedly earlier “Q1” layer so they elide the expression “son of man.” He alludes to what he thinks is the earliest “Q” layer and how it is supposedly replicated in Matthew and/or Luke to claim that Mark does not give us earlier versions of Jesus’ sayings. He dilutes multiple attestation cases for similar “son of man” sayings in the Gospels when they have variant wording. He softens some Gospel sayings through comparison to passages in Thomas and 2 Peter. It’s really a confounding exegetical strategy. I think Allison complained about some of this in his book.
I continue to think that perhaps it is just not possible to hinge as much as some scholars do on the sayings of Jesus in the Gospels referring to the “son of man” to prove that Jesus was an apocalypticist. There do seem to be several senses to the expression “son of man” in the Gospels, one apocalyptic, one fairly general that refers to humans or just oneself, and one that is employed in anticipation of the second coming. And in the end, it may just be too difficult to determine whether any of these strands actually go back to what the historical Jesus said to make anything more than a speculative case that Jesus was an apocalypticist. In view of this, maybe it is really true that Sanders had the best strategy for making this case, namely by looking at deeds and events rather than words. Jesus was baptised by an apocalypticist, was followed by an apocalyptic movement, and in between was executed as a result of some collaboration between the Sanhedrin and Pilate, and this would likely not have happened had they not perceived him as a threat to their authority or socio-political stability. What makes best sense of this storyline is that Jesus headed a movement that overtly threatened Sanhedrin/Roman authority, and that would seem to require some sort of apocalyptic vision involving them being removed from power.
In any event, the case that Crossan makes with his peculiar exegesis of Jesus’ “son of man” sayings leaves me far more confused than compelled.
People are often tried and executed throughout history over misunderstandings–or differences of opinion. Neither Roman nor Jewish authorities were known for their tolerance–dissent of any sort was taken very seriously. As evidenced by the later torture and execution of Christians for nothing more than refusing to sacrifice to gods they didn’t believe in.
There was no concept whatsoever of separation of church and state, and therefore to dissent religiously was to dissent politically, even if your dissent was entirely pacifist in nature. You might get away with such dissent if you kept a low profile, but clearly Jesus came to Jerusalem with no intention of doing that. Meaning, in my opinion, that he intended to provoke the very reaction that occurred. And he thought that very reaction–his own sacrifice–would trigger the transformation he was waiting for.
Perhaps it was not entirely dissimilar to a much later religious movement, much closer to home for Americans. Equally tragic. I suppose we can at least say the Romans waited for a genuine military uprising before they became genocidal, but racism in the modern sense was something else they didn’t have a concept for back then, and the cultural/technological gap was much wider in the latter instance.
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As opposed to the realism of an angel coming down from heaven to turn the world upside-down and get rid of all the bad people?
Yes, I know, that’s not what you meant.
But how can we know what’s realistic about what a religious visionary with an apocalyptic mindset might or might not have thought was going to happen, or what his precise role in coming events would be? The Doppelganger idea doesn’t sound so bad. As a general rule, middle positions hold up better than absolutist ones.
Jesus saw himself as a man, but a man who had been chosen by God to help transform reality–that seems indisputable, and that means we have to adjust our thinking to the world he was seeing after that. The idea of mortal men becoming divine or semi-divine beings (often after death) was commonplace in that era, among Jews and pagans alike, as Bart went to some pains to show us in How Jesus Became God. Jesus certainly was familiar with that idea. He knew he wasn’t God, he didn’t think his mother was a virgin, but that doesn’t mean he just thought he was just some Palestinian Estragon, sitting around waiting for Godot.
Explain to me why you don’t think Jesus could have thought he’d become the Son of Man after his own death. I’m sure you’d acknowledge that people in the grip of a powerful belief (not just religious belief) have thought crazier things. What in the texts leads you to believe otherwise in this case? Why did Jesus put himself in such a vulnerable position in Jerusalem? Why did he go out of his way to provoke both the religious and secular authorities, when he clearly did not have a very large following?
Why did the disciples so quickly adopt the beliefs they did after his death, have powerful visions that seemed to substantiate them? I’d say it’s because Jesus had prepared their minds in advance to accept that his death might not be failure at all, but part of God’s plan. This explains why it never happened with the other messianic pretenders, who were sticking more to the traditional messianic formula. Jesus changed it. And the new formula proved more adaptable, more suitable to inspiring and attracting followers, albeit mostly not from the ranks of the people Jesus had come from.
It might not be true at all, but why do you rule it out categorically? I don’t see the basis for that.
I look forward to reading Casey’s book. I am going to make the effort to read it in the second half of this month.
To me, at least up to this point, I see the “son of man” trope in Jesus’ reported preaching as very hard to disambiguate. The fact that the phrase is used with such frequency in the canonical Gospels compared to the other NT writings compels me to suspect that Jesus used the phrase frequently. He probably used it in several different senses, particularly if several different senses were available in Aramaic (and in the Hebrew of the scriptures). The generic “one” or “human being” is a plausible candidate, and so is a third-person apocalyptic sense of the term, though the latter is hard to establish with high degrees of certainty.
I do, up to this point, take the references connecting “son of man” to Jesus’ second coming as the least likely to trace back to the historical Jesus. It’s hard to get this usage past the dissimilarity test. It strikes me as more likely that the oral tradition and evangelists created this usage in retrospectively interpreting the meaning of Jesus’ death than it is that Jesus openly predicted or even planned his own execution. As Ehrman himself has argued, the events reported in the Gospels about the final Jerusalem mission of Jesus, from the city entry to the attack on the money changers to the charges and trial itself are hard pressed to pass the contextual credibility test. If those events did not happen in the way the Gospels claim they did, then Jesus could not have planned them as reported.
On the other hand, while the parousiac sense strikes me as the least likely, it’s not entirely impossible. The very scholar who made the apocalpyticist view of Jesus mainstream, Schweitzer, argued that, once the time of tribulation was not initiated by the disciples’ mission in Matthew 10-11, Jesus inferred that the kingdom would have to be prompted by his own death, and hence we get the predictions and the Jerusalem mission. Crossan himself, it seems to me, makes at least a reasonable argument to the effect that Jesus, if he did plan and perform the “protests” he is reported to have carried out in Mark, would have had to have known what he was doing was dangerous. Mark’s reporting of these “protests” may itself be oral and evangelistic license. But even if all Jesus actually did was lead a small band of followers into Jerusalem during Passover week and publicly preached about the coming overturning of worldly powers by God’s Kingdom, and in any way associated himself with those events, even that much strikes me as obviously risky. So there seems to be a kind of grey area about the last week of Jesus’ life that puts more than one interpretive possibility in play, and we don’t have a way of really knowing which one is right.
So, to me, dissimilarity makes the parousiac use of the “son of man” expression the least likely of the options available to be traceable back to the historical Jesus. But I don’t know what really happened either. It’s a frustrating but fascinating puzzle.
The specifics are impossible to know, and quite honestly, if there had been modern journalists at work in Palestine, doing interviews and talking to eyewitnesses, I’m not convinced we’d be any more certain of what happened. Maybe less. 🙂
For all that, I think some scholars get too hung up on deconstructing the gospel narrative to its minimal form. As big a mistake as trying to preserve the maximal form. It wasn’t just another day at the office. It was a very strange sequence of events that led to the founding of Christianity. When we do have the fine details of history, what we see over and over is that life is stranger than fiction. Life doesn’t have to make sense.
fwiw
anvikshiki said
I’ve been rereading parts of Crossan’s The Historical Jesus recently, . . . leaves me far more confused than compelled.
pretty much my same thought after/during reading this book
I don’t think he Crossan was explicit about this; but appears he did NOT believe Jesus taught a (or his) “second coming”
and I agree with that.
godspell i know you’ve written before
Explain to me why you don’t think Jesus could have thought he’d become the Son of Man after his own death.
that is an odd question
the obvious answer is that a prophet’s ministry ends at his demise (dont know any other contrary case)
Elijah’s return? maybe but I dont know any part of his ministry recorded in the NT that Jesus implied he would physically resurrect
And if Jesus thought of himself as a prophet in the old sense (he definitely saw parallels) that would be a good answer. However, Bart and many other scholars believe he saw himself as the messiah. The messiah is more than a prophet, and Jesus’ idea of what the messiah might be was certainly quite different from the standard Jewish idea. Jesus certainly saw John the Baptist as a prophet, who did not return after his death, and who he may have seen as Elijah returned–but there is some indication that while he thought no one born of woman was greater than John (meaning he wasn’t), someone reborn in the Kingdom would be greater. What’s his point, if not to say that he himself may become greater? (And of course he did, in a different sense).
Please note, Jesus reportedly talked about how Jerusalem murdered its prophets, but that isn’t backed up by the OT. None of the great prophets of the OT died violent deaths at the hands of enemies. But John had–and this has to have had a very profound impact on Jesus’ thinking. He certain was very aware that he might die violently in the near future. But he also believed God had chosen him to herald the coming of the Kingdom. How does he reconcile this in his mind?
If the Son of Man was meant to be a divine or semidivine being, such as an angel (as Bart thinks), physical resurrection wouldn’t really be what Jesus was talking about. When he refers to himself as the Son of Man, he could be speaking of a future incarnation of himself, a spiritual return, not a physical one. And this would explain why the disciples, at best half-understanding him, had visions of him resurrected. He’d put the idea in their heads, and it manifested itself through dreams and hallucinations, under the extreme stress of his execution.
Exactly which interpretation of what Jesus believed would you consider ‘normal’, tompicard? It kind of amuses me what people can normalize in their heads. None of this is normal. It’s all very very odd.
Crossan’s ideas are pretty odd themselves, though interesting. Really, the oddest story I’ve heard yet is Carrier’s. 😉
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