Tag Archives: Historical Jesus
On the Narrative Logic of John 21
The twentieth chapter of John’s Gospel is full of climactic moments. Not only does it record the resurrection of Jesus and his interaction with Mary in the garden, but it also tells the story of Jesus’s appearance to his disciples in the upper room (On the Johannine Pentecost) and the climactic confession of Thomas a week later. The chapter ends with a clear purpose statement when John writes, “Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples that are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.” (20.30-31) To many, these verses sound like an appropriate conclusion to John’s Gospel; for this reason, many scholars (and some readers) treat John 21 as a kind of appendix or addendum or afterthought. Although there is no manuscript evidence to support this claim, it is often argued that if chapter 20 brings the Gospel to its climactic conclusion, then why would John write chapter 21? It seems unnecessary. From a narrative perspective, John 21 is not an awkward appendix but the necessary completion of the Gospel’s story. It resolves tensions left intentionally open in chapter 20 and brings the Gospel’s themes — discipleship, love, witness, and mission — to their proper conclusion.
As I noted above, John 20 is the clear climax of John’s Gospel. Jesus is resurrected, the disciples are commissioned, and Thomas confesses Jesus as “My Lord and my God.” (20.28) This confession serves as a kind of bookend in the book that points the reader back to John’s opening where he affirms that Jesus is the Word that was with God and was God and was made flesh and dwelt among us. (1.1, 14) Following these climactic moments, it only makes sense that John’s purpose statement in verses 30-31 would bring the Gospel to its logical conclusion. This chapter proves that Jesus is the Christ of God, and that faith in Him as the resurrected one results in eternal life. The end. Or so one would think. Not only is there no manuscript evidence that John’s Gospel should end in chapter 20 (as there is with Mark’s ending, on which see here), but if John were to end his gospel with chapter 20, then there would be many narrative threads that would remain unresolved. What becomes of Peter after his denial? What becomes of the beloved disciple? What becomes of the disciples’ mission? Yes, chapter 20 concludes the narrative arc of Jesus’s identity, but chapter 21 goes on to explain what that revelation now means for the followers of Jesus.
John 21 returns the reader to the Sea of Tiberias, aka the Sea of Galilee. Narratively, this is a return to where it all began. Not only did Jesus begin his public ministry in Galilee, but he also called the first four disciples after a night of fishing on the Sea of Galilee. The scene intentionally echoes the earlier calling narrative familiar from Luke 5. After a night of fruitless labor, Jesus shows up and tells them to cast their nets on the other side of the boat. They haul in a catch that is nearly too large, and Jesus commissions them to discipleship and mission. Many interpret this scene as a regression for the disciples, a return to the life and vocation before Christ. However, in light of this parallel, this scene should be understood not as a regression, but as narrative symmetry. John intentionally returns his readers to the beginning to show that the resurrection does not erase vocation — it redefines it. Vocation that is engaged apart from radical dependence on the risen Christ is utterly futile, but when vocation is entered into from a position of dependence and obedience to the risen Christ, then it is abundantly fruitful. When we submit our vocation to the mission of Jesus, then we will reap abundant fruit and reward. Even so, the real center of John 21 is not fish, it is Peter.
Of course, all four Gospels record Peter’s three denials of Jesus on the night of Jesus’s arrest, but John is the only one who records Peter’s restoration. (Luke hints at the idea when Jesus tells him that after returning, he will encourage his brothers.) John deliberately connects the scene in John 21 back to the denial scene by noting that Jesus prepared a “charcoal fire” and the threefold repetition of the question “Peter, do you love me?” matching Peter’s three denials. Some tend to make a big deal out of the various words that are used for love in Peter’s answers, but this is overplayed. Not only were the words basically synonymous in the first century, but the idea that Peter’s love did not rise to some divine standard is wholly alien to the logic of the text. This is a threefold public restoration that corresponds to Peter’s threefold public failure. Moreover, it reveals the pastoral tenderness of Jesus. Jesus does not scold Peter; he does not call him out over his failures. He doesn’t berate or condemn him. He graciously restores Peter to ecclesial service. “Feed my lambs. Shepherd my sheep. Feed my sheep.” This commission is not merely personal therapy for Peter; it is an ecclesial necessity. John cannot end his Gospel with Peter in unresolved failure. The shepherd of the disciple group must be restored if the flock is to endure. But Peter is not the only disciple in view here either.
After his restoration, Peter noticed the disciple whom Jesus loved and he asks Jesus, “Lord, what about him?”, and Jesus responds, “What is that to you? As for you, follow me.” (21.20-22) Jesus’s point is that he has different callings for each of his followers, and that following Christ is more important than comparing callings. Peter’s calling was to shepherding and martyrdom; the beloved disciple’s calling was to abiding ministry and public/written testimony. As he writes in 21.24, “This is the disciple who testifies to these things and who wrote them down. We know that his testimony is true.” Not only is this important for establishing the credibility and reliability of John’s Gospel, but it is also a fundamental component of John’s understanding of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. To put it another way, John 21 grounds the authority of the Gospel in eyewitness testimony while clarifying that discipleship does not look identical for all. We all serve the risen Christ, but we all serve him in different and varied ways. These verses are not just random narrative details added on to the end of the story; they are essential for completing John’s theology of discipleship.
In other words, for John, discipleship is a life that is characterized by following Jesus, loving Jesus, abiding in Jesus, and witnessing to the truth about Jesus. When we confess Christ (chapter 20), he commissions us to a life of embodied mission (chapter 21). If we truly believe that Jesus is the risen Christ (and he is), then we will follow him in whatever calling he has placed on our lives. Put differently, discipleship is the vocation of following Jesus. The risen Christ is not merely to be believed in — he is to be followed. If we say we love Christ, we will commit ourselves to and give ourselves for the care of his people. Moreover, John hints at the fact that discipleship can involve suffering. In 21.18, Jesus tells Peter, “when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands and someone else will tie you and carry you where you don’t want to go.”, and John explains that “He said this to indicate by what kind of death Peter would glorify God.” (21.19) This is part of the vocation of discipleship, too. We must be willing to follow Jesus wherever he leads; this is the kind of discipleship that Jesus is calling us all too.
However, returning to my thesis, without John 21, Peter’s denial remains unresolved, the beloved disciple’s authority is unexplained, and the future of the community of Jesus followers is unclear. In terms of John’s narrative, John ends his gospel not with spectacle but with discipleship as vocation. Chapter 20 concludes the revelation of Jesus’s identity, and chapter 21 concludes the formation of Jesus’s community. Or to put it another way, John 20 answers the question “Who is Jesus?”, and John 21 answers the question “What now?” Without this pastoral and ecclesial resolution, John’s Gospel would be incomplete. John does not end his Gospel in private mystical belief. He ends it with shepherding, witness, martyrdom, and mission. And he leaves the end of the story open when he writes, “And there are also many other things that Jesus did, which, if every one of them were written down, I suppose not even the world itself could contain the books that would be written.” In other words, the story is ongoing, and all the things that the risen Jesus will do have not yet been completed even two thousand years later. John 21 is not a loose epilogue. It brings the Gospel to its proper end — not merely with a confession of Christ, but with the commissioning of those who will testify to him. The risen Lord restores the fallen, distinguishes callings, anchors testimony, and sends his followers into a future shaped by love and sacrifice. That is not an afterthought. That is narrative completion. And it poses the question to the reader, “Will you follow Jesus?”
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On the (Un)Importance of the Gospel of Thomas
In my last post, I argued that the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas has little to no value when it comes to the study of the historical Jesus. However, ever since the Jesus Seminar published their book, The Five Gospels, it has become somewhat common among Jesus scholars to include Thomas as another source for Jesus studies. The Gospel of Thomas is a collection of 114 logia, or sayings, that are attributed to Jesus, most of which are enigmatic and/or aphoristic in style. For example, saying 7 reads, “Blessed is the lion which becomes man when consumed by man; and cursed is the man whom the lion consumes, and the lion becomes man.” Thomas was discovered in 1945 at Nag Hammadi among some 52 other documents, most of which are from the 4th century CE. While Thomas contains intriguing sayings, its late date, its wholesale dependence on the Synoptic tradition, and its Gnostic coloring render it of very little importance for reconstructing the historical Jesus. Its primary value lies in understanding early Christian Gnostic interpretation and theological creativity, not the life and teaching of Jesus of Nazareth.
As noted above, the Gospel of Thomas, sometimes referred to as the Secret Gospel of Thomas, contains some 114 independent sayings attributed to Jesus without any kind of narrative structure or frame. Although the complete text found at Nag Hammadi in 1945 is in Coptic and dates to the 4th century CE, it also exists in three Greek fragments previously found at Oxyrhynchus around the turn of the twentieth century that date to the mid-second century CE. Some scholars argue that the oral traditions behind these Greek texts may be earlier, but this is speculation that is not supported by any physical textual evidence. The biggest difference between Thomas and the canonical Gospels is that it is completely lacking in narrative details; it contains no geographic markers, no passion narrative, and no account of the resurrection. More often than not, it simply reworks material from the Synoptic tradition. In spite of these differences, its non-narrative, aphoristic style is perhaps part of its appeal, but it is also the reason for its interpretive challenges.
This is perhaps why many, both scholars and popular readers alike, find Thomas so intriguing. It is cryptic, wisdom-oriented, less overtly theological, and resembles Synoptic style. For many, especially those who are skeptical of the canonical accounts of Jesus, Thomas reflects a non-apocalyptic, secretive, purely ethical Jesus, which is more in keeping with modern sensibilities. For example, saying 98 reads, “The kingdom of the father is like a certain man who wanted to kill a powerful man. In his own house he drew his sword and stuck it into the wall in order to find out whether his hand could carry through. Then he slew the powerful man.” Or again, saying 77 reads, “It is I who am the light which is above them all. It is I who am the all. From me did the all come forth, and unto me did the all extend. Split a piece of wood, and I am there. Lift up the stone, and you will find me there.” According to the scholars of the Jesus Seminar, these sayings represent independent (read secret) traditions not found in the canonical Gospels. However, these claims often overlook Thomas‘s dependence on earlier Synoptic material and its interpretive framing.
Estimates vary, but roughly half of Thomas‘s 114 sayings have parallel, often more primitive, versions in the Synoptics. For example, saying 54 reads, “Blessed are the poor, for yours is the kingdom of heaven.” This is clearly a restatement of the beatitude found in Matthew 5.3 and its parallel in Luke 6.20. Saying 55 reads, “Whoever does not hate his father and his mother cannot become a disciple to me. And whoever does not hate his brothers and sisters and take up his cross in my way will not be worthy of me.” This is taken from Matthew 10.37-38 and its parallel in Luke14.26-27. Saying 65 is simply a retelling of the parable of the vineyard owner found in Matthew 21, Mark 12, and Luke 20; saying 57 is simply a retelling of the parable of the wheat and tares found in Matthew 13. Other examples could be cited, but the point is clear, namely that the author(s) of Thomas have simply reworked Synoptic material, typically drawn from the Sermon on the Mount or the Kingdom sayings/parables of Jesus. Moreover, the ordering and grouping of these sayings typically mimics that which is found in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. This evidence clearly demonstrates the secondary literary dependence of Thomas and mitigates against arguments that it preserves independent oral traditions. To put it another way, if Thomas is so clearly dependent, then it cannot be used as an independent historical source in the study of the historical Jesus.
Beyond its late date and its dependence on the Synoptic traditions, another reason Thomas holds no value for the study of Jesus is its clear Gnostic leanings. Gnosticism is a second century syncretistic heresy that combined elements of Christianity with Jewish mysticism and Greco-Roman philosophy. It is primarily characterized by its dualistic worldview, its emphasis on hidden knowledge (gnosis) and spiritual ascent, and its devaluation of material reality. The Gospel of Thomas, as well as most of the other documents found at Nag Hammadi, clearly fall into this stream of thought. For example, saying 62 reads, “It is to those who are worthy of my mysteries that I tell my mysteries.” Saying 24 reads, “There is light within a man of light, and he lights up the whole world. If he does not shine, he is darkness.” Or again, saying 108 reads, “He who will drink from my mouth will become like me. I myself shall become he, and the things that are hidden will be revealed to him.” Clearly, sayings from the canonical Gospels have been filtered through Thomas’s Gnostic framework. This theological overlay makes Thomas more a reflection of early heretical Christian thoughts than of Jesus’ own teaching. While Gnostic themes are historically interesting for understanding the history of the early church, they further limit Thomas’s usefulness for reconstructing the historical Jesus.
Methodologically speaking, for a source to contribute meaningfully to historical reconstruction, it must be anchored in some kind of narrative frame, some cultural or geographic context, some chronological markers by which its historical veracity can be evaluated. The Gospel of Thomas is clearly lacking in this regard. It does not contain any of the details of Jesus’s life, his public ministry in Galilee, his conflicts with the Jewish authorities, or his passion, death, and resurrection. Without any anchoring in actual historical events like these, a collection of sayings cannot be attributed to Jesus with any real confidence. Therefore, using Thomas as a primary source in the study of the historical Jesus risks reconstructing him as an abstract, decontextualized, disconnected figure. Or to put it another way, a Jesus disconnected from historical realities can become anything and everything, except who he truly was. The Gospel of Thomas is simply too late, too dependent, and too Gnostic to be of any value in the study of the historical Jesus. Of course, this does not mean that Thomas has no value at all. After all, the Gospel of Thomas gives us an open window into early Christian theological creativity within heretical movements. It highlights the role of wisdom and of spiritual and mystical orientations in the beliefs of the early church. And it gives us insight into how the teachings of the historical Jesus were received and interpreted by one particularly Gnostic tradition. However, whereas canonical sources like the Synoptics and Paul ground their theological reflections in the reality of historical events, Thomas abstracts wisdom and secret knowledge from reality. In this regard, then, Thomas illuminates early Christian imagination and hermeneutics rather than the life of Jesus of Nazareth.
In light of the above evidence, I can only conclude that because Thomas is derivative and shaped by Gnostic and Synoptic traditions, it cannot be used as an independent source to reconstruct the historical Jesus. Sound theological reflection must be grounded in the historical realities of the person and work of Jesus. Or to put it another way, history grounds theology, and theology interprets history. The two must remain interconnected in the theological task. To neglect one or the other would necessarily lead us into either hardened skepticism or wild theological speculation. While Thomas is a great source for understanding early Christian diversity, it simply should not be conflated with the life of Jesus of Nazareth. Thomas may open a window onto early Christian imagination, but the historical Jesus stands firmly in the Synoptic Gospels and the apostolic testimony of the New Testament.
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On Whispers of Revolution: A Book Review
Bird, Michael F. Bird. Whispers of Revolution: Jesus and the Coming of God as King. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2025.
When we confess that Christ is King, we are tapping into a longing that goes back to the very beginning of creation. Adam and Eve were placed in the garden of Eden to serve as God’s vice-regents, to rule and to establish his dominion in the world. Of course, our first parents failed when they succumbed to the deceptions of the serpent, and from that point on, the story of the Bible revolves around God’s plan to reestablish his dominion in the world. In a new book entitled Whispers of Revolution: Jesus and the Coming of God as King, Michael F. Bird applies this lens to the person and work of Jesus of Nazareth. Bird is Deputy Principle and Lecturer in Theology at Ridley College, Melbourne, and he is the author of over 30 books, including the award winning The Gospel of Lord: How the Early Church Wrote the Story of Jesus. In this book, Bird argues that Jesus was driven by the conviction that through his words and work, through his mission and message, God was unveiling his kingship in a way that would rescue Israel and eventually restore the whole world.
Bird’s essential thesis is that the life and ministry of Jesus is best understood within the context of Jewish restoration eschatology. Jewish restoration eschatology is simply the hope that one day God would bring an end to Israel’s exile, restore their national and spiritual life as his people, and through them bring the nations into submission under his rule. This hope is grounded in the visions of the canonical prophets, and it serves as the foundation for the theology and worldview of Second Temple Judaism. For Bird, this worldview “provides the key to understanding Jesus’ mission, aims, self-understanding and hope.” (56) With this lens in view, then, Bird goes on to walk through the Gospel accounts to show how the details of the Jesus earthly ministry fit within this framework. Along the way he discusses topics such as, the birth and early life of Jesus, Jesus’ self-understanding of himself as Messiah, his teaching about the Kingdom of God and other topics, his interactions with his contemporaries, his’ last days in Jerusalem, and his death and resurrection. In all of this, God is coming, coming as king. He concludes, “Jesus himself started the whisper of this revolution, one involving a reordering of power, Israel’s regathering, the redemption of the Jews, the defeat of Satan, and the renewal of creation.” (300) However, this good news could not remain a whisper; it had to be shared, repeated, declared, argued, and even shouted afar. And this is exactly what Jesus instructed his followers to do.
In terms of strengths, Bird is particularly helpful when he is discussing the place of historical Jesus studies in relation to New Testament Theology. After all, Jesus did not write any of the books that we have included in the NT canon. Technically, the NT Documents are written about him, but none of them were actually written by him. So, we may rightly speak of the theology of Matthew or Luke or Mark or John, but can we also speak of the theology of Jesus himself? Bird suggests that the study of the historical Jesus is a necessary prolegomena o our study of NT theology. Jesus is the church’s primal theologian, and it is his teaching, his ministry, his life and death that stands at the heart of the New Testament. Therefore, we cannot simply relegate historical Jesus studies to the domain of historians alone; no, the study of historical Jesus is a fundamental component of the theologians toolbox when it comes to understanding the theology of Paul or John or Matthew or Peter or James. Bird writes, “Jesus was the first theologian of the Jesus movement, and his is the creative mind behind so much of the church’s generative tradition.” (15-16) This means that the theology of the NT should find its impetus, not exclusively but at least initially, on the lips of Jesus of Nazareth. He goes on to write that, “the study of the historical Jesus is a reminder that the ‘word became flesh’.” (17). In other words, if we truly believe that our faith in grounded in the historical realities of Jesus life and ministry, death and resurrection, then we must give the study of the historical Jesus its proper place when it comes to understanding the New Testament.
One minor reservation that I have concerns Bird’s relatively frequent appeal to the Gospel of Thomas. Thomas is a mid-to-late second-century sayings collection comprising 114 logia attributed to Jesus, many of which exhibit clear literary and thematic dependence upon Synoptic tradition. While some scholars continue to argue that Thomas may preserve independent and possibly early Jesus traditions, the case for its independence remains highly contested. In numerous instances, the parallels suggest secondary development rather than primitive preservation, and several logia reflect theological trajectories consistent with the emerging Gnostic or proto-Gnostic tendencies. To be clear, Thomas is an important witness to the reception and reinterpretation of Jesus’ sayings in the second century. However, its value for reconstructing the historical Jesus is, in my view, extremely limited. For that reason, Bird’s approximately twenty-two references to Thomas—nearly half the number of his citations of the far more substantial and canonically received Gospel of John—feel somewhat disproportionate. While these references do not materially affect his overall thesis, a more restrained use of Thomas would have strengthened the historiographical clarity of the argument.
Whispers of Revolution is not a fifth gospel but at the same time it is not merely a gospel harmony. It is historically grounded, insightful, and clarifying reconstruction of Jesus within the context of first century Judaism and its hopes for restoration. And insofar as the historical study of Jesus of Nazareth is “indispensable for religious scholarship and the life of Christian faith” (14), Bird’s book is both accessible and academically rigorous. It will be a great benefit both to lay Christians who want to understand Jesus and the gospels better and to scholars who are looking for a clear and coherent understanding of Jesus to which they can correlate their own work. And so, I would gladly recommend this book, and if I were ever to teach a course on the life of Jesus or the Gospels, I would require it for my students. When Jesus was with his disciples at Caesarea Philippi, he asked them, “Who do people say that I am?”, and then, more importantly, he asked them, “Who do you say that I am?” This is the fundamental question we must all be able to answer. Bird has answered it: Jesus was a messianic prophet of Jewish restoration in fulfillment Old Testament hopes. While Jesus was certainly more than this, he was certainly not less, and Whispers of Revolution is a great book for those who want to understand the life and times, the ministry and message of Jesus as he himself might have understood it.
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On the Jesus of History and the Christ of Faith
One of my favorite topics in the study of the New Testament is the historical Jesus; it is an area of study that attempts to understand Jesus as he was within the context of first century Judaism. However, many who study the historical Jesus argue that the Jesus of history (the first century Jewish teacher) is not the Christ of faith (the exalted Lord proclaimed by the church). In other words, the early church’s understanding of Jesus has been embellished and augmented by influences that go well beyond who Jesus actually was and what he taught. This presupposition is one of the the primary factors that originally inspired the now century old quest(s) for the historical Jesus. Of course, we must affirm that historical investigation is indispensable for understanding the person and work of Jesus, but the hard distinction between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith collapses under the weight of the earliest evidence. The church’s confession of Christ emerges not as a departure from Jesus, but as the historically grounded interpretation of his life, death, and resurrection. In the space that follows, I would like to defend this thesis by examining why history matters, where the split came from, and why the evidence actually favors continuity and not discontinuity.
It would seem to be readily evident that the historical study of the New Testament is essential for understanding the Christian faith. This is because Christianity makes several direct and specific claims about real events that took place in historical space and time. So understanding these events and their historical and theological significance is a matter of first importance when it comes to understanding our faith. As a case in point, when the eternal Son came incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ, he stepped into a particular place at a particular time, the fullness of time according to Galatians 4.4. In other words, the doctrine of the incarnation requires some historical understanding of the place and time when Jesus was born. In fact, the Gospels themselves are anchored in the geography, personalities, and events of the first century Palestine. The point is that if Jesus is severed from the places and times in which he lived, then we run the risk of distorting the significance of his life and teaching. More than this, we run the risk of reshaping Jesus into a man of our making, as a some kind of modern therapist or social reform mascot. The bottom line is that the hard work of history disciplines our theology and grounds it in the life of our savior as he lived it. Or to put it more simply, to confess that the Word became flesh is to confess that history matters.
The point of this is to say that historical inquiry is not the enemy of faith. The problem comes when we presume to dictate what history is allowed to contain. During the Enlightenment of the 18th Century, philosophers and historians began to doubt the details of the New Testament’s depictions of Jesus. Because of their presuppositions about the supremacy of human reason in the pursuit of truth, they were highly skeptical of the Gospels’ accounts of Jesus’s miracles, particularly his resurrection. Their skepticism resulted in an approach to history that might be called methodological naturalism, or the idea that anything that even remotely smells like it might be supernatural must be ruled out as a theological fabrication. Ultimately, their dismissal of the miracles of Jesus, particularly his resurrection, led them to conclude that the church’s high Christology, or its understanding of Jesus as the divine Lord of heaven, must be a late addition to the New Testament that has nothing to do with who Jesus was and what he did and taught during his lifetime, a conclusion which had more to do with their own presuppositions than with any actual analysis of the evidence. The real question, however, is not whether the theology of the early church developed over time (it clearly did), but the question is whether that development moved away from Jesus or unfolded from within the impact of his life and resurrection. An examination of the earliest documents clearly demonstrates that this is in fact what happened.
Now, the earliest Christian documents are the 13 letters of Paul, which were likely written between the years 49 CE and 68 CE. (The earliest of these is most likely 1 Thessalonians, and the latest is 2 Timothy.) Important for this post is the fact that several of these letters include embedded hymns and creedal material that clearly exalt Jesus as the divine Lord. For example, in Philippians 2.6, he “existed in the form of God,” and in Colossians 1.15, “He is the image of the invisible God.” In 1 Corinthians 8.6, the Apostle writes, “for us there is one God, the Father. All things are from him, and we exist for him. And there is one Lord, Jesus Christ. All things are through him, and we exist through him.” This is clearly a reworking of the Shema (Deut 6.4) which equates Jesus with the God of Israel. Even outside of Paul, in Hebrews 1.3, Jesus is “the radiance of God’s glory and the exact expression of his nature, sustaining all things by his powerful word.” And in James 5.9 (possibly the earliest document in the New Testament), he is “the judge [who] stands at the door!” The point of all this is to show that the church’s so called “high Christology” developed very early in the life of the church, and that within the context of strict Jewish monotheism. And so the question must be asked, “How did first century Jews come to worship Jesus as God so quickly?” The only possible answer is that the seeds of this belief were already present in the life and ministry of Jesus.
Of course, Jesus never articulated his identity in the language of the Nicaean Creed, but he clearly acted with divine authority. When the Pharisees ask, “Who can forgive sins but God alone?” Jesus says to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven. Get up, take your mat, and go home.” (Mark 2.1-12) When his disciples were rebuked for picking heads of grain on the sabbath, he responded, “For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.” (Matthew 12.1-8) He calmed the storms, he healed the sick, he cast out demons, he raised the dead. He equated his body with the temple, and he proclaimed a Kingdom of God that centered on his own person and work. And when the High Priest asked him if he was indeed the Christ, he responded, ““I am, and you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming with the clouds of heaven,” to which the High Priest responded by accusing him of blasphemy. (Mark 14.61-64) As a side note, the title Son of Man is most likely taken from Daniel 7, where Daniel sees “one like a son of Man” approaching the Ancient of Days to be vindicated and enthroned as king. The identity of this “one like a Son of Man” is debated, but it is highly likely that Daniel understood him as (quasi) divine figure. The point is that Jesus made several extraordinarily “high” claims about himself, claims that clearly threatened the Jerusalem religious establishment and eventually got him killed.
Moreover, the church did not invent these categories out of thin air; rather, it interpreted the shock of Jesus’ life and resurrection within the context and storyline of Israel’s Scriptures. And for them, the resurrection was the decisive interpretive key. The historical plausibility of the resurrection is practically certain given the cumulative effect of the evidence. The earliest confessions assume the truth of the resurrection (1 Cor 15.3-8). The earliest disciples went from fearing for their lives in the upper room to boldly proclaiming the truth of the resurrection in the temple square. The first witnesses of the resurrection were a couple of women whose testimony would have been viewed as untrustworthy in their day. All eleven of the disciples went to their deaths preaching Christ as risen from the dead, and the apostle Paul went from hateful persecutor of Christians to the most effective preacher and missionary in the early church. In other words, the resurrection was a central component of the early church’s belief, and its exalted understanding of Jesus flows naturally from this belief. If Christ was truly raised from the dead, then he truly was who he said he was, i.e. “the Christ, the Son of the living God.” The point is that the Christ of the church’s faith is what the Jesus of history looks like after Easter. Without the resurrection, a hard divide makes sense, but with the resurrection, the continuity between the two becomes inherently plausible. Or to put it another way, the resurrection is not some theological embroidery added to the story of the historical Jesus. No, it is the primary engine of the early church’s “high” Christology.
The bottom of line is simply this, namely that the hard division between historical events and their theological significance is a false dichotomy. There simply is no such thing as uninterpreted history; all historical events are immediately interpreted. The moment something happens, it is interpreted. The question, then, is not whether theology exists, but whether it faithfully corresponds to what actually occurred. In other words, theology is not the corruption of history; it is reflection upon it. And when it comes the person and work of Jesus, the Gospel accounts are just historical testimony that has been shaped by conviction. The faith of the early church was an organic and continuous development that grew out of the life and teaching of the historical Jesus, and the earliest confessions of Christ are best understood as historically grounded worship. If we separate the Jesus of history from the Christ of faith, the our faith becomes mere myth layered on memory. Jesus came incarnate at a particular time in a concrete place, and he was resurrected and he ascended to be seated at the right hand of the Father. And this is why both the history of Jesus and the faith of the early church matter. The one worshiped in the church is not a theological invention layered upon a forgotten Galilean. He is the crucified and risen Jesus of Nazareth. There is theological development, yes. There is interpretation, certainly. But there is no canyon between the Jesus who walked the hills of Galilee and the Christ that the church confesses as Lord. There is continuity — deep, historical, and theologically unavoidable continuity between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith.
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On the Red Letters and the Authentic Words of Jesus
Most English versions of the Bible print the words of Jesus in the Gospels in red letters. It is a tradition that goes back nearly a century. The first red-letter New Testament was published in 1899; the full Bible with a red-letter New Testament was printed two years later in 1901. The reason for this practice is relatively clear, namely to highlight the words of Jesus over against the surrounding narrative and commentary. As noble as this aim is, it can lead to some unhealthy conclusions and applications. Readers might be tempted to conclude that the red letters are more important, more valuable, and more primary than the rest of the New Testament. For example, some so-called “red letter Christians” pit the words of Jesus against the rest of the New Testament and purport to follow the social ethic of Jesus which is characterized by love and compassion rather than the more conservative theology and ethics of the Apostle Paul et al. However, if Jesus is fully God, and there is only one God, and if God inspired the whole Bible, then in a sense all of the words of the Bible, whether black or red, are the words of Jesus.
Of course, this does not mean that the actual content of Jesus’s teaching ministry is unimportant. When it comes to the quest of the historical Jesus, the details of what Jesus said and did are essential for understanding who Jesus was and what he came to do. This is why scholars of the historical Jesus developed criteria of authenticity to determine which sayings in the canonical gospels authentically come from Jesus and which ones do not. Criteria like multiple attestation, dissimilarity, coherence, embarrassment and others like these are used to decide the authenticity of each individual saying or pericope. However, more often than not, these criteria have been used to dismiss more sayings than they have proven. This is most evident in work of the Jesus Seminar and their book The Five Gospels: What did Jesus Really Say? The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus. Instead of establishing the authentic words of Jesus, they dismissed some 82 % of the sayings attributed to Jesus in the canonical Gospels either as things he definitely did not say (black bead) or as things he did not say but that might be close to his ideas (grey bead). Even sayings that met the established criteria were dismissed as inauthentic. This proves that there was probably another criteria at play in their judgment, that being if a saying evinced a relatively high Christology, then it was not authentic in their view.
More to the point, in my recent book review of Jesus and His Promised Second Coming by Tucker S. Ferda (see here), I suggested that the search for the “authentic” sayings of the historical Jesus in the gospels is a fundamentally flawed endeavor from the outset. This is because the Gospel writers did not set out to record the words of Jesus verbatim (ipsissima verba). They did, however, attempt to convey the words of Jesus by way of summary, thematic arrangement, implication, and interpretation. In other words, they were conveying the essential substance of the words of Jesus as well as it theological significance (ipsissima vox or substantia verba). This is partly because the Gospels are based on traditions that were passed down orally from the time of Jesus until the time the Gospels were composed. Even if the composition of the Gospels is dated early, i.e. in the 40s or 50s CE, then we are talking about 10+ years that have passed from the time Jesus to the time when the sayings of Jesus were written down. The point is that if “authentic” is understood to mean the actual words that Jesus spoke verbatim as he spoke to them, then we are searching for something that will never be found.
On the other hand, we must affirm that the Gospel writers were not simply making things up as they went along, putting words into the mouth of Jesus that he never said or thought. This is sometimes compared to the children’s game of “telephone”, where the first child hears a sentence, and then passes it along to the next child by whispering in their ear, and on to the next and so on. More often than not, when the final child reports the sentence, the final version is a far cry from the original, and usually so horribly garbled as to be beyond recognition. This analogy is a caricature of the actual nature of oral transmission. Not only was the culture at the time of Jesus thoroughly oral, but the Jews in particular took the transmission of oral tradition highly seriously. The Old Testament scriptures commanded them to pass on their faith orally from generation to generation, and Jewish children were trained in this from an early age in the temple and synagogues. The faithful transmission of oral tradition was practically sacrosanct in Jewish culture, and given the recognized authority of Jesus as a rabbi, the gospels writers would never have thought to put their own thoughts and agendas into his mouth. The same could be said for so-called prophetic utterances given by the risen Jesus; these would never have been treated as on par with actual Jesus tradition. As Luke himself indicates in the opening of his Gospel (1:1-4), the Gospel writers were faithfully writing down that which they had also remembered and received.
Now, someone might object, “What about the doctrine of inspiration? Weren’t the Gospel writers inspired by the Holy Spirit and so kept from error?” And I would answer, “Yes! Of course they were!” (2 Tim 3:16-17). But inspiration is not dictation. The Gospel writers were not mindless automatons simply transcribing by rote. Here again, Luke’s introduction indicates that he had done his research, had talked to eyewitnesses, had done the hard work “to write carefully and in order.” In other words, inspiration does not negate the normal processes of research and writing. In inspiration, the Holy Spirit works in, with, and through the human author in such a way that their words are his words. Moreover, the method of inspiration varies according to the genre of the literature being inspired. Clearly, prophetic texts, “thus saith the Lord” were directly inspired speech, but historical narrative, epistles, et al. allow for the creative engagement of the human author with the work of the Holy Spirit. B. B. Warfield puts it this way in The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible,
The Scriptures, in other words, are conceived by the writers of the New Testament as through and through God’s book, in every part expressive of His mind, given through men after a fashion which does no violence to their nature as men, and constitutes the book also men’s book as well as God’s, in every part expressive of the mind of its human authors.
The point of all this is to say that the Gospel writers have faithfully conveyed to us the real and true words of Jesus even if they have not conveyed to us his exact words. So, we should not take individual sayings (or even whole pericopes) out of their narrative context and then dismiss them as wholly inauthentic. This is a fundamentally flawed method of historical and exegetical inquiry. Rather we should attempt to understand how the words and actions of Jesus fit within the context of first century Judaism and how they gave rise to the theology and practice of the early church. As to whether we should continue to print the words of Jesus is red letters, I am of mixed opinion. Further, I suspect that my views on the question will do nothing to unseat standard publishing practice. Nevertheless, we must understand that there is no portion of Holy Scripture that is more authoritative, more valuable, more transformative than any other. Whether we are dealing with the letters of Paul or with the words of Jesus in the Gospels, we are dealing with the Word of God, and it is He who is speaking to us when we read. And so we should ask the Lord to give us the ears to hear and the hearts to receive what the Spirit is saying to us.
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On Jesus and His Promised Second Coming: A Book Review
Ferda, Tucker S. Jesus and His Promised Second Coming: Jewish Eschatology and Christian Origins. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2024.
One of the convictions that has Christians now for 2000 years is the expectation that Jesus will come again at the end of history to judge the living and the dead and to establish his kingdom on earth. This “blessed hope” (Titus 2:13) has been the confession of followers of Jesus from the very beginning of Christian history, as evidenced in the Apostle’s Creed. The problem is that this belief has somewhat of an embarrassment in the study of the historical Jesus. In other words, if Jesus truly believed that he would come again in the lifetime of “this generation” (Matthew 16:28, et al.), then either he made a simple mistake in his calculations or he was horribly deluded as to his understanding of himself and his role in the final consummation of all things. Scholars have typically followed two approaches in order to alleviate this embarrassment. On the one hand, there is a widespread consensus among critical scholars that the second coming is a belief that was created by the first followers of Jesus, and it does not go back to the historical Jesus. On the other, a large number of “evangelical” scholars have reinterpreted the coming of Jesus metaphorically/symbolically as a coming in judgment and have applied it to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD.
In his most recent book, Jesus and His Promised Second Coming: Jewish Eschatology and Christian Origins, Tucker S. Ferda (Errett M. Grable Associate Professor of New Testament Exegesis and Early Christianity at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary) challenges both of these approaches by arguing that the second coming hope goes back to the historical Jesus. He advances this argument in four parts. In the first section, he considers questions related to historical and interpretive method, and he critiques certain “atomistic” approaches that attempt to sift through the Gospels in order to find the authentic sayings of Jesus and then then from them try to construct the beliefs of Jesus. In Ferda’s view, this methodological approach has it completely backward. Instead, he suggests that we should start with the beliefs of the early church as they are presented in the New Testament documents and then attempt to construct a plausible scenario that how these beliefs came to be. In the second section, Ferda considers the history of scholarship on the question of the Second Coming, and he identifies certain presuppositions and biases that have contributed to the current state of affairs. Particularly, he suggests that certain elitist and antisemitic tendences among scholars have caused them to want to distance Jesus from “outlandish” apocalyptic beliefs of Second Temple Judaism. In the third section, in keeping with the method that he outlined in section one, Ferda surveys the Gospels and and writings of Paul to demonstrate the widespread and ubiquitous belief in the Second Coming that characterized the early church, and finally, in section four, he offers a historical reconstruction of the Sitz im Leben Jesu (the life and ministry context of Jesus) which he believes explains the Second Coming beliefs of the early church and how they arose from the teaching and beliefs of the historical Jesus.
In the space that remains, I would simply like to identify two strengths and two weaknesses that stand out in Ferda’s work. First, Ferda’s critique of certain “atomistic” approaches to the study of the historical Jesus is spot on. So many reconstructions of the historical Jesus have relied on application of the so-called criterion of (in)authenticity to the saying of Jesus. In this approach, scholars utilize criteria like dissimilarity, multiple attestation, embarrassment, et al., to identify which sayings of Jesus in the Gospels are authentic . However, in practice, these criteria have led to the dismissal of more sayings of Jesus than they have authenticated. Moreover, this approach simply does not appreciate the what the Gospels actually are. They are not verbatim recordings of the teaching of Jesus; the Gospel writers were not attempting to record and convey the ipsissima verba (the very words) of Jesus. Given the literary and historical nature of Gospels, it is much more likely that they convey the ipsissima vox (the very voice) or the substantia verba (the substance of the words) of Jesus. So, the search for “authentic” sayings of the historical Jesus is a fundamentally flawed endeavor to begin with; it is not possible. Ferda’s alternative approach accounts for this by treating the Gospels as theological/interpretive history, and moving backward from how the church understood and interpreted Jesus to what Jesus likely understood and believed. In other words, it attempts to explain how the beliefs and expectations of the historical Jesus fit both within the context of Second Temple Judaism and how they give rise to the beliefs and hopes of the early church.
The second strength in Ferda’s argument has to do with his thorough and nuanced handling of messianic expectations in the Second Temple period. It is widely recognized that expectations for who the Messiah would be and what he would do were quite diverse during the time of Jesus. Of course, the liberation and restoration of Israel was foundational for these hopes, but expectations for how this would be accomplished were far from uniform. However, it seems relatively clear that book of Daniel played a primary role in the formulation of these expectations, and especially so for Jesus and his understanding of himself as the Son of Man. In his analysis of these expectations, Ferda clearly demonstrates the plausibility of Jesus’ belief in his own Second Coming. Moreover, he clarifies how notions of imminence and delay fit together in these scenarios. He writes, “It is also important to note that messianic hopes, varied though they were, frequently envisioned some kind of process of inauguration, whereby the coming of a messianic figure is climactic but does not necessarily change history instantaneously.” (390) The point is that the idea of imminence need not be equated with immediacy, and it need not preclude the idea Jesus expected an interim period between his death/resurrection and his coming in glory and power. Not only is this tension between imminence and interim present in the expectations of Second Temple Judaism, it is highly likely that it was a characteristic component of the eschatological expectations of the historical Jesus.
Overall, I think Ferda has made a strong and persuasive case for the idea that the Second Coming hope goes back to Jesus himself. Of course, this does not mean that I agree with every detail of his argument, and here I will identify two that stand out. First. while he is right to reject approaches that attempt to sift the Gospels for authentic sayings of Jesus, from time to time he still dismisses sayings that he considers clearly inauthentic. For example, he writes, “The threefold passion and resurrection predictions are highly suspect as they conveniently predict what exactly took place in Jerusalem (Mark 8.31, 9.30-32, 10.32-34, and parr.).” (327) In other words, because Jesus predicts the exact events that will unfold as to his death/resurrection, these predictions cannot be authentic sayings of the historical Jesus. This is a dismissive statement that reads more like a bias than an evidence based conclusion. Moreover, he goes on to argue that it is entirely plausible that Jesus had considered the possibility of his own death and that he likely expected to die in Jerusalem. Setting aside the question of Jesus’s understanding of his resurrection, it is not clear why Jesus could expect to die but not predict that he would be killed. Moreover, as noted above, the decision on whether a saying is authentic or inauthentic is at best not helpful and at worst irrelevant.
Secondly, as I noted above, Ferda makes a convincing case that Jesus’s understanding of imminence need not entail that the kingdom would come and that the would return within his own lifetime, especially since it is clear that he expected that he would die (rise again, and ascend). It is a truism to say that the proclamation of Jesus was characterized by the notion of imminence. However, how the notion of imminence should be understood is widely debated. Even though Ferda acknowledges the presence of a delay in Jesus’s expectations, he attempts to salvage the idea of imminence by limiting it to “this generation”, meaning that Jesus expected that he would come back within the lifetimes of his audience or a timespan of approximately 40 years. This is based on statements like the one found in Matthew 16:28, which says, “Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom,” or Matthew 24.34, “Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things take place.” These verses, and their parallels, are widely debated. Moreover, if Ferda’s interpretation is correct, then it is not clear how this saves Jesus from error. If he believed that he would come back within 40 years, and he clearly did not, then he was still wrong about his understanding of his coming. This is a fundamental question. Ferda doesn’t acknowledge the implications of his statements in this regard, nor does he attempt to resolve this tension. (See how I have attempted to address this problem, here.)
In the final analysis, we need not be ashamed to confess that “He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead and his kingdom will have no end.” (Nicene Creed). This is our blessed hope, and to deny this in any way is to countenance heresy. It simply will not do to explain it away as a creation of the early church, and it will not do to reinterpret it as a metaphor or symbol. Jesus is coming again, visibly, bodily, in glory and power, to establish his kingdom on earth, to vindicate his people, and to defeat sin once and for all. Tucker S. Ferda has effectively demonstrated the plausibility that the church’s belief goes back to Jesus himself. Of course, he has not answered every question, and there is still more work to be done in terms of understanding the eschatology of the historical Jesus and how it is presented in Gospels particularly but also in the rest of the New Testament. But even if every question cannot be answered or every detail explained, followers of Jesus can boldly proclaim, “Amen! Come, Lord Jesus!”
Faith seeking Understanding 